Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 5

 

 This is the fifth part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Five: Condo Week (cont'd)

Thursday, May 23

  Our Thursday began with a bang as Sherry returned from her morning run and announced that she had encountered a bear and was not going to run here any more.

 She had been heading downhill toward the golf course when she saw a black bear loping uphill towards her in the grass beside the street. She stopped and slowly side-stepped her way to the far curb and kept a close eye on the critter until it was well past her and out of sight. She says she thought about heading back to the condo right then, but since the bear had gone in that direction, she decided to continue her run and hope that, by the time she came back, the bear would be gone. (And if it wasn't, she'd call for a ride.) Luckily, she didn't see the bear again and got home intact. 

 She was sure that what she saw actually was a bear, and not just a large beaver.

The Blue Ridge (photo by Sherry)

I decided I don't care if the dog's a slob.

 Once the excitement had died down -- it took a while; we had to have the whole thing explained to us several times before we could truly grasp it -- we got ourselves together to do some more exploring, this time along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a Depression-era government boondoggle that has left this nation with one of the great roads of the modern world; the kind of boondoggle that maybe we could use more of. We headed a short distance west on Interstate 40 -- a much more expensive and practical expenditure of government funds -- and picked up the Parkway, very close to the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center that we'd visited the other day. I stopped in to buy the small blue oval bowl by Amanda Taylor that I'd noticed on that first visit, and ended up buying both it and a companion piece, a slightly taller, equally beautiful round bowl with the same pattern. 

the peak by the road

 From there, we drove a few miles -- maybe fifteen? -- north on the Parkway to a place called Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center. We weren't sure what this place was supposed to be; I'd assumed it was another craft display centered on botanical pursuits. It wasn't. It's just a visitor's center with the usual tourist paraphernalia: magnets, t-shirts, toys, games, souvenirs, and an attendant who cheerfully offered to answer any question we might have, but was immediately stumped by a question from Nancy about the geography of the region, and just as cheerfully admitted that she only supervised the Parkway shops in the area and was new to North Carolina. 

 The local attractions are two hiking paths, one that goes about a mile and a half to a picnic area we'd just passed, the other that goes about a mile and a quarter to the top of a peak next to the parkway. They have elevation gains of 400 and 500 feet, respectively, so we were not in a frame of mind or physical will to hike either. Well, Sherry might've been; she lives for that kind of exertion. But it would have meant being on her own in bear country. She was not of a mind to do that. We contented ourselves with a few photos of the area, and a bear-themed postcard for Sherry, who still maintains it was not a large beaver she had seen.

 Nancy suggested lunch at Mount Mitchell State Park, which she'd found referenced at the Craggy Gardens Visitor's Center; it was just a few miles farther on, and was supposed to have a nice view of the mountains. It sho-'nuff did. This was North Carolina's first state park, formed around 1915 to preserve the spruce forest that was, at the time, being clear-cut across the state. The restaurant there looks out across the ridges to the west, and the view was especially pretty as the fog rose and fell. The food at the restaurant wasn't at all bad either. I got a reuben and Sherry got an "adult grilled cheese" sandwich and we swapped halves. I couldn't really say which was the better meal. They were served with home-made potato chips, which were interesting but not really all that good. The service was excellent and the prices were pretty good, too, and how could you improve on the ambience of a large native-wood room with floor-to-ceiling windows showing you the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains? Can't be done. The only peculiar thing was the way you place your order with the hostess at the entrance, then find a table, and they bring you your food. Odd; but it seems to work for them.

'40 Buick Century

 From there, we headed back towards Asheville on the Parkway, then turned off just at the northern edge of the town to go to a place called Grovewood Village, a collection of artsy-craftsy things derived from Biltmore Industries, which was a textile company back in the day. Now the old buildings have been turned to other purposes. The one I was interested in is now a car museum, in which I spent the entire time of our visit, looking over their small collection, about 15 cars (mostly GM; the building was a Cadillac dealership in one incarnation) while the others explored, oh, the sculpture garden, the museum of textile crafts, and a mountain-crafts shop. I'd've gone to look at those things but it started raining as I came out of the car museum, so I have to rely on Sherry's pictures. I would have liked to have seen the sculptures, at least.

The Flowering Bridge

 Our last planned stop was the North Carolina Arboretum, on the far side of Asheville. By the time we got there through rush-hour traffic, it was raining pretty steadily, and we decided that we did not in fact wish to wander around in the forest in the rain. So we drove back to our condo, listening to a very interesting podcast called Empire, which so far has been about the history of India since the Moghul Empire's collapse against the East India Company. Once home, we decided to go out for dinner, and after reviewing all the restaurants in the area, we settled on the River Watch, a bar & grill that has live music on certain evenings. (On the way, we stopped at the Flowering Bridge and I took two mediocre pictures, just for this blog.) At the River Watch we got to hear a guy named Dave Irvine, who played a lot of stuff we like: Bob Seeger, Tom Petty, the theme song from Gilligan's Island... All the classics. Unfortunately, we got to the River Watch a little late (mostly because Jeff had gambled that we wouldn't be going back out, and had ... um ... gotten comfortable); the place closes at 8pm every night, because, according to the bartender, by 8:30pm everyone in the area is at home and only the bears are out, rummaging for trash cans. Sherry had a very small house salad, while I had a bacon cheeseburger, which I enjoyed very much. We all appreciated the staff very much, as we were there well past closing time.

 We closed out the evening with a game of hearts at the condo, as our Duraflame log burned in the fireplace. We had all forgotten that Jeff's oxygen machine can't be used around open flame, so he had to take it off and move it away until the game was over. He then went to bed while the rest of us sat watching the fire burn and listening to music on Sherry's phone. I gave up after about half an hour and went to bed myself.

Friday, May 24

 Our only plan for the day was to attend the opening night of the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard in the evening. We had the whole day until then to just do whatever. We managed to fill the day exploring Rutherford County, and it ended up being a very diverting exploration.

 As you might expect, there is nothing of great interest in a remote backwater area like Rutherford County, North Carolina. There is some pretty scenery, which we have been enjoying all week, and there was some tangential involvement in both the Revolutionary War (revolutionaries hanging their Tory neighbours, and vice-versa) and the Civil War (right at the end, after Lee had surrendered), but nothing of any wider importance occurred. Still, we had nothing else to do, and we had a brochure showing where all these trivial historical markers were. And Sherry found something on line called the Cherry Bounce Tour, which led travellers to the place where locals bought booze during prohibition. The tour seemed to wander at random around the central part of the county, and ended in the middle of nowhere, and it didn't give any particulars about anything we might see along the way, but we weren't really choosy. We threw that into the mix.

 First we went looking for a place to recycle glass and plastic. It was supposedly located at the Bill's Creek Convenience Center, on Bill's Creek Road. That turned out to be an old, dilapidated gas station slowly crumbling away by the side of the road. There was no recycling there. I found a sign directing us to the Bill's Creek Community Center, so we went there thinking maybe we could find someone to direct us to the recycling center. What we found was two suspicious old locals at a dog park. One tried to direct us to some place miles and miles away to the north; the other said there was a place, but it was "only for Bill's Creek residents," and that she would have to call Cindy, whoever that is. We thanked them and left. (In the end, we made a random stop much later in the day at a port-a-potty at the trail head for a hike to the house Carl Sandberg lived in when he was in the area, and there was a recycling bin there. So, Yay!)

The Get-Up Bell Tower

 So we drove first to the county seat, Rutherfordton (pronounced, believe it or not, "RULF-tin") where we stopped for lunch at Maples on Main, a nice little cafe and bakery. From there I walked down to a drug store to use the ATM (after first walking several blocks in the wrong direction), while Sherry found a printed map of the Cherry Bounce Tour at the local newspaper office across the street. It was pretty hard to use. We spent a pleasant afternoon trying to locate roads and historical markers without GPS. Some instructions gave road names, others gave highway numbers, but precious little corresponded to information available on the ground. It became a sort of trial-and-error tour, but we managed to find most of the historical markers: places like the Biggerstaff Hanging Tree (no longer there); Brittain Presbyterian Church; Fort Hampton (no longer there), from the Revolution, where it appears nothing happened at all; Fort McFadden (no longer there), which gave refuge to settlers during attacks by the Cherokee whose land all this area was; and various markers relating to  General Stoneman's Civil War raid. Although we never found the spot where they sold the booze, nor did we ever find out why it's called Cherry Bounce. (I don't know if this is relevant, but there is a locally-produced cherry-flavoured soft drink called Cheerwine....)

 But really the only marker of innate interest was the one for the Get Up Bell, in Cliffside; because it was the only one (other than the perfectly unremarkable Brittain Presbyterian Church) that had some physical evidence of the thing being commemorated. We enjoyed driving more or less aimlessly around the county, but the Get-Up Bell was a genuinely interesting idiosyncracy. It was a large bell, resting alone in a grassy field next to an apparently unrelated memorial tower, that would ring every morning at 5:30 to let the good people of Cliffside, a mill town, know that it was time to get up. An hour later, it'd ring again to tell people to get to the mill; twenty minutes after that was a ten-minute warning, because you didn't want to be late to work. It'd ring again at noon to announce lunch, and again at 12:50 to warn that lunch was nearly over; and then at 6pm when the working day was done. Whatever thoughts you might have about such a régime, we have already thought on your behalf.

the White Squirrel Weekend stage

 By the time we'd made our way to the Get-Up Bell, it was getting kind of late, so we got back on the highway and headed west for the White Squirrel Weekend in Brevard, south of Asheville. The origin of this festival has to do with some albino squirrels that got loose from a circus some time ago. They are, the town claims, all over the place now, though we didn't see any. Doesn't matter; it's really just an excuse for a street fair. They close off a few blocks of Main Street, the vendors come out and musicians perform and everybody comes out to visit with friends and neighbours and eat and drink. It's a very pleasant time. It had poured rain a little before the festival started, but by the time we got there the weather was perfect for being outside. We had a little something unremarkable to eat, and walked up and down the street, and sat and visited with a local woman with a really friendly dog named Astra -- such soft fur! -- and listened to a couple of bands play, and then we drove back to our condo. It was great. 

Coda: The Drive Home

 The drive home was about as uneventful as expected, with three exceptions.

 First, we finished listening to The Ink Black Heart. It ended up lasting us almost to the Texas state line. We both decided who done it before we were out of Alabama, and every new bit of information after that only added to our conviction. As we passed Pumpkin Center, where the old family farms were, one of the minor characters named our suspect as the murderer. That's never a good sign in a murder mystery, but still, it was obvious to both of us that the character was right. The book's detectives had dismissed our suspect -- hell, they never even considered him enough to actually dismiss him -- and no reason for this omission was given, that either of us recalls. In the end, when it turned out not to be our guy, no loose ends were tidied up. He was never explained; none of the many things that made us suspect him was explained. There were no moments of "Oh, I'd forgotten about that" to make us feel sheepish for having suspected him. The upshot is, we still think he done it, and the author got it wrong. 

 Second, I fell asleep at the wheel. This happened once before, crossing the Mojave Desert on Interstate 10 in California. That time the little ruts in the edge of the freeway woke me up after maybe a second or less, and I vowed at that point that I would never drive when I felt that kind of fatigue. Unfortunately, on that occasion, I had been looking for a place to pull off the freeway for many miles, and even after the event it was many miles before there was any safe place to get off. On this occasion I was only a little bit fatigued; it was nowhere near the level that heretofore had concerned me. I was driving in the inside lane, about to pass a semi-trailer. I blinked my eyes or something and in the next moment I had one tire in the truck's lane of travel and the corner of the trailer was less than a yard from the front of my car. Sherry jumped and gasped, and maybe that woke me up, but I really think I was already awake again before she did that. My first thought was not to oversteer in response, because I've seen too many times (on Top Gear and in movies, not in real life) what happens when you do that: you spin out, and end up at the bottom of a cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway (if it's a movie) or turning circles on the tarmac (if it's Top Gear), and in my case I knew immediately that if I moved the wheel too suddenly I'd lose control of the car. So I quickly but smoothly moved back into my lane; the car responded beautifully. And you can bet that at the very first opportunity I got off the freeway and took a nap. 

 This occurrence, quite unreasonably, confirms me in a decision I've made (in consultation with Sherry, whether she knows it or not) that I'm going to give my pretty little Jaguar to a car museum. I had a particular one in mind, but have now changed to another, more appropriate one, and I'm making plans to take it to that museum later this year, after my upcoming trip to Los Angeles. If my calculations are correct, I'll be able to deliver it to its new, hopefully permanent home, before I go to Colorado at the end of July. (That trip will be in the Subaru anyway, for logistical reasons.)

 I say "unreasonably" because, obviously, what I'm driving -- whether it's the Jaguar convertible or the Subaru Forester or any old thing on wheels -- has nothing to do with the event. It only confirms my decision because I think this car, this little XK-8, is just too beautiful to waste. 

 The third thing is, I saw my first real-live Tesla Cybertruck. On the TV commercials it looked silly. In real life it is hideous. It is grotesque. It is minimalist technocrap. It is the opposite of my little convertible. There are no words to describe just how ugly this piece of machinery is. Ugh.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 4

 This is the fourth part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Four: Condo Week (cont'd)

Monday, May 20

 Well, this was a good, full day. First, the weather was much nicer than had been forecast; in fact, the entire week's forecasts have improved. We spent the morning here in the condo planning out our week, then headed up the highway to Asheville. After a quick lunch at a fast-food restaurant, we stopped by the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, just outside of the city. So many beautiful works of craftsmanship on display, and most of them for sale. I very nearly bought a very small oval glass bowl, but I remembered the truth of what I'd written in this blog not long ago, about what a slob my dog is....*

 The main reason, though, that I didn't buy anything was that the car was pretty fully loaded on the way up here, and I suspect we will be transporting some stuff that will later find its way to Colorado. But one of these days. One of these days....

Pinball Museum

Anyway, we stopped in at the Asheville visitors' center to get more information about certain items we thought might form a part of our day in town. Reorganizing our sightseeing sort of on the fly, we went first to the Pinball Museum of Asheville. Not a large place, but fun to see all the old pinball tables in the front room, and the early arcade video games in the back. You can play all day for a set amount; I think it's $15; or you can do like we did, and play certain games set aside for the purpose. I played a Godzilla-themed pinball machine (fifty cents) and have no idea how I did, but it was fun. I think I got some extra balls; if I did, it was pure luck, as I don't know a thing about pinball.

1st Baptist

 Then we decided to take a driving tour of architecture, because the public art tour we'd originally planned involved too much walking. So we drove around and around the compact downtown of the city, seeing a number of interesting buildings, mostly from the early 20th Century. The First Baptist Church, modeled on Florence's duomo; the City Building; the neighbouring Jackson and Westall buildings, which share an elevator; and so on (pictures in the album), ending at the Grove Arcade, and early version of a shopping center. 

 The Grove is quite a nice space. Upper floors are given over to apartments, and the second floor is offices. The ground floor is filled with small shops varying from arts and crafts to home decor of an upscale variety. Most were already closed for the day by the time we wandered in to admire the arcade's Venetian-themed architectural touches, but a gelato shop drew the four of us in as if there was a chemical trail we instinctively followed. I had a scoop of salted caramel gelato topped with a scoop of peanut butter, and was surprised that the peanut butter was the better of the two. (And having read in the Guardian this morning that a double scoop of ice cream in the U.K. now costs more than ten dollars, I feel like I got a bargain on the gelato, at about $6 for two scoops.) 

 We came out the south end of the arcade to try and locate several of the buildings on the tour that we couldn't get to in the downtown congestion; and while we were there we decided to have dinner before heading back to the condo. A passerby, who overheard us discussing the restaurants in sight, interjected her opinions about local cuisine, and managed to dissuade us from trying a rooftop Cuban restaurant across the street; I was dead-set against the poke-bowl cafe on the side street, and voted instead for the eventual winner, a "southern-inspired" cafe on the corner with outside tables. We had excellent service and pretty good food at Carmel's, despite the passerby's disparagement. (I rated it five stars on Google Maps because four and a half wasn't an option.) Mine was a mushroom pizza with sausage added, once again served on cracker-thin crust. Must be the current fashion. Sherry's was a chicken pesto pizza, very good but way too oily. Half of each went home with us.

 Once back to the car, we embarked on a search for the house Jeff's dad had been born in, on Brevard Road. The information Nancy got from a real-estate web site said the house there had been built in the 1940s, but it looks exactly like the house Jeff's grandparents had built there in the 1920s; so we believe it's the same house. Maybe there was some kind of update that caused the county records to be altered. But it is the same house. 

 Following that, we stopped at a drug store in the neighbourhood so I could get some cash at an ATM, then headed back to the condo for the night. 

* on May 13; see Part One, regarding the North Georgia Folk Pottery Museum galleries.

Tuesday, May 21

 Another great day! Gorgeous weather and lots of exercise. I had my leftover pizza for breakfast, and it was even better as leftovers. We gradually got ourselves together and headed out for our day. We'd planned to take a boat tour of the lake at 10AM, but we got there a few minutes after they sailed. So Sherry and I killed the interval in the town's Welcome Center, which had lots of brochures about things to see and do in the area; and it had a three-dimensional map of the area, which I enjoyed studying; and in the back room was a small history museum, detailing the minor events that took place locally in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. There was also some coverage of more recent events, such as the founding of the town in 1927, the same year the first tourist buildings were constructed and the year the dam was built. It was interesting that the dam was a private venture, paid for by the sale of electricity. It paid off the dam in ten years, by which time the Great Depression had started and the Morse Brothers, whose vision gave birth to the town and the lake, were ruined. So only the bankers profited.

 We got on the 11AM boat tour; there were eight customers on board. The tour guide was excellent: knowledgeable, well-spoken and funny. She took us all around the lake, showing us various buildings of historical or architectural interest. If there are any famous people with houses on the lake, she was discreet enough not to mention them. She did, though, say at one point, "The people who live in this house don't like having their house stared at, so we of course pause here several times a day to look at it." Another house she showed us was the first built on the lake: five hundred square feet including a boathouse on the lower level. It's the smallest house on the lake, and was bought by the owner of the mansion next door to use as a guest house.

 She also pointed out places related to the filming of Dirty Dancing. There's not much left. The stars were housed in the 1927 Spa Hotel, which has been renovated recently along with two other Spanish Revival buildings on that part of the lakeshore. The cabins that were used as employee lodging in the movie, and where Baby met Johnny, were torched by an arsonist some years ago. One scene was filmed on the golf course by our condo. And the town has an annual Lift Festival, when competitors get into the water and try to lift their teammates out, as Patrick Swayze did with Jennifer Gray. (He was given cinder blocks under his feet, to give him a grip in the mud; competitors don't get that advantage.)

 A number of people have funiculars to access the lake below their houses. In some cases it's their only access to the water. Others have long slides that toss riders into the lake. She showed us the largest house on the lake, a fifteen-thousand square-foot French-style palace occupied by just two people. 

 When the Morse brothers went bust, all the land they owned around the lake was auctioned off; one man, a Mr Powers, bought 200 acres, which he gave to his daughter. She never built on it, and later in life gave half to two nephews and put the other half into a conservation trust. The two nephews ended up doing the same with their property, so now there are only 200 acres on the entire 24-mile-long lake shore that are undeveloped. 

 We found the entire cruise around the lake interesting and relaxing. So glad we did it. 

 Afterwards we went up the road a few miles to the village of Chimney Rock. The plan was to buy some sandwiches or whatever and have a picnic up on the mountain in Chimney Rock State Park. But because we'd missed the 10AM boat tour, it was past noon when we got to the chosen provider of foodstuffs, the Old Rock Cafe; so we just had lunch there. Glad we didn't have to carry food or a cooler around while we hiked. 

the tunnel

 Chimney Rock is a short stone tower that stands over the Broad River valley. The former owners, in order to bring tourists in, built an elevator 260 feet up to the level of the tower's top, and a tunnel into the rock to connect with the elevator. At the top is a walkway out to the belvedere on top of the rock. It has an excellent view of Lake Lure just a few miles away, and of the surrounding mountains. 

 From another point in the park is a trail leading to Hickory Nut Falls, which, at 404 feet, is one of the highest in the state. The trail is a mile and a half each way, improved but not paved. It took us a long time but it was worth it. The falls flow from a natural spring on top of the mountain, and it's been wet recently. We happened to be there just as the sun was above the falls, giving our view some special effects. (The final scenes of the movie Last of the Mohicans were filmed at the top of this waterfall.)

 After spending the afternoon in the park, we decided that the Fog & Scaffold Athletic Club should have its annual meeting, as there is a very nice miniature golf course laid out on the bank of the river. We had a business meeting first, in the bar there, and then hit the links. I had a two-stroke lead at the halfway point but ended up finishing third. Good enough. It was fun. 

 We followed this up with dinner at the Highlands, a pretentious restaurant with a balcony overlooking the river. The ambience was very nice. The food had highs and lows. For example, my prime rib sandwich was fine, nothing really special, but it was served with what I have to call steak fries, but cut in a way I've never seen, before being fried up perfectly. They end up looking like crescent moons. Sherry had fish tacos that I thought were so-so. I know it sounds odd, but they had a fishy smell. They were served with rice that was simply boring, undercooked and underseasoned. The service was mostly good, although turgid, but I suspect the waiter was overextended. There were long gaps in the service, when we were waiting for things. He apologised at the end, which leads me to suspect that the problems is either that he is stretched too thin, or that the kitchen is disorganised, or both. As for the prices, they were slightly higher than I would willingly pay were it not for the ambience. I hesitate to call it any kind of good value, but it was not outrageous.

the Riverwalk

 Before we left, Sherry and Nancy took a quick look at the Riverwalk the village is building. It's a work in progress. San Antonio has nothing to worry about here. Then we went to the condo and crashed.

Wednesday, May 22

 Today we went to the Biltmore Estate. This is the single biggest attraction in this part of the country, other than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Biltmore is the gigantic house built by George Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore who was in his day the richest man in the world. It was built during the Gilded Age, that late-19th-Century era when a handful of robber barons first came to control a significant part of the wealth of this country. They were the Oligarchs of their day, though none were as wealthy, relatively speaking, as the richest people of our own time. 

 The house was originally to be a sort of Appalachian version of a Newport cottage: 6,000 square feet or so, maybe Greek revival. But his architect, believing that money was no object to a Vanderbilt -- and it seems he was right -- convinced George that he should build a house "worthy of the estate" he was acquiring in the North Carolina mountains, which eventually came to more than a hundred thousand acres. (The entire Pisgah National Forest began with 87,000 acres of estate land sold to the government -- at a very low price -- by his widow, in recognition of George's wishes.) The resulting mansion, at something like fifteen thousand square feet, is still the largest private residence ever built in the United States. It's built in a French Empire style, and looks like the chateau of Blois, with the stairs moved to the front of the house.

Biltmore

 

 

Blois

We had tickets to go in at 12:30, but the Asheville Visitor's Center employee told us we could go into the grounds at any time, see the gardens and wander around the miles and miles of remaining property before our timed entry to the mansion. We planned to do that. Naturally, it didn't happen quite the way we planned, because we weren't actually ready to leave as early as that would require. We left the condo around 9:30 and got to the estate a bit before 11am. After cruising around in circles trying to figure out where to park, we found someone who could give us advice on that point...even if we had to have him repeat it several times, and then I said it back to him to make sure I understood what he'd said. He has a local accent, I suspect.

the stables

 We only had time for an early lunch in the Stables cafe. The stable and coach house were the first part of the estate to go up, in 1889, and Vanderbilt would live in the top floor apartment when he came to check on the progress of construction. Now the building and its courtyard is given over to restaurants and gift shops. I had a wedge salad, made entirely from ingredients produced on the estate, and it was excellent and filling. Sherry had a chickpea sandwich called the "Not Tuna Melt." She expected hummus, I think, but it was chickpeas, intact. A little weird, but in a good way. It came with ordinary french fries. Nancy had a roasted chicken quarter, which she says was excellent, as were the smashed potatoes, while the coleslaw was too vinegary, and it didn't have a good colour. It looked a little wilted. Jeff had some kind of sandwich; none of us remembers what it was, and he's not here to testify at the moment, so we move on: into the house, where they give you an audio guide wand and let you loose in this massive place.

The entryway: grand stairs, lobby, winter garden

 George kind of rushed the construction so that he could host his entire family for Christmas in 1895. As a result, a number of the major rooms on the main floors were incomplete when the house was occupied, and some remained that way for the rest of George's life. (I feel you, George.) As the insipid audio guide puts it, the present appearance of the rooms is "an interpretation of George's wishes, based on extensive research." After a few rooms like that, I decided that the audio guide wasn't worth listening to. The woman who recorded the guide speaks unbearably slowly, and each room's brief lecture begins, "As you move as far into the room as possible...," as if she expects people to heed her; her voice is irritatingly breathy; the information she imparts consists of rare dollops of interesting fact submerged in a bathtub of drivel. "Guest" speakers were heard but did nothing to elucidate anything. 

 Anyway, after a few rooms like that I dispensed with the audio recordings. That made it easier to go through the house, taking photographs, and that made me look for things to photograph. (My digital SLR Nikon camera stopped working after half a dozen shots, so I had to switch to my phone. Irksome.) Considering how much time I wasted listening to the audio for the first 7 or 8 rooms, I doubt that I missed anything of real significance. On several occasions I spoke to docents positioned around the house, and found out the reason there are no working bathrooms inside the house: "120-year-old plumbing and no sinks in the bathrooms." I also learned that the 40 or so bathrooms in the house are all exactly the same, from the master suite to the lowliest servant's quarters. Vanderbilt ordered plumbing fixtures from England for all the bathrooms, the same stuff, and had all the walls done in the same white tile because it was considered (correctly) to be more hygienic than wallpaper, and easier to clean. But he wanted his guests to know the luxury of having a maid deliver a pitcher of hot water. (I suspect the maids got their own hot water, rather than delivering it to each other to taste the luxury.)

the staff dining room

 The areas of the house open to visitors include parts of the ground floor, the two floors above that (there's at least one more up there, but it's closed off), and one of the basement floors, containing an exhibit about the construction and the workers who built the house; a swimming pool and changing rooms for the ladies; a bowling alley; and two kitchens, one with the giant rotisserie and the other with all the other gear needed to feed the huge numbers of residents, guests, and staff. The entire house had central heat (which is being upgraded for air conditioning with the addition of a room-sized heat pump out back somewhere); I noticed that the main kitchen had two radiators, while other rooms had registers for forced-air heating.

 The whole place boils down to this: it's huge, and no expense was spared. It was expensive to furnish and too expensive to maintain, it's magnificent and beautiful and it was, and is, a point of pride not only to the family but to the people of western North Carolina.

the back yard

After viewing the house for several hours, we drove to the 73-acre garden. Jeff and I waited outside while Nancy and Sherry went in. Well, I started to go in for a quick look, until I saw how many stairs I'd have to climb just to see it. I decided the shade of a tree in the parking area was preferable. Then, before leaving, we drove all around the estate, a slow five mile trip, with lots of putative wildlife sightings, especially beaver, which were wandering through the grass or standing on a rock beside the road. In the end we decided they were the Biltmore Beaver, a small fluffy-tailed rodent resembling a squirrel or a marmot. We also saw some wild turkeys.

 Before coming back to the condo we stopped for dinner at an Italian place in Lake Lure. The service was excellent, the prices were reasonable, the ambience was good (it's on a hillside overlooking the town, with Chimney Rock visible in the middle distance), but the food was not very good. The garlic rolls were dripping oil, and my own lasagna is better than theirs; and I don't really do lasagna well.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 3

 This is the third part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Three: Condo Week

Saturday, May 18

 The unit we got this year is pretty nice. There are two parking places reserved for it, and a walkway crosses from the parking area to the front porch. The building has three units in it, and is set in thick woods of oak and maple, with dogwood and rhododendron understory. There's a bedroom and bath on ... let's call it "street" level. Half a flight up is the main floor: a full kitchen, with a pass-through to the living room. To the side is a dining area and fireplace, and beyond it is a large balcony looking into the woods. Half a flight down from street level is another bedroom and bathroom, along with a washer-dryer closet and a walk-in closet. There's what looks like a jacuzzi in the bathroom down there.

 As soon as we got the cars unloaded, I threw a load of laundry into the tiny washing machine and we headed off for dinner. We happened upon the Grey Hawk, which is as much a garden as a restaurant. Sherry and I ordered a charcuterie board (despite Sherry's best effort to make me believe I said "soup") and a mozzarella-and-tomato sandwich to split. The food was great; the atmosphere was great; the service was perhaps the best I have ever experienced. The overall bill, with taxes and tip (and a "non-cash adjustment"; aaargh) was about $90, but if you know me you will understand just what it means when I say I think the experience was a good value. (My review of the place on Google Maps was two words: "Six stars!")

 It was very late when we got back, but I had to wait up for the dryer, I thought. I ran that load of clothes through three dryer cycles before I gave up, started the thing a fourth time and went to bed. They were done when Sherry got up Sunday morning.

Sunday, May 19

 Breakfast this morning was at the Victory, which Nancy tells me is a Christian-themed restaurant. Not sure what makes it that. We got a later start than I'd thought (because I was looking at the clock on my computer, which is set to Central time) and as a result we missed the beginnings of all the final-day soccer matches of the English Premier League season. Turns out not to have mattered: there were no shocking changes to the standings. Arsenal still finished second, Liverpool finished third, and the three teams promoted last year were relegated again. The only real shock was Aston Villa's collapse, which had no effect on its standings but still was surprising. 

 So the Victory was pretty good. The coffee was good, and the food was pretty good. My breakfast burrito was a little on the dry side. The ambience was congenial, like a family gathering at grandma's house with a lot of cousins you don't really know. The service was good but uneven. Still, I'd rate it 4 out of 5.

 The weather, which was very wet yesterday, was merely damp this morning; but after we got back to the condo and watched our fill of soccer, and made our initial excursion to the grocery store, it got much nicer. Still mostly cloudy, but by the end of the day the sun was shining on the lake and photos were worth taking.

 The first thing we did in the way of sightseeing was to go to the Flowering Bridge, in the town of Lake Lure. (The town is long and skinny, skirting along the southern and eastern edge of the lake itself, so going "to town" is a surprisingly time-consuming journey along narrow, twisting mountain roads.) The Flowering Bridge was the brainchild of one of the lakeside residents. When a new bridge was built where the Rocky Broad River enters the lake, she convinced the town to make the old one into a pedestrian walkway through a botanical garden. It's not that long a bridge, but they've managed to get quite an assortment of flowering and non-flowering plants into the available space. Shockingly, neither Sherry nor Nancy took a single picture on the bridge. We're going to have to go back.

 Having had a late breakfast, we all skipped lunch and went straight to dinner, around 6:30 or 7 at a place called the Lake House, near the old dam that formed Lake Lure back in the 1920s. The food was good; not as awesome as what we had at the Grey Hawk the night before, but along similar lines. I had a southwestern bowl with steak on rice and corn and various veggies; it was good, and the big juicy chunks of steak were excellent (except that I'd asked for medium rare and they were more medium); Sherry had duck salad, which looked very good but I didn't taste it. I also had an ice cream and brownie dessert called a hullaballoo, which was good but unnecessary. 

the sun comes out

 The atmosphere at the lake house was very good, too. The tables are all outside, overlooking the water. The restaurant is at the end of an arm of the lake, and you look down that arm of water toward the main body of the lake. It was very pretty, and undisturbed by the kind of loud boating that is de rigueur at Lake Havasu. And when the sun came out it was gorgeous. 

 The problem with the Lake House is the service. These people are cheerful, mostly, and get the orders right, but they just have no sense of timing. Nancy asked twice to have the salads before the main courses. Both times the answer was, "Oh, sure, yeah," but the salads came out at the same time as the main courses. I asked about dessert and got a run-down of the options, then said which I would like. The waitress asked Jeff (who was still eating his main course) if he would like dessert, to which he said, "Yes, but I"m not ready yet." I had my dessert before he was done eating. And then, on the bill, in addition to their hefty "non-cash adjustment" charge, they have the gall to suggest tip amounts for 20%, 25% and 30%. I left ten percent and felt generous doing that. (We felt a slight tinge of umbrage, too, at the fact that the place is not accessible; but when Nancy asked the hostess about it she made reference to a ramp on the far side of the building; maybe it was intended as humour but came off as dismissiveness. We looked at the ramp. It's dangerously steep and has a step at the bottom and is covered with cleaning gear; I don't think it's intended as a wheelchair ramp in the first place. I think this place pre-dates the ADA and hasn't done any renovations that would require compliance.)

 

OKAY. I'd planned to just put up a single post to cover the entire Condo Week portion of this trip, but it's getting a little too long. So I'm going to break the week into two, or maybe three posts, and go ahead and publish this one. Look for the next installment in a few days.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 2

This is part two of a series that you ought to read in order. To get to Part One, click here (or click "older post" at the bottom, if you're not on the mobile site. All the pictures from this trip can be viewed here. All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions. 

The Add-On: Knoxville 

Wednesday, May 15, & Thursday, May 16

We met up with Nancy and Jeff at the Asheville airport just as planned, at the baggage claim; then headed over to the rental car counter (so that I can be listed as a driver of the vehicle we get; it's the whole reason we always meet at the airport). Unlike some airports, Asheville had the good sense to put the rental car counters right next to the baggage claim. There were maybe 8 or 10 companies with counters there. Hertz, the company Nancy has always used in the past because of the discounts available to her, had two customers waiting; Alamo (I think it was) had two or three; and Avis, the company Nancy used this year (because, even with Hertz's relevant discounts, Avis was now less expensive) had maybe thirty people in line. 

 We finally got to the front of the line. Nancy had decided to reserve a minivan this year, because all the small SUVs we've used in past years have been too small for all the luggage. It's always been a problem but since Jeff's had to start using oxygen and bringing a walker, it's become a serious problem. The van she'd reserved was in the garage, but the clerk noted that "a nicer car" had just been returned; and since Nancy had been so much more polite to the clerk than the guy in line before us, she said she would get us that car if we were willing to wait about 30 minutes for them to clean it and gas it up. At that point, we figured, what was another 30 minutes? Between waiting for them to deplane and waiting for the car line, we'd been hanging around for nearly an hour and a half already; and we really had nowhere to be in a hurry. So, sure, we'll wait. Well, it was only about 15 minutes before she called out to us. 

 What we've got this year is a gigantic Chrysler Pacifica van. I've been doing most of the driving, and I take pride in my driving abilities, but I have yet to get that boat into a parking place on the first try without going over the line. Also, I hit my head almost every time I get into it. And as with all unfamiliar cars, the location of controls and the details of their use is something of a mystery; for instance, I haven't been able to figure out how to turn off the radio. (We did figure out how to pair Nancy's phone, so we get Google Maps directions through the stereo. And I figured out how to delete all the previously paired phones.) I do like the GPS display, which even when we're not following directions somewhere shows where we are. Not sure if that's coming through Nancy's phone or if it's just something the car is programmed for. 

 We drove across Asheville to our hotel, We were tired from driving (and hiking up the hill at Foxfire) and Jeff & Nancy were tired from their flight (they'd had to be up at some ungodly hour to get a shuttle to the Denver airport), so we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner, then called it a day. We went for breakfast Thursday morning at a place Sherry had picked out, which turned out to be the breakfast area of another hotel -- why would that be listed on Google Maps? -- so we ended up at a local spot we had seen on the way. It was very good and if I weren't so tired now I'd look it up. But since I'll probably never be back in Asheville for breakfast I just don't care enough to do that.

Looking Glass Falls

 At some point along the trip, Sherry and I decided that we should constitute ourselves as the Fog & Scaffold travel club. The drive from Asheville to Knoxville fulfilled the fog part, and now that we're in Knoxville we've taken care of the scaffolding part. It seems ubiquitous here. Along the way, we stopped to see Looking Glass Falls and the Sliding Rock, both in the Pisgah National Forest, which used to be part of the Vanderbilt estate. We also stopped at the "Cradle of Forestry" site nearby, a place commemorating the forestry school set up by (George) Vanderbilt in the late 1800s, when his Biltmore Estate was getting started, with the idea of training people to manage the forests he owned for the long term. That unplanned stop turned out to be an interesting hour spent.

As I was mapping out our planned route to Knoxville, I noticed that there was a marker for Cold Mountain. The Charles Frazier novel Cold Mountain has been one of my favourite novels since it came out in 1997; it was also made into a really good movie a few years later. It hadn't occurred to me that the title mountain was an actual place, and this was it. So even though there's nothing of significance there, I made it a point to make a stop at the base of that mountain, just so I could get a picture of it, to remind me, from time to time when I see it, of the magic of that novel. And here is that picture:

Cold Mountain, North Carolina: a real place

From there, we drove over to the town of Franklin, where there's a Scottish Tartan Museum. Jeff, who says that the McNairs might be part of any of three clans, and that he doesn't know which his family is part of, went into the museum, but said not a single word about the experience. (I stayed in the car, intending to take a short nap. This possibility was obviated when the ugliest and most garrulous woman in Franklin, North Carolina, set up her checker board on the sidewalk next to me and engaged her grotesquely fat goitered friend, who had obviously never played checkers before, in a match.)

View from the Skyway

 The drive along the Cherohala Skyway was made mostly in a light rain. It's beautiful scenery the whole way, but also Nancy started reading to us from memoirs written fifty years ago by Jeff's grandmother, Annie Woody McNair. She had an interesting life -- not famous or adventurous or anything, but interesting nonetheless -- growing up in western Virginia and Kentucky in the early 20th Century. Even the mundane events reveal interesting differences between life then and now. Nothing makes you realize how good we've got it these days than hearing the details of life a hundred years ago.

 At one point it rained buckets, but at that moment we just happened to be in the Jukebox Junction, having lunch. I had a buffalo chicken sandwich that I regretted the rest of the day. And just as we finished lunch, the rain stopped and the clouds lifted.

  There are some graduation-related events taking place in Knoxville, home to the University of Tennessee's main campus; so all the local hotels have jacked their rates up to the max, and as a consequence our hotel is ... well, not quite in the boondocks, but not really in town. We're about 8 or 10 miles east of the city. We didn't care; we didn't figure to do a lot of commuting into town: maybe once in the morning, and back in the evening. So this morning (Thursday) we piled into the van, went for breakfast at an excellent little coffee shop downtown, called Pete's, where we planned the things we wanted to do and see while we're here. Our waitress helped out with several recommendations and excellent food.

Crawdaddy Jones

 One of the unexpected things we fell into was a live performance on the local NPR station, WDVX, which puts on a music show called "The Blue Plate Special" every weekday at noon. We took the free trolley to the station and listened to two performances: first a singer-songwriter from Alabama named BB Palmer, who was pretty good, though I thought his lyrics didn't quite hit the mark. Then came a duo called Crawdaddy Jones, who were pretty close to awesome. I was seriously tempted to try to go to their other upcoming performances around town while we're local, but it would have meant skipping too many other plans.

 Following that, we walked around the corner to Market Square to begin our sightseeing for the day, but Jeff, who had neglected to take his meds the night before and had run out of oxygen somehow, and was dizzy and having heart palpitations or something, decided he needed to go back to the hotel. So I went and got the car, brought it up to Market Square, and Nancy drove him to the hotel, made sure everything was okay with him (or as okay as was possible), then came back to meet Sherry and me downtown. While she was doing that, Sherry and I visited the Eastern Tennessee History Museum, which turned out to be much more interesting than expected. She concentrated on exhibits about local music, while I went for exhibits about the Civil War in this part of the state. We were both happy with the time we spent there. 

Sunsphere (in 2017)

 Nancy got back a couple of hours later and the three of us went up to the observation deck of the Sunsphere, the little tower built for the 1982 World's Fair. It was a little tatty and not at all impressive as a belvedere, but it was only $5 a person. Because the tower is built at the bottom of a hill, the view is limited to the downtown area on the east, the low mountains on the south, west and north, and the university precincts. But the young woman who staffs the place had some suggestions of other things to see, one of which (Volunteer Landing, on the waterfront) was the last thing we did before returning to the hotel.

 But before that, we went across the river hoping to get a good view of the city from over there, where there are a couple of low mountains that should have provided for it. I found a web site detailing prospective locations. The first was called The High Ground, and there was a photo on the web site, supposedly taken this year, showing exactly what I was looking for. 

what was promised

 So we headed over there. 

 The web site lied. I mean, they lied. THIS is the actual view we found at The High Ground, a city park:

 

 

 

what we saw

 No way all those trees grew in just a few months. By the time we'd made the hike from the parking lot to the High Ground -- something the author of the web site's column obviously never did -- it was too late to pursue the city views any longer; so we went for dinner at a place back in Market Square, then down to Volunteer Landing, then back to the hotel for the night, exhausted.

Friday, May 17

  This is the day we spent exploring the town of Sevierville. It began with an early-morning drive to Seven Islands State Birding Park, in the eastern part of Knox County. It was drizzly while we were there, and all the benches outdoors were wet; so I sat on a bench in the barn near the entrance, close to the end of the building, where I could hear the birds even if I couldn't see them. (I did, however, see an indigo bunting, a beautiful little bright blue bird; it was in the road as we neared the park, and I got a good look at it just as it flew away.) 

Tennessee Aviation Museum

 We went into Sevierville (pronounced suh-VEER-vull; a major point of contention in our little group) to see a mural and a statue in the town center, but because they were setting up for a barbecue-and-beer festival that started in the evening, we had to park a ways away and walk it. Then back to the car and had breakfast at a cute little bakery-cafe a mile down the road before we went to the Tennessee Aviation Museum, at the Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge airport. The displays of local aviation history were interesting, as was a longish movie about the role of the P-47 Thunderbolt in the Italian campaign during World War II. But the displays of actual aircraft in the attached hangar were really disappointing. There were a few intact aircraft, mostly unrestored, including several MiGs (which were interesting for their novelty), but mostly there were sections and pieces (including an engine and part of the cockpit assembly of a P-47 Thunderbolt that had crashed and burned) and movie-use mockups of aircraft, which was of slight interest. And the signage for the displays used a great deal of military jargon in lieu of actual information; that may make those who are in the know puff their chests out a little but to us civilians it means less than nothing. It's like when officials are interviewed on TV and use that mechanistic institutional-speak they seem so fond of.

 From there we drove over to a covered bridge from the 1890s that Sherry & Nancy particularly wanted to see. While we were there I finally figured out how to shut the radio up. (It comes on every time we start the car and there's not "off" button; all I can do is switch to Sirius, which is just as bad, or USB, which at least stops it for the one trip, until we re-start the car after a stop. But I discovered at the covered bridge that if I turn the volume down to 0, it won't mute the Google Maps instructions. So that's as good as turning it off.)

 Next stop was a complex of shops relating to apples: a cider works, a candy shop, a creamery, a winery and two restaurants. I had a scoop of apple-walnut fudge ice cream while Sherry and Nancy went off to buy cider for the condo (if it lasts that long); then we had a late lunch in one of the restaurants there, which for Sherry and I was mostly left over for dinner, in the hotel room, in the evening. I found the entire series of enterprises somewhat overpriced, though the quality of everything was high. Maybe I was just feeling grumpy? It's been known to happen, though never without just cause.

 Anyway, after lunch we hit up a moonshine distillery called Shine Girl, where Sherry and Nancy tasted a flight of six distillations before selecting two to take to the condo: Red Velvet Cake and Lavender. I tried the Red Velvet Cake; it does taste like fermented red velvet cake, but it's not as good as the Salted Caramel we got in Dubois PA a few years ago, the flavour that started us on our 'shine appreciation course.

 Our last stop of the day was at the world's largest knife store, which is sort of like a Cabela's or a Bass Pro Shop. They have every model of every knife made, and all kinds of other outdoor gear. But the excitement of that was overshadowed by the news that Kaylee, our great-niece and Nancy and Jeff's granddaughter, had been selected for concert choir back home in Colorado. After getting that news, we didn't talk a lot about the knife store, the name of which I forget.

Saturday, May 18

 After long discussion of the available routes and distances involved, we finally decided that our trip to the condo in Lake Lure would be by way of a backyard display of dinosaurs, now called Backyard Terrors, in Bluff City, Tennessee. I had seen this amazing collection of hobbyist-constructed critters seven years ago, and even though they got barely a mention in this blog, I've felt ever since that this was one of the most fascinating sights I've ever come across in all my wandering around. Definitely a Top-Ten place. The other options were to drive straight down the interstate, or go through the National Park, or take the Tail of the Dragon scenic route. Interstate 40 is pretty through the mountains, but it's still just a four-lane highway and nothing special; and we like our travels to be as special as we can conveniently make them. The route through the park is likely to be heavy traffic (and rain) and not much different than what we saw on the Cherohala Skyway; plus there's a good chance we will take a full day to explore the park during our condo week anyway (even though it's about an hour and a half drive from where we'll be staying). And the Tail of the Dragon, which I've driven before, is no more exciting than the Cherohala Skyway; the two routes run parallel about 40 miles apart. The only difference is that the Tail of the Dragon has more traffic, especially motorcycles, as it's a pretty well-known scenic drive, while Cherohala is kind of a well-kept secret.

 And so that's what we did, pretty much. On the drive up to the dinosaur park, Nancy finished reading the memoirs of Jeff's grandmother, and we listened to an episode of a podcast called Empire. This one was about the history of the East India Company in India. None of us had known that the Battle of Plassy, which enabled a small Company army to defeat the Mughal and French forces, turned on the fact that it rained. The Company army was surrounded, about to be ripped to shreds, when the skies opened. The Mughal army didn't cover their gunpowder; the English did. After the storm passed, the Mughal cavalry attacked and were destroyed by the English cannon fire. Amazing. 

one of the new statues

 The Backyard Terrors Dinosaur Park was, as expected, terrific. Quite a few new dinosaur statues have been added since I saw the place seven years ago, and it seems like the owner must've bought some more property to expand into. Some of these new dinosaurs appear to be built with an entirely different method; they seem so Polished, like they were bought instead of assembled.

 In our planning of the drive to the condo, I'd forgotten that my car was still waiting for us at the hotel in Asheville, so we had to add that into our plans. It only added fifteen or twenty minutes to the trip, except that as we started for Lake Lure from there, Google Maps wouldn't talk to me, and I couldn't see the screen because of the sun, so we started off by missing every turn and having to make one U-turn after another. I finally pulled over and told Nancy to take the lead and I'd just follow her. We got to the condo office around 5:15. The condo office turns out to be miles from the actual condo, so it was about 6pm before we started unloading our stuff.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 1

Part One: The Trip Up

Friday, May 10

 Strong storms passed through Texas just before we left on this trip: tornadoes and flooding and torrential rain. East Texas got over two feet of rain in a short time, and these storms continued to dump water across the southeastern part of the country. But my calculations were that we would be behind the bad weather, and further and further back each day, and it seems I was right. Not a drop of rain so far, and after the first day of clouds, we've had gorgeous spring weather. 

 Carly went to the kennel early on Friday, and as usual was thrilled to get her paper collar. If we could bring her on these condo trips, I'd gladly leave the Jag behind and drive the Subaru. And in fact, now that I'm so much fatter than before, despite still being only 49 years old, I'm close to the point of giving my little convertible to a car museum anyway. (If I thought any of my heirs were the least bit interested in it, I'd give it to them, but they're not. It's not their style.)

 So we were off. We stuck to I-10 all the way through Houston, listening to The Ink Black Heart, the sixth book in J.K. Rowling's "Cormoran Strike" series of mysteries. Like her Harry Potter series, each book is longer than the one before. This one -- the first we've listened to rather than reading -- is 33 hours long, so we won't finish it until the return trip. We enjoy the series: the regular characters are well-developed and likable, the plots are complex without being impenetrable, the language is precise and the tone is just slightly erudite. They're written for people who paid attention in school.

 East of Houston, we stopped for lunch in a Vietnamese noodle house called Vietnamese Noodle House. It was simple and downscale but the food was good, plentiful and cheap. Service was so-so and the restaurant itself was utterly unprepossessing, but I'd go back if I'm ever looking for lunch around there. (I won't be.) I'd planned, at that stage of the trip, to take the old highway as far as Beaumont, but Google Maps showed some kind of blockage ahead on that route, so back to I-10 we went. (That stretch of I-10 between Houston and Beaumont still holds the title of Dullest Freeway in the US, as far as I'm concerned.) We got off the interstate just east of Lake Charles and headed up through Alexandria to Natchez, where we spent the first night in a reasonably priced hotel that claims to be a 3-star place but really only gets two. We got our room key and found a parking spot nearby, then opened the room to find somebody else's luggage and shopping all over the room. The desk clerk blamed housekeeping, and I'm not giving a lot of thought to how it could be their fault. The replacement room was in the same general area, so it was no trouble to unload the car from where it was. 

 Then we headed Under the Hill. That's the part of Natchez, right along the riverbank at the bottom of the bluff, where the riverboats used to dock. Well, they still do, and there was actually one in the port, a stern-wheeler whose name I didn't catch. Lights were on in some of the rooms on board and you could tell that they were elegantly appointed. Makes me want to try a river cruise, but I would like to do that somewhere with less humidity and fewer mosquitos.

sunset on the Mississippi at Natchez

 Anyway: Natchez Under the Hill, years ago, was what we would call a red-light district: whorehouses, and saloons, mostly, plus warehouses and flophouses. Now, of course, it's all gentrified. Not a big area, but big enough for a few nice bars and restaurants, it's the center of night life for upscale Natchez. I hadn't been down there in about 40 years, so I was curious to see it again. We had a very pleasant dinner at a sports pub called The Camp, then went back to our hotel, where we were slightly relieved to find our own belongings undisturbed. 

Saturday, May 11

 In the morning I had a cup of very bad coffee, most of which I threw away because of the bugs swarming around me while I tried to drink it, then we drove up the highway to Port Gibson, to see a goldfingered church steeple and grab some breakfast. Found the steeple, but turns out there are no restaurants in Port Gibson. (McDonald's doesn't count.) So we dove into our ice chest and had hard-boiled eggs and apples for breakfast while lamenting the primitive resources available in rural Mississippi. 

 After a drive up the Natchez Trace we got off to go see the Mississippi Petrified Forest, a privately-owned attraction that, from the descriptions I found on line, smacked of tattiness. Yet it turned out to be quite a nice little diversion: about a half-hour's fairly easy walk through low forested hills with lots and lots of 30-million-year-old petrified logs lying around. The signage was good, making the natural forces at work easy to understand, and there was plenty of (living) flora and fauna to interest us on our slow progress through the park. At six bucks each (senior rate; regular adult tickets are $7) it felt like a real bargain.

 I had some trouble getting Google Maps to take me along the route I wanted, and we ended up passing through Jackson first on freeway, then on a six-lane divided highway. We stopped for lunch somewhere along the road there, in a new-ish cafe in a strip center, where the service was excellent, the menu was very short and the prices were reasonable. We each ordered salads, but when the servers carried the daily special fried chicken plates by for the folks at the next table, I knew I'd made a mistake. I'm still suffering. The salad was okay but, Man! did that fried chicken look good! I suspect it will backfire on me at some point in this trip.

 After that, we made a stop in a podunk little town called Shubuta (or Shubula; sources disagree) to drink some red water out of their "famous" red water artesian well. Shubuta (or Shubula) isn't actually a town, it's more a community that used to have a police force (we saw the car) and now is a convenience store, a bunch of abandoned businesses, and this artesian well. Iron-laced water bubbles up out of the ground into a 30-gallon pot, then flows into a small concrete coy pond, then drains into the ground, forming a nice breeding ground for Mississippi's state bird, the Mosquito. 

 The water was not as tasty as the iron-laced water we used to get from the pump at my grandparents' farm in Pumpkin Center sixty years ago. And not as much fun, because you don't have to pump it yourself.

 So that was as much of a roadside attraction as I could find to justify taking the back roads across Mississippi and Alabama. From there we drove over to Monroeville, Alabama, the "literary capital" of that state, so called because both Harper Lee and Truman Capote were born there. There is, it appeared, nothing to see after business hours, because the Old Court House, which we were assured would look just like the courtroom set constructed for the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird shuts down at 5pm. We didn't really care. We had dinner in the Court Cafe -- I had an excellent shrimp po-boy and fries, and we picked up scones for the next day's breakfast -- and drove up the road to Montgomery, where our hotel was.

Sunday, May 12

 Last time we went through Montgomery we stopped at the Peace and Justice Memorial, a very moving place, and then went to the Legacy Museum; but we got there too late to see the whole thing. So our plan was to stay the night in Montgomery, then finish viewing the museum Sunday morning. That's exactly what we did; we got there just after it opened at 9AM, We were there until about noon, and still kind of rushed the last part of it.

too on-the-nose

 Since last year's visit, the organization behind both facilities has added a third campus, this one a sculpture garden along the Alabama River, a few blocks away. We decided to go there before getting lunch, and honestly it was kind of disappointing. We expected art but got three-dimensional preaching. But we were both very hungry by then, so maybe it's better than I'm giving it credit for. (Not.) After waiting for a long slow-moving train to unblock the crossing, we got to the spot we'd picked for lunch. It being Mothers' Day, we wanted a place that wouldn't attract families taking mom out to eat after church, and we picked right: NYC Gyros, a tiny little storefront that felt like stepping through a wormhole into Brooklyn. Excellent middle-eastern fare, unexpectedly cheap, with a small dose of Noo Yawk sass from the owner. I'd give it four and a half jalapeños if I still did restaurant reviews.

 We drove top-up to Auburn, where we wasted half an hour seeing the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. There was no fine art there, just a few small galleries of postmodern race-sensitive crap. I'm sure it's very popular with the white-guilt woke arts community, but it's nothing I'd look twice at. Well, there was one sculpture, a wall-mounted piece with an old sailing ship model stuck into a lobster trap. If it had had a title like "Slave Ship" I'd have thought it was an excellent metaphorical representation of how 250 years of the slave trade, and its later consequences, still traps all of American society; but no, it was called something that related to a protégé of the sculptor, and so was meaningless to any large purpose.

 It was too early for dinner when we passed the Whistlin' Pig Cafe, which is reputed to have the best Brunswick Stew in all of Georgia ... why that should be a thing, I don't know ... but it's OK; it's closed on Sundays anyway. We drove up the mountain to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt's favourite picnic spot, right behind the CCC-built headquarters building for FDR State Park. (He used to come to that spot when he was at Warm Springs, which is just a few miles further east from there.) It was, as you might expect what with the presidential imprimatur and all, a nice view, but I didn't consider it photo-worthy, as I already have way too many photographs of indistinguishable broad forested valleys dotted with the occasional unidentifiable building in the distance. 

 For reasons I no longer remember, I'd decided to bypass Warm Springs, so we got on the freeway and headed north, hoping to bypass Atlanta traffic congestion completely while Mothers' Day was still in force. We didn't entirely succeed at this, as apparently one of the big things to do in that area on Mothers' Day is go watch the Braves play wearing pink gear. We also had to go right past Harts Field, the world's busiest airport, so there was a stretch of traffic to deal with. But all in all it wasn't that bad. We got out to the northwest suburbs while it was still broad daylight, and headed for Morgan Falls Overlook Park, which turns out to be a popular city park with a playground stuffed full of little kids, more than I've seen in one place since I was one myself. Unfortunately it has no waterfalls, and thus no overlook thereof. There used to be a waterfall, but it's now under the reservoir formed by a dam erected by the local power company on the Chattahoochee River. Well, I got some exercise while making this determination.

 We spent the night in Roswell, not quite beyond the reach of the Atlanta Metropolitan area, after having a late supper at a very good place called North River Tavern. It seemed about to close when we arrived, but by the time we left it was pretty well hopping, except that everyone was out on the patio. We were the only customers sitting inside, I think. I had a side salad and we split an order of hot dogs. (I don't know why I've been craving hot dogs lately, unless it's because I keep passing the Dog Father restaurant on San Pedro and wondering how it can have stayed in business for so many years.) My side salad ($2.95) was more like a chef's salad, and I could barely eat my hot dog afterwards. The dogs (two in the order) came with fries, which were, dare I say it? I dare: perfect. They were perfect. Crinkle cut, perfectly fried, and not too much salt. 

Monday, May 13

The cabbage patch

 In the morning we found our perfect travel weather had come to an end. It was drizzling, and it drizzled all day. And my carefully planned excursions for the day ended up out the window for the most part. Horsetrough Falls, supposedly in the town of Helen, turn out to be somewhere else, somewhere up in the mountains northwest of the town. (The town itself, by the way, is widely known for having remade itself in the image of an Alpine village. It looked farcical.) In searching for Horsetrough ("Continue straight," the Google Maps lady says, at a T-intersection.) we passed a sign directing us to another waterfall that was supposed to be about 20 miles away. When we couldn't find Horsetrough, we decided to go there. It's on federal lands, so free for us with our lifetime senior passes; we found this out after paying $5 for a Georgia State Parks daily parking pass. I need five dollars worth of vengeance against the State of Georgia. (When I think of Marjorie Taylor Greene and what she's doing to this country, that five bucks goes way up.) The Gourd Place (museum and studio) is only open by appointment, which we did not have. And Babyland General Hospital, the creepiest place on earth, smacked too much of cultishness. It looks like a plantation house, with extraordinary landscaping. Somebody made a pile of money on Cabbage Patch dolls.

 (Which reminds me -- the MTG reference, not the cabbage patch: in three days' driving across the Deep South we've seen exactly one Trump sign. I take it as a hopeful indication that, this close to a presidential election, the people who avidly supported the Great Orange Child in the past seem reluctant to let their neighbours know. May God bless and save the United States.)

Anna Ruby Falls

 We hiked up to the falls. Half a mile, not too steep but a long way up. Took us not quite half an hour going up, a little longer going down (because the tarmac was a little damp and my shoes don't have the best grip; I should have thought to change into sneakers for the hike.) Worth every gasping step. Anna Ruby Falls is actually two waterfalls, side by side, as two creeks (each of which has as much water in it as the San Antonio River) come together. One is about a 50-foot drop; the other is easily twice as high. They have a nice arrangement of viewing platforms built so you can get a good look at this natural wonder.

 Well, that was a really nice interlude, with more exercise than I've gotten since my heart attack last Christmas. I was relieved to make it to the top, and I was relieved to see that they had frequent benches available all the way up (though I only needed them twice, if I recall correctly.)

 After that, we stopped in at the Northeast Georgia Folk Pottery Museum, which has a nice, albeit small, exhibit showing the history of pottery in the area, which has been going on for about 200 years. In the earliest days, pottery was a basic necessity. "If a man couldn't put up 50 or 60 gallons of syrup" (the only sweetener available back then) "his family wasn't gonna make it through the winter." Later on, as glass storage jars and factory-made pottery became available, and new products like granulated sugar and molasses made it into the hills, pottery became more decorative, less of a necessity, and relatively cheaper.

 On the other side of the building is a series of art galleries. I walked into the first room and found eight things I wanted to buy. I stopped looking. That makes nine artisan works on this trip that I regret not having bought. Of course, the decisive question in my mind has become, Where would I put it? And there, I have me. I have no place left in my house to display a vase or a pot or a small wall hanging. I live in too much clutter. (I will, at this point, refrain from specific critiques of the habits of other members of the household in connection with available flat surfaces at home.) (Yes, Carly is something of a slob.)

wooden Model T model

 Then we went to the Miles Through Time Car Museum, in Clarkesville. This museum is run by the guy who maintains the Automotive Museum Guide, an essential part of my trip planning now that I'm running low on new counties to visit. (By the way, I visited my planned four new Georgia counties today.) It's located in the back part of an antique mall that his wife operates. The cars are arranged chronologically, and the exhibits include auto-adjacent topics like the development of service stations and auto repair shops; toy cars; and model cars, including unbelievable full-sized hand-made wooden models. I'll say this right now: this museum easily has the best explanatory signage of any I've visited so far (about 40, maybe?). I spent so much time reading things. Just as a fer-instance: I didn't know, and I bet you didn't either, that the Coca-Cola company tried to get the US Treasury to mint a seven-and-a-half-cent coin, so it could raise its prices above a nickel a bottle without requiring customers to use more than one coin for a purchase (this, at a time when five cents was real money), and that, when the Treasury declined to do so, for a brief time the company made its own seven-and-a-half-cent tokens, which were a flop. (It also tried a scheme where a small number of empty bottles were loaded into vending machines, so that some unlucky customers would have to spend ten cents for a nice cold Coke, thus raising the average revenue per serving to 5.62 cents. Wow. Is it any wonder business in this country needs to be regulated?)

 It was too late in the day to visit Tallulah Gorge State Park, which from the descriptions I've read is a must-see sort of stop; but it shuts down at 5pm sharp. One wonders why. So we didn't get to use our $5 Georgia State Parks parking pass, and I still want vengeance for that.

Tuesday, May 14

 First thing this morning after breakfast (at a popular cafe called The Rusty Bike, where I decided I didn't have to eat the entire breakfast burrito) we drove up the road to the one attraction on the trip that Sherry has actually gotten excited about seeing: the Foxfire Museum, in the tiny town of Mountain City. I'm sure all the world of a certain age remembers the Foxfire magazine that recorded the history and lifeways of the Appalachian Mountain settlers and their descendants; it was put together by a bunch of school kids in the Rabun County area of Georgia, kids who were concerned that these ancient ways were being lost to modernity. The magazine's articles were collected in a series of best-selling books; the royalties from the books enabled the group to buy some land, relocate a bunch of Appalachian buildings -- cabins, barns, mills, etc. -- and those buildings now comprise the Foxfire Museum, a sort of Living History project where people can come and see how to grind corn or make buckets or do smithing and whatever.

 Of course, early on a rainy Tuesday morning there weren't any volunteers there to man the various buildings and studios, so we just walked slowly up the hill, the only people there at that time of day, looking in each building (if it was unlocked), then back down the hill. It took us not quite an hour. Sherry enjoyed it pretty thoroughly; I was nonplussed, as (1) I'd never been a fan of the Foxfire stuff as a kid in the 1970s when this was all popular, and (2) after a year and a half living in West Virginia, where time moves much more slowly, so a year and a half counts as twenty-five years of normal life, I'd seen all the ramshackle cabins and 'shiner stills and axe handles I care to see. I've been in enough log cabins, barns and sheds, most of them much older that those at Foxfire, and most of them still in regular use, and cluttered with people and things, and seen enough of the lifeways of poverty-stricken Appalachians. And I've been to enough Living History museums, from Louisbourg to Sturbridge to Acadian Village, to keep me satisfied for the remainder of my days.

Bridal Veil Falls

 Following that, we crossed into North Carolina and went by Bridal Veil Falls, which is right next to the highway. As soon as we came 'round the curve and saw the falls, we realized we'd been there before. There's a roadway passing under the falls themselves, and I have a picture of me driving my old blue Jag convertible through it. The road under the falls is closed to traffic now, I hope only temporarily, so we just got a pic with the car in the distance. It's not the same.

 From there, it was up to the airport at Asheville to collect Nancy and Jeff. We are now ensconced in an Asheville hotel for the night. We had dinner at a nice restaurant a couple of miles down the road and will get an early start tomorrow, driving in a roundabout way to Knoxville, where we'll spend three nights before heading to our condo week east of Asheville. Tomorrow will start Part 2 of this blog post. 

And by the way, as usual all my pictures from this trip are available for viewing in my Google Photos albums, "2024-06 Lake Lure Trip". All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.