The Award for Best East Coast National Park Goes To…

The Great Smokies National Park!

Really though, it was such a beautiful place. By some miracle, we managed to catch the park at peak leaf peeping time, so our backpacking trip was accompanied by showers of gold, orange, and red leaves. The mountains themselves were more like gentle giants than anything like what we experienced in the Andes or the Rockies, but the deciduous forest was such a nice change to pine trees that we were absolutely enchanted the whole time we were hiking.

We followed this beautiful stream up the mountainside, with lots of gorgeous cascades to oooo and awww at as we went along. 

There was even a hidden waterfall off a little unmarked side trail that provided ample photo opportunities.

At the summit of the mountain ridge, the trees were thick, but we could catch glimpses of the far mountainsides aflame in fall color, and the carpet of leaves blanketing the ground was like a colorful quilt sprawled under our feet. Several creatures found shelter underneath the colorful quilt, and blended in almost to invisibility. 

The air was cool, but comfortable, and we came to our last backpacking camp after nine miles of beautiful hiking. At this point, after about 23 days in the backcountry, we’d like to think we’re pretty experienced at this whole backpacking thing, and Ryan’s found lots of ways to bring creature comforts to the backcountry as well.

It was sad though, in our little cathedral of yellow trees, knowing that this was our last time of the trip to be camping away from it all. We’re lucky to have had such incredible experiences backpacking, from our first journey together up Aconcagua to our favorite trip down to Havasu Creek, backpacking has certainly been a memorable activity for the trip.

Back to the Smokies though, after completing our last backpacking trip, we drove south through the park to Georgia, which brought even more incredible views of clear streams, stunning leaves, and mountains aglow. It was one of the prettiest drives and sights we seen in a day driving and we were certainly determined to come back to fish, camp, and hike the area more in another autumn hopefully not too distant.

That Awkward Moment When You Accidentally Stumble Upon the Amish

From South Carolina, Ryan and I ventured westward again to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Site.

Now first things first, what’s a gap? It took me a while to understand that a gap is exactly what you would expect, a gap, but a gap in the mountains, or what we in Colorado would call a pass. This is significant because without the discovery of these gaps, westward expansion over the Appalachian Mountains would have been incredibly more difficult, and Manifest Destiny might have been given the middle finger by Mother Nature. But thankfully people like Daniel Boone discovered an “easy” way through the mountains by means of gaps like the Cumberland.

It was actually quite fascinating understanding the history of the area. Boone discovered the Cumberland Gap, and led the way west for so many pilgrims into the fertile valleys of Virginia and Kentucky. Lewis and Clark used the gap to head west to St. Louis before starting their epic exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, and so it’s clear that the area is worthy of a historical monument. For Ryan and me, why use the gap when you can just go straight uphill to the ridgeline?

It was a backpacking trip, just a one-nighter, but nonetheless we had to find the trail with a gain of about 2000 vertical feet so we could eat our calories that night with a clear conscience. It was also the most direct route to our lodging for the night, a little log cabin built a good hundred years ago by some guy named Martin.

It seemed like a fun idea when I made the reservation, and we’re still happy we had the opportunity to mix up our camping routine, but let me tell you, there is no place creepier to spend the night than an old cabin in the middle of the woods.

First of all, it’s not like the cabin had electricity, so the only light in the cabin was from the dirt crusted windows and our meager headlamps, which while not very big, still did little to light up the corners of our little abode. And then of course you can only imagine what sort of things are living in that cabin. We discovered a couple spiders, too big for comfort, but what was worse was their webs, which were large and strong enough to hold whole sticks aloft in the air – a bad omen for my arachnophobia. My industrious boyfriend was quick to gather a good amount of firewood and soon enough had a fire going in the cabin’s old stone fireplace, not unlike how early settlers would have done it. While we were grateful for the little bit of warmth it produced, I couldn’t help but think about what the smoke rising from our chimney could be signaling to whatever was living in the forest around us. Clearly all the Halloween prepping is getting to me. It took me awhile to get to sleep since every thump and scrape sounded like the lever of our cabin door being moved open. Eek!

I did finally get to sleep but then in the middle of the night, I awoke to a rather discouraging noise, a chewing sound coming from one of the far bunks. Completely tense (so as not to move and thus not be noticed by whatever it was, cus every kid knows that works), I listened intently to understand just what I was hearing.

 

Sure enough, it was exactly what I figured it was. Mr. Mouse had discovered our Ziplock bag of trash and was doing his best to nibble through it to the sweet smelling paper towels inside. This is not surprising at all in a super old cabin in the woods, and I had actually prepped for such an intruder. We had spilled some rice on one of the bunks in the corner, so I put our trash and fuel bottle and such over there as bait while moving our sealed food to another bunk on the other side of the room, hoping he’d be too distracted by the smells of the bait to notice it. Sure enough, it worked! All the rice was cleared from the other bunk, and we had a small hole in our trash bag and some shredded paper towel, but oatmeal and energy bars were left untouched. Huzzah! Now while I’m proud to have bested the little guy, I will say when he came scurrying over to our bunk bed to investigate my pack (which had delicious smelling pots in it), I was a little cowed. The last thing I wanted was to stay up fighting a mouse off my pack all night, but Ryan moved around on the top bunk above me and the little rodent thought better of his plan to get close to the humans.

What's so scary about this place?

The next morning of course we felt silly for ever being afraid of the cabin or the woods, but then again I think I prefer my tent significantly anyway. We made off for the Hensley settlement listed on our map, which was the only attempt by settlers to farm the Cumberland ridge.

We strode into the clearing of the settlement and started walking among old fence lines upon wet, soft grass taking pictures and commenting on the old structures and how we wouldn’t like to sleep in them either.

Suddenly, we came across a building with a sign “private residence, do not enter” and I said loudly to Ryan “Holy cow! People still live here?” The woman on the porch as we rounded the side of the building answered before Ryan could, “Good morning!”

Needless to say, I felt SUPER awkward and couldn’t believe we hadn’t been told there were still inhabitants in the settlement. The woman was wearing a long dress and bonnet and was holding some stitching, which instantly made me think, “Oh shoot, we’ve invaded an Amish settlement.”

From her house, we awkwardly walked around the lawns to the cemetery and the school house, which looked both like it could be in use, or like it was being posed as if it was being used. Completely befuddled, we walked by one other house where another woman dressed in colonial garb was starting to weave on the front porch. Time to go!

Turns out when we went to the visitor center to turn in the cabin key that no, they are not in fact Amish, they are volunteers. They do live up there, but they dress in period costume and engage in activities like weaving for educational purposes and they love to show tourists through the cabins that are in mock 1800s getup. Soooo we didn’t actually stumble upon an Amish community, instead we just snubbed some volunteers by completely avoiding them. Oops! Mostly I was just happy to hear there were other humans not far from our haunted cabin in the woods, Amish or not.

Southern Living, Then and Now

From Shenandoah, we drove south towards two very different representations of southern life – the old and the new.

First stop was Jefferson’s home named Monticello, which was added to our list of destinations mostly because I’m a total nerd about that period of history. Ryan was impressed as well though as we strolled among the grounds and toured the house with a very knowledgeable and quirky tour guide. Monticello and the acreage Jefferson owned gave a wonderful glimpse into how one of the most popular and prominent men of the late 1700s-early 1800s lived his life. What became quite clear on the tour was that the survival and upkeep of Monticello and the lifestyle Jefferson lived was completely and utterly dependent on slaves. Quite in debt throughout most of his adult life (he would accumulate approximately $2 million dollars of debt in today’s dollar), if it weren’t for the slaves that harvested crops, made nails, and ran his household, it’s quite likely Jefferson would have been in deep trouble with his creditors and spending his time writing appeals from jail instead of the Declaration of Independence. So in that document, when Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” I’m sure his conscience was squirming.

Luckily Jefferson treated his slaves as kindly as he could, and the slaves quarters (while tucked semi-underground below the hill of the estate), were particularly comfortable for them.

Back to the debt though, Jefferson’s home (where we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the interior), was filled with beautiful paintings, hundreds of books, maps, scientific instruments, busts of all the great men of the day, not to mention built in intricacies like skylights, revolving doors, and specially designed clocks. That plus the exquisite food Jefferson ate (he brought one of his slaves to France with him to be instructed in French cooking and ate as such ever since), it’s pretty clear how the bills started to pile up. Nerd moment – by far the coolest décor Jefferson had in his house was the original pair of antlers mounted on a wall that were brought as a specimen by Lewis and Clarke themselves back from the west on the Voyage of Discovery. I was pretty ecstatic about that.

Overall, Ryan and I found the idea of Monticello, with its flower gardens and orchards, vineyards and beer cellar, a romantic vision of plantation life in the south two hundred years ago. Frozen in time and preserved as carefully as possible, it was fascinating to fathom the life Jefferson lived there.

From Monticello, it was time to experience more modern southern life, and where better than at the State Fair in North Carolina.

At this wonderful cultural experience, there were tons of Chernobyl sized pumpkins, decorative gourds, an extensive gardening section, and of course ridiculously expensive livestock raised by 4H kids. We wandered about guided by one of my good friends born and raised in the state, admiring the winning “largest watermelon” and listening to the good-natured southern accent all around us. If you want a good chuckle, imagine Jefferson talking like that.

One cultural highlight of the fair we had to experience was the cooking, which was not in the least bit French.

Of course in the photo above you can’t even begin to tell what it is we’re eating, but believe me when I say those are fried Oreos, fried cookie dough, and fried cheesecake on a stick. Yup. Welcome to the south! To me, the sugary sweetness was almost too overwhelming. I like all those things separately, including just fried dough like funnel cake, but combing them was almost too much. The cookie dough especially was so sweet it almost made us sick after just four of the fried mounds. The Oreos were the best, but even those took my stomach for a turn. What’s even crazier is we didn’t even scratch the surface of what we could have purchased fried.

The most intricate fried thing was probably the “Twix bar wrapped in bacon,” though the unfried “Krispy Kreme Donut Burger” (a burger with donuts as buns) probably gave a lot of the fried foods a run for their calories.

After gorging ourselves on fried things, it was off to the races… of pigs that is (if video does not load, click here).

I wonder what Jefferson would have thought of this modern day pig race could he attend the state fair. My guess is he would have thought it just as hilarious as we did, because “pig races are boring” said no one ever. They also raced baby goats and ducks, which all the animals seemed to understand “if I just turn this corner, and then this one, and this one, and this one, I get food!” It definitely got the crowd cheering every time.

The fair ended with a finale of fireworks lighting up the South Carolina sky. Between the fireworks and the carnival games we wasted some money on, plus the sugary food and pig races we were happy to be little kids again, and more than happy we were able to experience southern life both old and new. Now off again to the mountains!