On Friday morning, we woke up and ate breakfast at the hotel. They had a pretty decent selection of food — we ended up making some waffles using the waffle iron and eating some biscuits and gravy, and probably something else as well. It wasn’t stunning, but it was pretty good, and it was free.

We checked out of the Days Inn and noticed that there is a mountain view in front of the building. It was a decent place to stay, at a reasonable price ($60), at a good location. We’ll probably stay there again on future trips to the Smokies.

The Days Inn’s mountain view, complete with Wendy’s and Subway signs. Still, not bad …

We weren’t terribly far from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The directions I initially got had us driving along the edge of the park instead of through it, but I thought we might like to get a glimpse of the park before continuing on to Charlotte. Plus, we wanted to drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which starts (or, more accurately, ends) in Cherokee, NC. You have to go through the park to get to Cherokee, so it made sense to do it this way.

To do this, we had to drive through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is where a lot of people like to go for their Smokies vacations. It didn’t look at all appealing to me, with endless strip malls, hotels, and a vast array of tourist attractions, most of which had nothing to do with the mountains at all. I understand that what a lot of people want isn’t the same as what we wanted (to be close to nature and away from crap like that), but it still seemed weird to me that people go so close to so much beauty and spend their time in resorts or playing miniature golf and go-carting.

We stopped at the visitor’s center, primarily because Sarah was getting a little carsick. It was getting hot, and the air conditioning in our car doesn’t work, so the heat combined with the mountain roads was making her feel a bit sick. She felt better after a few minutes, and we continued on our way. I didn’t mind picking up a few maps and pamphlets anyway.

The drive through the Park on 441 was just awesome. I was tempted to pull off at each overlook and gape at how awesome the mountains were, but I knew if we did this, we would never reach Charlotte. Besides, we’d be back later in our trip. We decided not to stop at all during this trip through the park. It was also a very fun drive, as it’s a windy mountain road. I was a little concerned about how well the car would handle it, but we had no problems.

We listened to the Woven Hand album “Mosaic” while driving through the park. I thought the mood and atmosphere of it fit the scenery perfectly.

After driving through the park, we stopped in Cherokee, NC for lunch. We ended up eating at the “Riverside Cafe II.” Sarah had the flounder basket (which was not served in a basket), and I had an Indian Taco, which was described to me as a funnel cake (not sweet though) topped with chili, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. It wasn’t bad, but I have to wonder if it was approximating a specific Cherokee dish, and if so, what that dish really would’ve tasted like, because I’m sure this wasn’t it.

 
Riverside Cafe II / Indian Tacos

We also got some coffee at a local coffee shop (my photo didn’t turn out) and headed out toward the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Well, since I made a “track listing” intended to be for an album, I thought I’d use it to organize my blog posts about our vacation as well. So here we are, starting out with the first night.

We set out on Thursday night, August 16. I had taken time off work on Friday and the whole next week. We got a lot of our stuff ready on Wednesday, and Sarah had the car mostly packed by the time I got home from work on Thursday (naturally, I rode my bicycle to work). We packed a few additional items and left around 6:30 pm — earlier than we expected. Our plan was to drive to Jellico, TN, where we had reservations at a Days Inn for that night.

Once we reached I-65, it quickly became clear that the bike rack wasn’t working too well. The bikes were being blown around by the wind, and it was making me nervous. I exited the interstate and secured the bikes using some rope. I almost didn’t even bring the rope on this trip, wondering if we would need it.

Securing the bicycles

So, we learned two valuable lessons: 1. always bring rope and 2. my bike rack is OK for small trips, but not for long trips on the Interstate.

The drive was pretty uneventful, and it got dark shortly after we entered Kentucky, so we couldn’t see the land on our way in. I could sense the land getting more mountainous and the road windier as we approached Jellico, but I really had no idea what it would look like in the morning.

The Days Inn was pretty decent, there were no problems with our reservation, and we went right to our room. We found the Bible open to Psalms.

The Bible in our room was opened to Psalms for our benefit

I don’t know why this detail sticks out in my head, but it does. Maybe it’s the fact that I had no intention or reading the Bible, or the fact that we found the South to be every bit as religious as people seem to assume the Midwest is. There are a lot of religious people in Indiana, but it’s not as inescapable as we found it to be in the South.

We wrote some things in our journals (which I’m not even referring to now), something we would only do once or twice more. I had a lot of trouble hand-writing my thoughts. I have crappy handwriting, and I can type a lot faster than I write. For whatever reason, it wasn’t working for me.

We drank a couple of beers that we brought with us and tried to get some sleep, knowing the next day would be a long one. The Days Inn claimed to have a mountain view, but it was too dark to tell if that was true or not. We’d have to wait until morning to find out.

Sarah and I leave tonight for our vacation to the Smokies and North Carolina. We’ve been planning this for some time, and it’s hard to believe it’s finally happening. This will be my first paid vacation ever, and you can bet that I’ll take an occasional moment while standing on top of a mountain to remind myself, “I’m getting paid for this!”

We really need this. Neither of us has had a real vacation in … well, really, since we were kids. It’s about time. I can’t wait to scale up the rock face of a mountain, or plunge into whitewater rapids, or sit in a gazebo overlooking the mountains and stare into Sarah’s eyes until I forget the mountains are even there. To go mountain biking in some real mountains. To get lost on some shitty gravel road that my car wasn’t built to drive on in the first place. To find out how long it takes to boil water at 6,000 feet.

We’ll take thousands of photos, and while we won’t be able to blog while we’re gone, but instead, we’ll try our hand at putting pen to paper and actually writing. My handwriting is awful, and I can type faster than I can write, but I’m hoping that that tactile connection will have its own charms, and the fact that we can write anywhere we go is appealing. I normally don’t even try to write unless I’m sitting at a computer, and let me tell you, I won’t miss sitting at a computer. It’ll be difficult to transcribe our thoughts when we return, but a worthwhile endeavor.

I was going to go into detail about our plans, but it doesn’t really matter what our plans are. The point is, we’ll be getting away from our jobs, school, family, friends … everyone we know, for a time. It will be just us, and it’ll be our world.

Last weekend was yet another excellent one, complete with mountain biking, road biking, swimming, and some photography.

Mountain Biking
I went mountain biking with Dave and the two Chrises on Saturday morning, but I was running late, so I met them up at Hesitation Point instead of at the lower lot. I rode Hesitation Point very well, clearing some obstacles I had never cleared before, including a drop-off followed almost immediately by some rocks and a log you have to hop. We also rode the Aynes Loop “backwards” (counter-clockwise), which I had never done. It was actually easier than going the other way, which involves at least 10 minutes of solid climbing. The climbing is more spread out this way, and the trail rides very differently.

Then, we rode the North Tower Loop backwards to complete the trifecta. I rode down to the lower parking lot with them, rested for a minute, and turned around and rode back. I lost the computer on my mountain bike (again!), and I think I just won’t replace it this time. I’ve bought two already, I don’t really want to buy another one. Incidentally, it was a Cateye Enduro 8. I can’t really recommend them, since I’ve had two of them fall off of my mountain bike. I haven’t had the same problem with the Cateye Mity 8 on my road bike — at least not yet. My confidence in it is definitely a bit shaken, but the road bike doesn’t see the same kind of abuse and rough surfaces the mountain bike does, so hopefully, it’ll be OK.

I was tired on my way back up Hesitation Point. The fact that I was riding really well earlier was lost now, due to fatigue. I made a mistake around a difficult switchback. Somehow, one of my tires slipped, and I found myself falling — fortunately, to the center of the switchback, not to the ravine on the outside. Still, I fell a bit, hitting my knee and my left arm on something, and unfortunately, hitting some sensitive parts on the top tube of the bike. No real damage done, but it left me a bit sore. I rested for a few minutes and continued on my way. I was glad when I made it to the top of Hesitation Point. I think it was about 18 miles of riding, all told.

Road biking
On Sunday morning, I went for a road ride. I wasn’t sure how well that would work out, given my injuries from Saturday’s trail ride. I also got off to a bit of a late start, and it was pretty hot by the time I started riding. My plan was to ride around Lake Lemon backwards. After riding Mount Gilead Road, I felt OK and continued on, riding Shilo Road in the opposite direction I have in the past. It was a lot easier this way, in terms of climbing; instead of a long, spread-out climb, it was mostly downhill, with a couple of short, steep climbs. The only problem with this was that since Shilo Road is one of the roughest and windiest roads in the area, it was more technically challenging.

I still felt pretty decent after riding Shilo Road, but I decided to head back toward home, rather than ride around Lake Lemon as planned. It was getting hotter, and I knew I could make it around the lake, but I didn’t want to push it too much. I wanted to get home and hang out with Sarah, and I knew we’d want to do some things with the rest of our day - I didn’t want to wear myself out completely by riding. So, it ended up being a fairly short ride, at about 26 miles, instead of the 36 I’d planned. On my way back, I took a photo of something by a fire station I’ve been meaning to shoot for a while.

Proving once again that firefighters are true American heroes.

Swimming
Sarah and I went swimming in the pool in our apartment complex Sunday afternoon. We have done very little swimming in recently years (especially me), but we had a lot of fun. I use the term “swimming” very loosely; really, we just hung out in the water, and played a little pseudo-volleyball with a beach ball and no net. We also took some photos with the underwater camera I got at Goodwill for $2. I’ll post some of those photos later.

Photography
We were planning on watching Office Space Sunday night, but instead, we went for a drive and took some photos. I used my old Pentax K1000 again, and really enjoyed it. Sarah has a great post about our outing here. We found ourselves on many roads to nowhere, getting lost and not particularly wanting to be found. There was some incredible late afternoon/evening light, warm and on an angle — and a beautiful sunset, the best part of which (a huge, pink sun hanging low in the sky) we couldn’t capture because there were cars behind us and no way to get off the road. Anyway, Sarah covered it pretty well, and posted some of her photos, so I’ll shut up and post some of my own photos.

Bryant Creek Lake

Reaching up

Main Forest Road

Sarah

Stump

Low Gap Road

Solitary Tree

Last weekend was another great one, despite the fact that it rained for much of it, and Sarah had a lot of work to do.

The highlight was something we hadn’t even planned — after hiking with my mom and nephew on Sunday, Sarah and I weren’t ready to go back home yet and grabbed our cameras and headed out for a drive on some country roads. I was planning on heading toward Paragon, IN along a route I rode with the Bloomington Bicycle Club, but I’m not too familiar with the roads in that area, and we got lost.

This was fine at first. We ended up near Oliver Winery — but by the grape fields on the other side of the highway from the main building, which I didn’t even know existed. We saw some very cool landscapes with hay bales, which Sarah was hoping to find.

Bales of hay — notice the grape vines on the left side at the horizon.

Scraggly tree

We drove around some more, and it started to get darker and foggier. I was hoping for an opportunity to take photos in some fog, and it looked like that might be a possibility. We stopped near a house to photograph this really cool field across the street, and I was about to set up the tripod when a dog came running down. We got back in the car and moved a little further away; the dog ran back up to the house. We got out of the car again, and the dog came running back, along with at least four other dogs! They seemed friendly enough, but we weren’t about to risk it. We got in the car and kept driving.

A little bit later, the low fuel light came on. I knew I probably should have gotten some gas before we went on this drive, but I didn’t expect to be gone very long. I still wasn’t too worried, because I didn’t think we’d have any trouble finding our way out of there. It continued getting darker, and we stopped at another spot so I could try to get some shots of a field. I need some more practice at this night photography stuff. I think things need to be underexposed to a certain extent to capture the night mood, but I tend to underexpose too much, I think.

Foggy field at night

We started driving again, and couldn’t find our way out of the area. After a while, we realized we were going in circles. We came to Mount Pleasant Church, which seemed a bit familiar to me, but I still didn’t really know how to get back from there. I could tell Sarah was worried, but she was doing a great job of letting me work this out, which I really appreciated. She has a great post on her blog where she talks about how it’s not so bad to be lost together … and I completely agree.

There was a woman there visiting the cemetery. I hate asking for directions, and I probably would’ve been more stubborn if I hadn’t been worried about running out of gas, but that being the case, I asked her how to get back to the highway. She had me ask her mother, who was in the passenger seat, and ultimately they said we could just follow them; they were going up to Martinsville, whereas we were going to Bloomington, so we’d just turn separate ways at the highway. This worked fine, although we decided that since we were closer to Martinsville, we had better go there and get fuel before going home.

I’m glad we did, because having a fresh tank of gas allowed us to take a more scenic route home. It may seem silly to take the scenic route at night, but it’s vastly more pleasant than the highway, and I still wanted to get some more photos. We passed a road that looked really pretty, and I turned around to go back and take some photos.

We got out of the car and heard some strange animal noises. A few cars turned onto the road and came too close to us, scaring us, but I didn’t want to leave my hazard lights on because it would interfere with my long exposures. As our eyes adjusted, we were able to see a little more clearly just how foggy it was, and we watched as thousands of lightning bugs lit the scene, blinking like photographer’s flashes at a sporting event. They collected most in the trees, giving off an impressive show. We held hands and kissed while waiting for exposures to complete. Even if none of the shots had worked, it would have been perfect.

Old Myers Road

Subdued silhouettes

Porch light

We drove the rest of the way home, content. We could have kept going. We could have stayed out doing this all night –  but it was late, and we had work the next morning. Another time.

Working backwards, earlier on Sunday, we had gone hiking with my mom and nephew, and we took our dog Rob with us as well. We weren’t sure if we’d be able to do so, because it rained most of the morning and a little in the afternoon as well. Fortunately, it cleared up and we decided to go for it. We hiked two trails at Brown County State Park, the one around Strahl Lake and Trail #2, which runs from the North Tower to the Lodge, past the family cabins, and back. The Strahl Lake trail was very easy, but Trail #2 was a bit more challenging, with quite a few hills. We saw a toad, a slug, and a turtle.

I only managed to get one bike ride in over the weekend, a fairly short (25 mile) ride on Saturday between rains. I saw three deer and five wild turkeys on this ride — they must have come out to get some sun once it cleared up, just like I did. I don’t feel the least bit bad about only riding once — we definitely made the most of the weekend.