Tales from Towed Haul

April 23, 2017.  Today was a cold, rainy day.  After Nancy and her contingent left for Atlanta at 10 am, we retreated to the Airstream, made coffee and read for a while.  Then we visited Clarke and Marcia and Bo at their home in Valle Crusis, which Brad had not yet seen.   They are renting a house on the top of a mountain with views on two sides that would set wet hair on fire.   They are tempted to buy the house and I really hope they can make it work.  With 8 acres of beautiful lawn and woodland, it would be a great place for Bo to explore as he grows up!

After lunch, we made our way up to David’s cabin for an open house.  I played pool with Hope (age 15) and then with Schyuler (age 11?) and John (age 7?).   We would not have won any billiards trophies, but at least we didn’t tear the felt!  David and Hannah’s home is a wonderland for children.  The cabin is utterly indestructible, with heart pine floors, ceilings and walls throughout and a huge stone fire place like those in the Grove Park Inn.  A second story balcony runs the length of the house and all nine children sleep there on most clear nights from May through September, lined up in their sleeping bags.  On other nights, the six girls share a huge girls dorm room and the three boys share a big room down the hall.  There are at least three or four other bedrooms, but they enjoy being together.  (I know you don’t believe this, but I have known these folks forever, and have never once heard an unkind word or grumble among them.)  The walls of the cabin are full of family portraits, photos and artwork, spanning four generations of Glovers. Hangers and Kennedys.  A grand piano, a large red hammock, and a map of the US strung with colored string and pins to map the family’s annual RV excursions share the living room, along with an assortment of well-loved furniture, books and games.  I don’t recall seeing a TV.  What a life!  I was having such fun, I forgot to take pictures for the blog!   Below is a picture from the wedding of all 11.5 of the David Kennedys, plus Andrew, the recently acquired son-in-law. (Clarke, Marcia and Bo are shown in the April 21 post.)

April 22, 2017.   This morning we gathered at the Beech Mt. house with Nancy, Bill, Denis, George and grandchildren Nancy, Laura and Jack for a huge breakfast of eggs, cheese grits, bacon & toast.   We set off for the wedding as soon as Stacy arrived for the great dog-handoff, at 11:45.

The wedding took place at 1 pm in the same church where the rehearsal dinner was last night.  It is a modern church designed to accommodate a large membership, set in a multi-use building with a full stage, stadium-style seating and a professional acoustical sound set-up.  The 13 bridesmaids (each of which was either a Kennedy, a Barry or a Cockman) wore pastel colored dresses of their own choosing, and each of the 12 groomsmen (of more varied parentage) wore khaki slacks and a white dress shirt.  The ceremony was very personal, just perfect for this particular young couple.   Heidi played the piano as the mothers and grandmothers were being seated.  As you can imagine, there was a host of child attendants (maybe a dozen) under age 5, who processed en masse down the aisle singing, surprising well, Jesus Loves Me!  An excellent ensemble of four a capella singers (Grace’s sisters, Heidi and Hope, and her uncles Clarke and Jonathan) performed during the lighting of the unity candle.  And as mountain music is a mainstay of this community of friends, there were several congregational songs of that genre, led by Dustin Petrey on guitar and John Cockman on fiddle.

Immediately after the ceremony, while the wedding party disappeared upstairs for formal photography, specified guests whisked away the seating and prepared the church floor for dancing.  Once the traditional first dances were out of the way, things got lively.  First was an Anniversary Dance in which all married couples were invited to the floor for a waltz.  Couples were required to leave the dance floor in the order called (based on the number of years they had been married), leaving the longest-hitched dancing until last.  Nancy & Bill won the prize for being still married after 56 years!  Then the mood turned to mountain music.  Before long, 400 or so men, women and children were expertly flying up and down in rows and swirls, doing the Virginia Reel, Hunt the Fox, and other elaborate group musical machinations.  It was a unique wedding!  I loved it.

April 21, 2017.  This morning, Nancy and Bill picked me up at the campsite at 10 am to get in some sightseeing and family visiting before we all head to the wedding rehearsal party and dinner late this afternoon.  Brad stayed behind to pack up our things and stabilize the Airstream for the two nights we will stay with Nancy & Bill at Beech Mt.

First we visited my nephew David’s new office building in Boone — a very big building (10,000 sq. ft. I think) housing the many employees busy at work in the vacation rental management business which David and his college roommate started a few years ago and have grown substantially.  David is the father of the bride (Grace) and is Nancy & Bill’s son.  David and Hannah, his beautiful wife of 20 years, have nine children and are expecting #10!  About 15 or so years ago, they made a fundamental life-changing decision to leave Atlanta and David’s stock-broker career there and move to the mountains just outside of Boone.  David himself built a huge log cabin with plenty of room for an expanding family, and they set about filling all the available bedrooms.  Hannah home-schools all the children!  You have never met a more talented, well-educated, polite and loving group of children (Grace, Heidi, Hope, Greta, Schuyler, Thomas, John, Faith, Sudie and TBD).  Several young like-minded and prolific families (the Whites, the Barrys, the Cockmans and the Kennedys) live close by and form a unique community of spiritual, musical and practical support,  life-long friendship, and general sympatico.  With all this togetherness, it is not surprising that Grace & Andrew’s wedding will have over 400 guests — mostly relatives of these families.  (Grace is a Kennedy; Andrew is a Barry.)

Next stop on the pre-rehearsal tour today was trip to nearby Valle Crusis to visit to my nephew Clarke and his wife Marcia and their one-month old son, Bo.  Clarke is David’s brother (making him the uncle of the bride).  Clarke and Marcia got married last April at our lake house in Georgia, during Daddy’s 103rd birthday party!  They gave me two days’ notice that they planned to get married at my house!  It worked out beautifully, but that is a “whole nuther” story as they say.

Brad joined us at Nancy & Bill’s house at 3, just in time to meet Stacy, the dog sitter who will entertain Doris while we are at the party tonight and the wedding tomorrow.

The festivities began with a cocktail party at 4:30 for out of town guests, followed by the rehearal dinner at their large community church.  Among the many toasts and presentations, Heidi, who is an accomplished pianist at age 16, played and sang a hauntingly beautiful song that she composed for the occassion, called “Figure Eights — for my sister Grace, on her wedding day (and everyday).”  It was a wonderful party, with equal measures of reflection and promise.

We arrived back at Beech Mountain by 11 pm to find Doris in good spririts and well satisfied with having been entertained by Stacy for 9 hours.  Also staying with us at the Beech Mt house were my niece Denis, her husband George and 3 of their 5 children, all from Atlanta.

All in all, it was a grand familial day.  Looking forward to the wedding tomorrow!

Today we were back to our normal frenetic activity level.  We did still read the paper and do a couple of puzzles before getting out of bed, but managed to shower, eat breakfast and get dressed and on the road to the Blue Ridge Parkway by 10:30 am!  What a lovely drive.  We wove through quaint and innovative Brevard NC, where I spent 8 weeks of my 10th year of life with a painful lump of homesickness in my throat at Camp Illahee and 2 hours of bliss there with two of my best friends on my 60th birthday.

From Brevard we made our way to the BRP, jumping on at mile marker 406 with the goal of reaching mile marker 320 (Linville Falls) by 3 pm.  We would have made it, I feel sure, had Brad not suffered an attack of the “I’m-too-sleepy-to-drive-another-inch-without-a-cup-of-coffee”s, whereupon we pulled into a sunny overlook and attempted to brew a pot of coffee in the Airstream using battery power from the truck.  We got about 1/4 pot before the truck cried “Uncle!”   Brad gave up on the coffee, ate two candy bars and regained his will to live.  A few miles later, he noted that our gas gauge was dropping like a stone, pulling the 7600 pound trailer straight up the Appalachian Chain.   The range gauge reported that we could make it another 42 miles before choking to a stop, but it was 35 miles to Linville Falls.  What were the chances we would encounter a Flying J truck stop with Cummins Diesel fuel within 7 miles of mile marker 320 on the BRP?  Nil.  So we exited at the next opportunity and blessedly found the magic elixir in the small town of Spruce Pine.  We made it safely to Grandfather Mountain Campground near Boone at about 5 pm, just in time to set up the Airstream, hang out the white fairy lights on the awning and get dinner on the grill and drinks and hors d’oeuvre on the picnic table by 6 pm for our dinner party to start the wedding weekend!

Wonderful dinner with Nancy and Bill (grandparents of the bride).  Looking forward to the festivities to come!

OK, I am embarrassed to even comment on this day, but when one commits to a blog it’s a matter of discipline to keep at it every day.  Last night, I got trounced at canasta and then Brad feigned a headache, exhaustion and some kind of early-onset dread disease when I challenged him to a re-match.  Without warning, a severe thunder storm ensued, lending dramatic effect to his protestations and some rollicking night music.

We slept like babies who didn’t wake up early.  Actually, like babies who woke up at 5:30 and sat in bed drinking coffee, reading the paper and doing jigsaw puzzles until about 9:00.  By 1:30, we had polished off a hearty breakfast, a hearty lunch and one book each.  Brad read Shoot Like a Girl (from the Smithsonian magazine, about a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan) and I read Shattered, a new book about a HRC’s 2016 campaign.

On the bright side, we did venture out in the afternoon.  A walk along the beach (this lake sports a nice sandy shoreline — probably a man-made beach, but it is convincing and aesthetic in a natural sort of way).  Then a drive in the surrounding country side to sightsee and buy some more cooking propane.  (We used up the whole canister last night creating the tinfoil peat bog.)  We admired gorgeous banks of blooming rhododendron and mountain laurel and discovered that we are only about 25 miles east of Cashiers NC, very near Salem SC.

Back at the rig, and an hour or two of reviewing and commenting on a draft proxy statement, it was time for illegal cocktails and the long overdue canasta grudge match, which I won this time!  Now to watch an episode of Foyle’s War and call it  night.  What a nice way to spend a shamefully lazy day!

April 18, 2017

Following tradition, and gearing up for her 112th birthday on May 31, Doris dropped off her tax return at the Post Office today and hit the road for another April Airstream adventure.  This year, we are going on a short jaunt to Boone NC to attend the wedding of my great niece Grace to her beau Andrew.  (Grace is the first of my 25 great nieces/nephews to get married.)  We thought we’d make a week of it by camping first for two nights at Devils Fork State Park on Lake Jocassee in SC, and then heading up to Grandfather Mountain NC, near Boone, for the real deal.  We will cheat by staying for two nights with my sister Nancy and her husband Bill at their lovely home in Beech Mountain, and then circle home by way of Twin Rivers State Park in SC.  Doris is sentimental about many things, but weddings might top the list.  She has talked of nothing else for the last 24 hours!

Our camp site at Devils Fork is breathtaking; secluded in the woods about 20 yards from the rocky lake shoreline and overlooking mountains in the near distance.  The water on this 7500 acre lake on the eastern edge of Sumpter National Forest is pale green, translucent and chilly still in the April air.  Someone is fishing on the shore nearby.  A bass boat speeds past, perhaps chasing a late-breaking tip.  Doris has crawled under the table and curled up for a nap.

Within 15 minutes of leveling the camper and hooking up the essential pipes and hoses, we broke the cardinal (but rarely enforced) rule of state parks by sneaking out a bottle of 12 year old Macallan given to us last night by our neighbor Doug who was, I suspect, enticing us to leave town as soon as possible.  Thus distracted, and over an open fire, we burned our dinner of meant-to-be-steamed aluminum-foil-tented beef and vegetable medly to a blackened crisp.  Nothing goes better with top notch Scotch than food that smells and and tastes like a peat bog.  Authentic!

Tonight we will play canasta, eat sinfully dark chocolate ice cream and try to go easy on the coveted single malt.  It is after all still the first day.

Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. We woke up vaguely nervous about this being Election Day and decided to ignore it as long as possible. We had a quick simple breakfast, posted the blog entry from yesterday and got on the road to Hiawassee by 10 am – estimated to be about a 4-hour drive. We took I-24 to Chattanooga and then headed east towards the tri-corners area (where TN, NC and GA converge).  On US 64 in Tennessee, within the Cherokee National Forest, we happened upon a gorgeous 30-mile or so drive designated as the Ocoee Scenic Byway.  This curvy exhilarating route follows Lake Ocoee for a long way and then the almost dry, extremely rocky bed of the Ocoee River.  Based on the number of whitewater rafting outfitters along the way, it was obvious that this portion of the river is not always dry.  In fact, we came upon the closed-for-today Centennial Olympic whitewater course.  It appears that the rocky bed of the river at this point has been artificially enhanced to create a dramatic water course.  It would be exciting to see when at full stream, with kayakers from around the globe bobbing and diving for dear life in a spray of Tennessee white water.

By the time we emerged from that adventure, the sky had morphed into a smoky miasma along the border of TN and NC.  As we feared, the smoke was collecting from a large number of forest fires in the area, due to historic drought conditions.  Fortunately, the sky is mostly clear where we are now – at the beautiful Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds in Hiawassee. We camped here one weekend last October with some friends from Atlanta, so we knew what to expect.  On this Tuesday in November, the campground is practically empty and we have the site of our choice, right on the lake. Below are some scenes from the campground, reflecting remnants of a Halloween dance in the Rhododendron Gardens here. We are now settled in our Airstream, fixing dinner and hunkering down to watch the election returns on TV.  I’ll close this brief travel blog now, before we know the results and feel compelled to comment on them.  Thanks for coming with us on Doris’ QuikTrip!

Monday, Nov. 7, 2016. This morning we explored Old Stone Fort, which oddly enough is not a fort and is not made of stone. It is old, though. Constructed by prehistoric Native Americans in Coffee County TN during the Middle Woodland period (1,500 to 2,000 years ago) and used for about 500 years as a ceremonial gathering place, it consists of a 50-acre flat grassland plateau surrounded in part by substantial “walls” made of impressive dirt mounds up to 2000 feet in length and in part by steep cliffs falling to the Big and Little Duck Rivers on either side. (Recall that our campsite in this state park is situated similarly on a steep cliff over-looking the Big Duck River. ) The original entrance to the “fort” was designed to face the exact spot on the horizon where the sun rises during the summer solstice. This feature implies that the builders used it for ceremonial activities related to the changing of the seasons. By the time European settlers arrived, it was unclear what it had been used for, which resulted in it being misnamed as a fort. In the 1800s, a portion of the mound walls were destroyed in the building of two industrial mills (paper and pulp) along the waterfalls of the Big Duck River. The picturesque stone foundations of these two mills are all that is left of them today. Fascinating ancient Native American artifacts discovered are on display in a small museum at the site. It was a beautiful and interesting two-mile hike. Doris loved it and scaled up and down the perilous paths like a 90 year old!

After lunch we chilled out around the campsite, reading and such. Late in the afternoon, our friend Marrie arrived from Murfreesboro, bearing wonderful gifts and good cheer. She is quite familiar with Old Stone Fort, having brought generations of grammar school children here on field trips to learn about prehistoric goings on and brush up on their archery skills. Marrie is a math teacher, but she is very nice. (Take that, Commander Rider! Just kidding.)   Marrie’s son, John Lasater, is an award-winning chef in Nashville, famous for Hattie B’s Hot Chicken where lines of clamoring customers consistently circle city blocks. He participated in the Summer Chef Series in Atlanta this August, where he collaborated with Goo Goo Cluster (also headquartered in Nashville), to produce the award-winning “Goo Goo Cluckster” a premium Goo Goo inspired by hot chicken and waffles: made with spicy chili ganache, maple syrup caramel, brown sugar maple syrup nougat, and Jeni’s waffle cone crunch, all covered in dark chocolate! Marrie brought us a Goo Goo Cluckster the approximate size of a hockey puck and packaged like it was ordered from the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. Yay! She also brought us two just-picked heads of romaine lettuce and cabbage from her farmer’s market lady and some of her own homemade salad dressing. We enjoyed catching up with Marrie and sharing stories about everybody in West Point GA and one in Moselle MS (Marrie’s sister, Vivian, who is my dearest friend). After dinner, Marrie drove off with some trepidation into the dark forest that is our home here. Brad escorted her to the entrance gate, and we hope she made it across the narrow bridge and back home. Much love, Marrie, and thanks for coming!

Sunday, Nov. 6, 2016. We did not have far to go today (about 50 miles), so we lingered away the morning and left camp at about 1 pm, right after lunch. I selected a Google route that looked like it would be more scenic than the short, fast way the map suggested. I was right! We started out going through a few small towns (Farmington, Wheel, Shelbyville). On the way, I kept seeing great old houses and barns I wanted to take pictures of but was too slow to capture as we whizzed by. You’ll just have to imagine the immaculate white Victorian house with an old refrigerator on the front porch.

After Shelbyville, we veered even further off the suggested route, where we soon encountered a stampede of highly-manicured, exquisitely-fenced horse farms, probably specializing (Brad says) in breeding and training five-gaited Tennessee Walking Horses and high-stepping Saddlebreds. We came upon the George Dickel distillery and amazingly did not stop for a tour. Judging by the prosperous equine estates lining the small country roads, we were traveling in high cotton. After the picturesque village of Normandy, with some trendyish shops and an old railroad crossing, Google and I directed us down a really tiny winding road called Old Stagecoach Road. As soon as we made the irreversible turn, we got a little nervous, as it turned out to be a four-mile mountainous, curvy, single lane road – ideal for a convertible MG on this beautiful sunny autumn day, but more precarious for a monster pick-up truck hauling a 28-foot, 7600-pound, rolling house with a full refrigerator, queen size bed and all our other worldly goods.  Fortunately we did not meet anything coming the other way. Quick as a flash after emerging from that nail-biting wonderland, we arrived at Old Stone Fort State Park in Manchester TN at about 3 pm.

The campground here is stunning. The sole access road takes you over a 19^th century aquamarine colored steel truss bridge that is about two inches wider than the average 21^st century RV. No problem for us seasoned needle-threaders! The other amazing thing is that on a Sunday night in November, we were the ONLY ones here! We have not seen a soul other than one ranger who came by in a truck to empty the trash can in our loop, which was full of refuge from the busy weekend here. Our camp site is on the edge of steep cliff above the Duck River, with a beautiful view of the woods, the river and the old bridge over which we arrived. Brad managed to maneuver the trailer so that our DirectTV gizmo could find its three satellites, so I am happy on all counts. It was very dark and a tiny bit creepy to be the only people for miles around. But we survived the night just fine and are now cooking breakfast of coffee, biscuits, eggs and bacon.

Starting the chili in the slow-cooker this morning before we head out on foot to explore the features of this interesting archeological park, where will spend two nights. We have company coming for dinner! We convinced our great friend Marrie from Murfreesboro (originally from West Point) to drive down to visit us in our Airstream tonight. Can’t wait to see her!

Saturday Nov 5, 2016.   Well, the Yellow Jackets conspired to let us leave camp at half time. Setting aside that familiar disappointment, we looked forward to seeing the remaining portion of the Natchez Trace and then veering off eastward to our next lighting point. As we were leaving the J. P. Coleman State Park, we discovered that the lake on which we had been camping was actually a very large slough of the Tennessee River, down which oozed companionably, alongside occasional vees of woodland ducks, large container barges on their way to the wider world.

We sniggled our way back over to the Natchez Trace to savor the last 70 miles before our planned exit. Given that it was already mid-afternoon and we had lots of football games queued up on the Sirius Radio, we by-passed the many tempting 20-minute hikes to things that don’t exist (I kid you not, one of the entries in the guidebook of attractions reads as follows: “Mile 367.3 Dogwood Mud Hole. There isn’t anything to “see” here, but this marker helps to remind you of what the Trace was like in periods of heavy rain. An often impassable mud hole lies nearly a mile to the south.”), and elected instead just to enjoy the immaculate unspoiled landscape along the Trace. Good choice. It is fine with a capital F. Eventually, we came to a sign saying that the rest of the Trace was closed and directed all traffic to detour. But not before we got a chance to stop, explore, photograph and inspect the wonderful double-pen rough-hewn long cabin replicating Grinders Stand (which means “inn owned by a person named Mrs. Grinder”), in which Meriwether Lewis mysteriously died, on October 11, 1809 at age 35, of two gunshot wounds to his head and abdomen while sleeping alone in his guest room. Many speculate that it was suicide. Others say it was murder or perhaps a really bad side effect of syphilis or malaria. Whichever way, it was a sad end to an amazing explorer and fascinating man. The monument at his grave nearby is a large broken column, a symbol of a life cut short.

Thus off the Trace for good, we wound around on beautiful rural state roads through farms and small towns, heading generally east towards Columbia TN. Brad commented that people in the area seem to have a real sense of pride in their surroundings. I agree there was a remarkable neatness to the countryside — in a backdrop of beautiful fall colors and decorated with only a modicum of things that a Junior Leaguer would deem prohibitively in poor taste.  Good job!

We arrived at 6ish at Henry Hudson State Park near Chapel Hill, TN. It is a pretty wooded campground with lots of people out camping in the great weather.   A group of four men in their 20s and a dog are camping to our starboard side and having a great time. We had pasta and salad for dinner and watched another episode of Foyle’s War (no TV coverage under this heavy tree canopy).

Sunday morning now and we are off for a hike. (We are having trouble getting strong enough wifi signals to post the photographs to this blog. I will add them retroactively as soon as I can. Come back later to see them!)

Meriwether Lewis Memorial

Grinder’s Stand