Subject: Al Gore country

 

 

Wednesday Oct 25� Asheville NC - Great Smokie Mountains - Gatlinburg TN

 

Woke up happy from my big night on the town, and walked to morning coffee at a little sidewalk pastry shop, then checked my mail at the Library.� Returned to scary motel, cranked up the truck and went looking for the BRP again.

 

It was overcast and sometimes misting heavily, but I went ahead and had a very pleasant day of drivin', waterfall hikin', fall color admirin', and damp forest smell enjoyin' anyway, which lead me eventually to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

 

The park itself is a cool place, but on this day it is too darned crowded.� The mobs of people at every pullover were only mildly annoying until I got caught in a 15 minute traffic jam approaching Gatlinburg on the far side of the park.� There were just so many cars on the road that the least little stoppage backed people up for miles, and these country folks are so polite that they that they seem to prefer sitting on their fat butts in the middle of the road to actually going someplace.

 

Gatlinburg is nearly gridlocked, so I stop at the first cheap looking place I see and take a room.

 

OK, so here I am, sitting in a lawn chair in front of the Trent Motor Lodge in Gatlinburg TN.� Gawd what a freak show.�� I am, as of now completely over this unseasonably warm weather thing and wish for for seasonably cold to commence, just to get everybody the heck off the streets and back to the comfort of their easy chairs.�

 

There are TWO Ripley's Believe It or Nots in a six block area, along with uncountable foot-long corn dog stands, taffy and fudge stores, Tee shirt stores, and oh so much more.� Dollywood is about 12 miles down the road at Pigeon Forge -- I have stumbled into Middle America's fall playground and I want out!

 

I have unwittingly headed straight to ground zero of this nonsense like a moth to the flame.� If I had it to do over there is a perfectly good road following the southern edge of the Smokies that I'm sure is "almost as good" and has a� helluva lot less cotton candy stands.

 

On the plus side, many of the motels here have "Vote for Al Gore" on their marquees -- which is good to see.

 

I've kind of had it.� I want there to be a bitchin' cold snap and clear the streets!

 

 

Thursday Oct 26� Gatlinburg, TN - Townsend - Kimball, TN

 

Breakfast at the recommended local Pancake House sucked.� A line of fat middle Americans queued up there for no discernable reason except that everyone else was -- a hugely crowded place with bad service and very average food.�

 

My morning plan was to do this little 11 mile loop drive called Cades Cove.� arrrrggghhhh!� With my digital odometer, I can say with accuracy that it took over half of a Yo La Tengo CD to go 1.8 miles.� I was having an un-mellow time of it, sitting in this endless line of vehicles in the middle of nowhere, so I found a dirt road that would take me out of the living hell known as the Smokies and bailed!�

 

On the other side of the hill, back in the normal world, I had a great lunch, the special of the day -- "steak and gravy" with sweet peas and collards and iced tea.� Another charming southern-ism I forgot to mention is that when you order iced tea down here you are often asked: "sweet or unsweet?" :)

 

I've been staying off freeways mostly because it's just plain nicer to do so, but I also have some serious tire anxiety.� I'll be passing a semi at 75 mph with another semi behind me and I'll start thinking about my Firestone Wilderness ATs and about tread separation, and what a bad thing that would be to have my treads separate at that particular time.� I did get around to calling Freeman Toyota (where I bought my truck in Santa Rosa) the other day, and did not get much information.� I called the woman who sold me the car, who had always distinguished herself by being straightforward.� She said exactly eleven words "I don't know anything about that, let me connect you to Service".� I gave her a hard time but she stuck to that, and service said "they have received no recall notice from Firestone".� So that's all I know about that.�

 

Chattanooga is in the middle of an "X" of Freeways -- I-24 zigs in from the NW, I-59 zags out to the SW, and I-75 makes the "<" of the X on the eastern side, and there is as much serious interstate truck traffic here as I have seen anywhere -- surprising to me, as I thought it would be kind of sleepy around here.� I decided to forego the famous Lookout Mountain and Rudy Falls, which are advertised on the sides of barns all over the South and Midwest.

 

I stopped for the night in the town of Kimball, which is an ugly little collection of chain stores situated in a beautiful wide, pleasant valley.� From the motel one can look a great distance.� There's a graveyard across the street, then beyond that is the freeway, then fields and the knobs on the far side of the valley.� It's very pretty, and now that there's less people I like the balmy weather.�� There is a lot of light industry around here, plastics plants - that sort of thing.� I can picture the local burghers selling the place as a manufacturer's paradise -- cheap labor, malleable environmental standards, and all right here in the good old predictable U.S. of A.

 

A local guy mentioned a big Nissan plant in the next valley, I'm reminded of how Ronnie back in Indianapolis said my Toyota Tacoma Truck was built in Princeton Indiana.� NAFTA indeed!

 

 

Friday Oct 27� Kimball, TN - Shiloh - Bolivar TN

 

Free breakfast at the motel and a foggy freeway.

 

Sometimes you pick it right, and this morning I picked it right.� About 15 miles out of Kimball I got off the freeway and visited the headquarters of� the South Cumberland State Recreation Area.� The chatty guy there talked my ear off for about 15 minutes, but did point me to a good place to check out.� On the other side of the town of Sewanee (home of the extremely Baptist University of the South) was a natural bridge that was really nifty.� First of all there were no (0, none) people there!� I figure they were all still in a line at Dollywood.� It was lovely and quiet and there was a great view into the distance beyond the bridge.

 

Drive, drive, drive

 

Late that afternoon I detoured down to the Mississippi border to the Shiloh Battlefield Military Park.� Very moving.� 39,000 union troops were attacked by 43,000 rebel troops, who wanted to pry them off of their position on the Tennessee River.� The rebels won the first day, and would have kicked their Yankee asses except that 20,000 more union troops were brought down the river in steamboats overnight to turn the tide.� It's a really bizarre place to wander around in -- 5-6 miles square, all woods and fields, with statues and placards *everywhere*, in the fields, in the middle of the woods, everywhere.� All these big sad marble and bronze statues peppered all over the place, facing different directions, really eerie.

 

I drove through yet more swamps in the gathering gloom and made it to Bolivar Tennessee for the night.