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.