48stateroadtrip.com

I guess it’s never a bad thing to go hang out on an aircraft carrier-museum for a few hours. Well — probably the second consecutive day of it might get old. Never done it that way, though, so I wouldn’t know.

I’m starting to realize that Charleston’s attractions are merely okay. OTOH, it’s been a great, comfortable, *polite* place to hole up for a few days.

That said, here are a few pictures of the same thing each time. (The aircraft carrier is the Yorktown, it was built in 1943 and therefore involved in WWII. Decommissioned in 1970. It smelled like an aircraft carrier.)

Oh, and I forgot to re-charge my DSLR battery, so these were taken with my cell phone, so they’re kind of crappy-looking.

Carrier, flag, Ravenel Bridge (connects Charleston with Mt. Pleasant)

Tailhook, but no scandal.

Hornet is go.

Bridge and Phantom viewed from flight control.

Y’know, I’m not sure I learned anything from this ship. The guy there didn’t know if there were any actual F4F Wildcats left anywhere (theirs was another FM-2). Um. They have a Medal of Honor museum on-board, but it was pretty dull. You do (re-)learn that aircraft carriers are big, complex systems there. Got to see the on-board dentist area. There’s also a submarine that you can walk through (torpedo room, engine room, officers’ rooms, bridge, galley, mess, torpedo room — IIRC).

Beautiful day, though.

bkd

(PS, I *did* learn that Charleston lost their navy base in, like, ’98 or so. Still got the AFB, though.)

Spent most of Day 96 doing grad school app stuff, as well as sitting in the room trying to avoid having to do grad school app stuff. It eventually works out — at least at always has so far in my life. Heck, every day’s a roll of the dice, right? Here’s me hard at work on Day 96:

Sadly, my face appears to be slipping off the side of my skull.

And while I’m sure you’d be happier hearing more about *that* adventure, instead I’m throwing out a bunch of photos that have accumulated on my cell phone throughout the trip. Some of them seem more honest and/or representative than the others I end up posting here. Enjoy anyway. If you want.

Nephew Sam at breakfast. Not sure why there’s french toast cooling on the window sill.

Safeco scoreboard, before things went wrong. The girl sitting by herself was just there to see Ichiro!, but she kept falling asleep. Ichiro!, on the other hand, remained alert and lively throughout the proceedings.

Army helicopter drops its load over American Lake.

I miss this haircut. Next time without the goat, probably.

My campground at Spanish Creek in Montana.

How every Winchester rifle owner spends his January.

A favorite town name, Michigan.

Fancy cars at an un-fancy hotel in Ohio.

Waffle House, breakfast staple of the flyover state world.

A European grocery store right in the middle of the Adirondacks.

I chose the lamp. It was as flavorful as it was incandescent.

Hiding out from a rainy night in New Hampshire.

Felice, who did not, in fact, take a photo.

Almost Tolkien-esque, those Marine aviators.

Laundry day in Statesville (for me, not for anyone else).

I’ve become very fond of southern barbecue. (Although the coleslaw was weird.)

I also spent the morning of Day 96 trying to figure out whether I needed to buy some grown-up clothes for when I drive through Utah and potentially meet up with my grad school app adviser. And now you know everything.

Fin.

bkd

Crap — Day 100 is coming up. I better do something momentous.

Day 95 I went to Congaree National Park (south of Columbia, S.C.) and paddled around in the swamp. It was about as chill, relaxing an activity as I’ve done this trip. Apart from havin’ to wrench my kayak out of the cab of my truck, dig underneath my cot to find the keel and my PFD, extract my foot pump out of the nether-corner of the truck bed, and then inflate and assemble the whole thing. But, really, you know, once that was done, it was pretty dang relaxin’. Check it out:

I should probably take more photos of stuff like diggin’ under the cot to find my keel. Posterity might appreciate that kind of thing. Next trip. (Although, in my defense, it’s not always easy to take photos of yourself doin’ things like that.)

Sorry for all that paddlin’ noise on the video. Kind of kills the moment(s).

Trip lasted about three hours. By “the swamp”, I mean “Cedar Creek”. Technically, yes, the water is flowin’. Just very slowly. Made for easy paddlin’ upstream and still waters that yielded really good reflections. Photos are kind of off though — too dark to use normal ISO and a small aperture, which blew out the details. Plus there were too many snags to stop paddlin’ long enough to really compose anything. Oh well. Here’s what I ended up with.

Mmm: swampy!

My apparent consternation is unfounded.

Glass-like.

Another photo.

A fork in the creek.

Somewhat spider-like, imho.

Floatin’.

Fall color *and* spanish moss festooning the trees of Congaree.

Other notes:

• I saw no alligators.
• I saw no pythons.
• I saw no alligator-python fights.

For that matter, I didn’t see many animals at all — a few ducks and that was it. Still, a beautiful, easy-goin’ day.

bkd

Thirty-three, the tres-tres. Landmark.

I got kind of excited about Mark Sanford when he refused to take the government’s bad-idea, forced loans, but then:

1. I found out he’s not much of a public speaker.
2. He ran off to Argentina with his mistress.
3. I found out he put his name on his state’s welcome signs.

Obviously the third one is the real killer.

Interstate 26 — it’s big in SoCar.

I also learned that a palmetto is sort of like a small palm tree, which usually doesn’t ever get over nine feet in height. I think South Carolina is the first state I’ve been to on this trip where people really seem to get excited about their state flag. It’s a cool flag for one thing, but you kind of see it everywhere. Maybe I just notice it more because it’s so eye-poppingly cool. And it’s on (almost) all the license plates whether folks like it or not, which might also be why it seems to be everywhere…

bkd

There are two main problems with the Great Smoky Mountains:

1. They’re crowded.
2. There are too many people there.

Unless you’ve been slavishly watching Ken Burns documentaries or just really know your national parks, there’s some likelihood (that’s safe) that you may not know that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the system. Frex (this was on a rainy weekday in October):

OTOH: fall color!

So here’s what I propose to fix the problem:

1. Charge an entrance fee.
2. Wipe Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge off the face of the earth — or just relocate them to some other part of Tennessee.

Most other parks charge an entrance fee. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that every park out west charges $10-20 for a week’s admission, but *the* *most* *popular* park of all has no fee at all and also just happens to be overcrowded. I think the parks should be self-funding and to certain extent other parks in the system are. I’m not sure why the rest of the country needs to subsidize the South’s park-going (the vast, vast majority of Great Smokies park-goers are southern; those who weren’t were generally from Ohio or Illinois, which basically seem like southern states to me).

As for Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, the two towns closest to the park on the Tennessee side — man. Here’s Gatlinburg in mid-October:

Such compelling strip low- to mid-range hotels!

These towns are some sort of strange haven for the blue-collar white middle-class. I know this sounds snobbish, but — these places are horrible. Overrun with people and their cars, the only thing the towns offer are a(n admittedly curiously) vast variety of miniature golf places and pancake houses. As a result, Sunday afternoon traffic was frequently immobilized from the park exit all the way to the freeway (at which point it moved just fine). We abandoned our hopes of visiting Cade’s Cove as a result.

Eh. I guess another solution would be to just never try and visit the park from the Tennessee side, but what fun’s that? This country demands drastic, memorable solutions, so: push the button, glass Gatlinburg.

Dropped my bro off at the airport in Knoxville. Stopped *very* briefly in downtown on my way out to take this ill-lit photo:

Sweet vestiges of 1982!

Contrary to popular belief, however:

1. I found no sign in Knoxville welcoming me to the “Wod Fir”.
2. I found no evidence that the Sun Sphere is, in fact, filled with wigs.

I understand that there are the “second Sun Sphere” conspiracy theorists out there, but whatever.

It’s not exactly the Space Needle, either, you know? I mean, the thing’s all of five stories tall. And you also don’t have to drive over sidewalks to illegally park at the Space Needle — I found it mandatory in Knoxville after their direction-giving “Parking” signs led me to a no-parking loading dock with walls on three sides. For as polite as southerners are, you’d think they’d figure out how to make useful, accurate, plentiful road signs. OTOH, maybe if you don’t already know, they don’t want you to find out.

bkd

So proud to live, so proud to die.

Eh.

Started the day off by going to the Cherokee Museum in Cherokee, North Carolina. It was kind of interesting. A lot of arrowheads and pottery, not so much beadwork. The story wasn’t bitter and I learned that the Cherokee used to catch fish in shallow rivers by sprinkling powdered walnut bark into the river, which would stun the fish, allowing them to pick up the biggest ones and allowing the smaller fry to recover and swim away to grow fatter.

There were only 60,000 Cherokee when they were forced from their lands. Half died. Now there are 300,000 per Wikipedia, of which only 13,000 live in North Carolina. I had to get the numbers from Wikipedia, they weren’t in the museum. And the Cherokee high school girls basketball team won the state championship in 1998 (that one I learned from a sign next to the road).

After the museum, we went to the Cherokee village, a “living history museum”. It was like Williamsburg, except not really at all.

Wherein were taught the ways of the ancients relatively less moderns.

Indeed.

Cherokees did not live in teepees.

The best part was listening to all the Native Americans talking in North Carolina accents. I don’t know what else I expected, but — yeah, not that I guess.

Then we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’d seen it in Virginia, but this was the North Carolina part. Very different (no, seriously).

The snow line.

Fall color + winter blanching.

The yellow-leaf road.

Leaves, snow, trees.

I can now no longer honestly claim that I’ve never been snowed on in October in North Carolina.

bkd

Read the scene where gravity is pulling me around.

I miss being young enough to think R.E.M. is/was cool.

Went on this hike:

Alum Cave Creek

Arch Rock, or: I’ve now seen a shot for which it would’ve been nice to have a tripod available.

The view from under the overhang of Alum Cave.

The trail!

The stairway leading out of the peak-side lodge.

The actual peak — it’s not the highest in Tennessee.

The Cliff Tops.

Ibid, but with me in the photo.

A mountain-top hillbilly village!

Tree tunnel.

Telkontar goes into the light.

Rain-fed, trail-crossing cascade.

Yes, they have fall color in Tennessee as well.

They’re called the “Smoky Mountains” because there are clouds there.

A log bridge!

Creek with trees.

Same stream, some fallen leaves, trees, and more great smoke.

Ten or 11 miles, out-and-back, 2,800 feet in elevation gain. Went to the lodge, then continued to the peak, then swung by the Cliff Tops before heading down. We saw Jimmy Carter hiking down when we were on the way up. No joke. Didn’t take any photos of him, of course — I mean, it was just Jimmy Carter, not Calvin Coolidge or anything. Most crowded hike I’ve been on the whole trip (excluding the last two miles on the way down from Half Dome). Either the Smoky Mountains visitors are a hardy bunch or there are just *that* *many* of them. (Truly, the park is choked with visitors, bad weather or no.)

With good weather, this is possibly an A-plus hike. In steady-state drizzle? It was still nice. Wish there would have been a view — any view — along the way. The trail was made for views, what with all those ledges and such. Fortunately, the trail itself had some interesting stuff along the way — log bridges, cable-aided narrow walkways, drop-offs into oblivion, steps through arched rocks, weird accommodations at the top. All it needed was views. And maybe a lighthouse. And if there’d been a family of trolls living under any of those bridges that would snatch maybe every seventh hiker or so, that also would have added interest (and thinned the crowd).

Great hiking with Telkontar, of course. He was less affected by the lack of views, no doubt in part because his alternative was being stuck in an office. Whereas my alternative was… sky’s the limit, really.

bkd

PS, This hike was in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

It’s sort of amazing to me how much weather determines my mood. And you’d think that someone who grew up in the Seattle area would be okay with being rained on constantly, no-visibility skies, and temperatures in the low-50s. Nope. Ah, well.

Picked up my bro in Knoxville Wednesday night, slept in a Holiday Inn Express in Kodak or Sevierville (one may be a subset of the other), then trucked on down to the Ramsay Cascades trailhead in the northeast part of the park. It was an eight-mile out-and-back with a 2,400-foot elevation gain.

When it rains this much, the Little Pigeon grows up a little.

A Telkontar sighting.

For want of a telefoto lens, the best shot available of the falls.

We weren’t next.

Wenn von Nebel frei die Bahn!

Log bridge on the way back down.

The rivers were awesome and the falls apparently relatively big — I’ve found some other photos online wherein the water coming off them is a lot less than we saw. I guess the rain *is* good for something. I was pretty soaked — as much from sweat as from rain — but lived to fight another day. Some website designated this trail as “difficult”, but that website, whatever one it was, is crazy. Or at least its author has a different definition for “difficult” than I do. Or maybe I’m just in that good of shape.

And then we decided we were wet enough that we didn’t need to prove anything by also camping in such weather. Fortunately, Pigeon Forge offers plenty of cheap hotels. Unless you plan on staying Friday or Saturday night.

bkd

PS, I’m staying in the Brick House Campground in South Carolina right now and it is the best Verizon data connection I’ve had through my MiFi the entire trip. Could some physicist out there please explain?

Two-thirds there! So I crossed the border at night on a busy, curvy interstate and so while the welcome sign was huge and well-lit, I didn’t bother to get a photo. Maybe I’ll do a make-up some other time when I cross into Tennessee. It is, however, notable that the sign did not read “Tennesseein’ is Tennebelievin'”. Maybe the one coming up from Alabama will.

bkd

It costs $55 to give yourself a tour of the Biltmore Estate (a house). Let me type that out in words so you don’t think that’s a sticky keyboard issue: fiffty-five dollars. I didn’t realize this before going in to buy my ticket.

Me: I’d like to see the house.

Woman: That’ll be $55.

Me: U.S.?

Woman: [pretends not to hear]

Let me bash the Biltmore Estate more before putting the price in context. Thanks.

• While its original owner was a Vanderbilt, his first name was not Cornelius.
• He was a grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt — all the money spent to build the place was inherited.
• His two older brothers inherited the family business — the guy who built this house didn’t even have a job.
• The house was lived in for thirty (30) years before it was opened to the public, at which point it was no longer lived in.
• It was opened to the public because the family couldn’t afford to keep the house.
• Therefore, it served as a house for 30 years and as a tourist building to be walked through for 80 years.
• Some of the rooms weren’t finished until long after the house became a tourist-building.
• In spite of this, everything in the house makes out as if (a) this Vanderbilt family was important and (b) their time in the house was significant.
• The estate employs 1,900 people. It’s a non-house house with a bunch of grass around it. 1,900 employees.
• Despite the $55 cost to enter the house, you’re not allowed to take photographs anywhere inside.
• Excluding driving time, parking time, and time spent walking from the parking lot to the immediate house area, I saw everything I needed to in about an hour.

It’s The Biggest “House” in the Country, which screams of unfamiliarity with restraint. The interior maybe isn’t as tacky as Marble House in Newport or Hearst Castle (although Wm. Randolph Hearst at least did some stuff to increase *his* inherited wealth) — but then, it’s the gaudy, expensive stuff in those houses that makes them worth seeing. This one just seemed like someone’s outsized ego that, once it came down to interior decoration, couldn’t be matched by his bank account.

Big house.

Relatively normal-sized garden.

So, just to help better illustrate how ridiculous $55 for this house is, here’s a comparison of the prices of various attractions I’ve visited on this trip (and a couple other popular sites I haven’t visited).

The most remarkable thing about the place, IMHO, was that it was fairly *packed* with people, despite my being there on a bad-weather weekday. Is there really nothing better to do in this part of the country? OH man.

Or, in short: bad value.

bkd