Indulge Me With Another Rant

Thursday, 19 April

I just don’t get it.  Honestly, I’ve racked my brain trying to understand why people feel the need to leave their mark by defacing things, but I still don’t get it.

From the “call me for a good time” phone numbers on the doors and walls of public toilets … to the “Jack ♥ Jill” professions of love carved into trees … to the “John Was Here” on whatever date scribblings on whatever surface is available … I just don’t get any of them.

We’ve been traveling for over 30 years now, and we’ve seen graffiti everywhere we’ve gone; in every city and country and continent we’ve visited.  Well, OK; we didn’t see any in Antarctica, but that’s a rare exception.

Not once have we been tempted to leave our mark in such an ugly way.  In fact, we try to make sure that we leave no more than our footprints behind … ever.  Is there some joy in defacing things that we’re missing out on?  Are we going to be scarred for life because we’ve neglected to write our names on a wall somewhere?  If so; then so be it.  We can live without that kind of “ugly” joy.

We came across this Bob Was Here sign the first day that we ventured into the park.  It was on the trail behind the John Oliver Place.  There were several others scattered around the park as well.  You can read the words for yourself (click for a bigger version if necessary).

How sad it is that we even need such signs.  Not that they seem to be doing much good; we saw graffiti on the walls of every heritage building we went into — some as new as 2010.  There were probably newer ones, but I was so disgusted that I turned away, helpless to do anything about it.

Just some of the graffiti we saw at the Gregg-Cable House and the Lawson Place.

And then there was the cross vine hanging down over the Abrams Falls Trail on the way to the falls; gone by the time we trekked back two hours later.  Needless destruction of another sort.  But I’ll limit my rant to one topic and save that one for a later time.  Unfortunately, we’re bound to encounter more of both as we continue to travel.

Cades Cove Heritage Sites (Part III)

Thursday, 19 April

After leaving the Cable Mill Area (post here), we headed off to explore the last of the heritage sites along the top of the Cades Cove Loop.  Even though there was more traffic by the time we got to these sites, we noticed that few people stopped to check them out.  In fact, most just rolled their vehicles to a stop, took a photo, and moved on.  Not complaining; we enjoyed having these places to ourselves — especially the Carter Shields Cabin, where later in the day we enjoyed a private picnic.

This post covers sites 15, 16, and 17 on the map scanned from the auto tour booklet.

The Dan Lawson Place (#15 on the map) was our first stop.  It is believed that he built the house around 1856 on land he purchased from Peter Cable, his father-in-law.  Originally a log house, it was altered by the addition of sawed lumber and expanded over time.

The Dan Lawson Place as seen from outside the snake rail fence.

This property has some features that are considered unusual for that time and place — a brick chimney and a granary (wheat wasn’t grown in the area; and corn was kept in cribs).  I suppose one might think of them of symbols of the wealth Lawson acquired over the years.  The quality of the interior construction, which is said to be one of the better ones in the park, also speaks to his wealth, and perhaps to the carpentry skills of his father-in-law, who helped Lawson with the construction.

Clockwise from top left: View from the front porch; the inside faces of the logs in
the main room are hewn smooth with an adze; the granary; the view from the
property; the lumber siding on the addition to the original log cabin.

From left to right: the smokehouse; the granary; and the house.

The next property, the Tipton Place (#16 on the map), has a two-story house built after the Civil War by Hamp Tipton, a veteran of the war.  For some reason, I didn’t go inside, so I can’t be sure if it was a log cabin converted to a framed house.  From the outside it certainly looked like the latter.  In 1878, the house was rented to a newcomer who was strongly embraced by the community — a blacksmith (also a carpenter and coffin maker) whose skills supplied “a long needed want.”  He added a blacksmith shop onto the back of the house.

The Tipton house, as well as the smokehouse (far left) ,and the corn crib and
cantilever barn (replica) across the road.

McCauley added the blacksmith shop to the house.  Behind the structure is an open shed called an apiary or “bee gum stand.”  It sheltered the bee hives from the elements, but not from the bears.

The double pen corn crib is larger than the average size seen on pioneer farms.

Built in 1968, this replica cantilever barn is similar to the one that once stood here.

In all honesty, by the time we arrived at the Carter Shields Cabin, we were a bit ‘heritaged out’.  That our tummies were starting to grumble probably had something to do with our lack of interest as well.  So, we made a quick stop, but didn’t explore the cabin where George Washington “Carter” Shields, a veteran crippled in the Battle of Shiloh, lived for 11 years (1910-1921).

From all accounts, this site is especially lovely when the dogwoods are blooming.

Oddly enough, after taking the Sparks Lane shortcut from here to hike to another heritage site for a picnic lunch, we changed our plans and returned to this peaceful spot for our midday repast (post here).  By then, the cyclist I mentioned in the linked post was camped out behind the cabin.  Not wanting to disturb him, we never did go back to the cabin to explore it.

I have one more thing to add about our visit to the heritage sites, but I don’t want to end on a negative note, so I’ll post my rant separately.  Hint: it doesn’t have to do with wildlife.

Cades Cove Heritage Sites (Part II): Cable Mill Area

Thursday, 19 April

I mentioned before that the Cades Cove Loop is open to one-way traffic only.  What that means is that if you dally along the way, the heritage sites along the top half of the loop are over-crowded by the time you get to them.  So, we devised a plan to explore the sites along the bottom of the loop in a piece-meal fashion the first couple of days (post here), and make a special trip for the rest on another day when we’d drive pretty much straight through.  Of course, that meant being at the gate to the loop at sunrise to be amongst the first on the road, but it paid off.  We reached the Cable Mill Area just before 8:00a, and had the site entirely to ourselves for the first hour we were there.

Cades Cove Map scanned from the Auto Tour booklet; the Cable Mill area, which is
the focus of this post, is circled in blue.

The Cable Mill Historic Area is probably the most visited section of the loop.  This is partly because there is a visitor center here.  Mostly, however, it’s because in this complex one finds a gristmill that is original to the area and a collection of buildings that were brought here from other parts of the park and reassembled to create a microcosm of the early 1800s pioneer culture that the NPS aims to preserve.

Detail drawing of the Cable Mill Historic Area.
[scanned from the cades cove auto tour booklet]

After looking through my photos of this area, I found that I liked them best in B&W.  Partially, because the sunlight streaming through the heavy canopy created very contrasty light conditions for photos; and partially because this treatment seemed to fit the mood of the area better.  So here we go — a virtual trip in B&W …

Welcome to the Cable Mill Historic Area!

If there was one essential staple in the life of early pioneers, it was corn.  It was a dependable grain, and it fed not just people, but livestock as well.  And it could also be used to make a potent beverage!  Though single family tub mills were numerous in the Smokies, they weren’t very efficient, grinding no more than a bushel of corn a day.  Enterprising farmers would sometimes build a mill powered by a waterwheel and charge other families for grinding their corn.  Though the form of payment was sometimes cash, more often it was a portion of the ground flour or meal.  Most of the mill owners were farmers, and milling was a part time occupation for them.  The mill would be open during specific hours/days, and if a customer arrived outside those hours, they could ring a bell to summon the miller.

(John Cable used the waterwheel to also power a sawmill, which was instrumental in the change from building log homes to building lumber and frame homes.)

Built in 1868, Cable Mill was one of the few mills that served the 700 residents of Cades Cove.

Cable Mill doesn’t open to the public until 9:00a, but Miller Bobby was kind enough to chat with us as he prepared the mill for its daily operation.  As he walked down to the wheel to grease the gears, he explained that a bear had figured out how to remove the gear cover so that it could lick off the fat.  “Yesterday, the rangers used mechanical grease to discourage the bear; we’ll see if he comes back tonight,” he told us.  Then, slathering on a thick layer of animal fat, which is what millers of old would have used to grease the gears, he replaced the cover the bear had removed.  I can just picture the bear’s reaction to getting a mouthful of less-than yummy mechanical grease.

Miller Bobby graciously poses for a photo op.

Leading us inside, Miller Bobby then gave us a sneak peek into the rest of the operation.  We watched as he meticulously checked gears, made sure the hoop around the grinding stones was set right, and put some corn in the hopper to do a test run of the grinding stones.  “Sometimes, I have to prod it a little,” he said, as he gave the gear shaft under the platform a gentle shove with a stick.  And sure enough, a trickle of corn meal started coming down the chute soon after.

Miller Bobby gets the mill ready for visitors.

Thanking Miller Bobby, we set out to explore the rest of the buildings in the complex, which is surrounded by a snake rail fence.  Speaking of those slithery creatures, there was a sign near the entrance warning visitors that snakes are active around the buildings.  You can be sure that I was extra cautious about where I went and what I did, and there was no rolling around on the ground like I often do when I’m photographing things of interest :-)

Our first stop after the mill was the Gregg-Cable House; it’s one of the structures brought here from elsewhere in the park.  Constructed in 1879 from lumber that Leason Gregg purchased from John Cable’s sawmill, the house is named for its original builder and its subsequent owner — “Aunt” Becky Cable, daughter of John Cable.  By all accounts, she was a remarkable woman, helping her brother manage his store, opening her house to family boarders, farming her land, and caring for her brother’s orphaned children.  She lived in the house until she died in 1940 at the age of 96.

The Gregg-Cable House may well have been the first framed house in Cades Cove.

After living in log cabins, a framed house such as this one was what most people aspired to build.  Those who couldn’t afford to build a framed home put up siding to hide the exterior of their log homes.

There were no furnishings to give visitors a sense of what the interior might have
Looked like back in the pioneer days.  (Center top image is a Historic photo of aunt Becky.)

Behind the house we found two more buildings that were reassembled here — the corn crib and the barn.  The corn crib was an essential structure on every mountain farm.  After the corn was harvested from the field, the unshucked cobs were dumped into this crib and left to air-dry so that the corn could later be ground into meal or used as chicken/livestock feed.

The slats were positioned with enough open space between them to provide
air circulation, but still keep the corn cobs from falling out.

The barn behind the house is one of two in this complex.  In fact, farms of the time — especially if more than one generation lived on them — often had more than one barn.

The drive-through design provided a protected place for farm equipment and animals.

Out in front of the house, we found two structures that were vaguely familiar.  One looked like a mill of sorts and the other looked to be a kiln or furnace of some kind.  It turns out that we were on the right track.  Miller Bobby, who was walking nearby, explained that the horse-driven mill was used to crush de-leafed cane stalks, and the resulting juice was then boiled down in the furnace to make sorghum molasses, a popular sweetener.

Sorghum mill and furnace; the two vertical rollers in the top section of the mill crushed the stalks of cane, and the juice was collected below.

Our next stop was the cantilever barn.  The design, which originated in Europe, allowed the second story of such barns to be larger than the base.  The loft was used to store hay and fodder, and the eaves afforded the animals, which were usually roaming about outside, a protective overhang when they wanted to get out of the rain or sun.  The eaves also sheltered any farm implements that were placed under them.

Logs extending out from the top of the cribs on either side support the second story.

Images from the cantilever barn show the pass-thru between the two cribs and some
of the farm implements placed under the eaves for protection from the elements.

Iron was an essential material in pioneer life.  As such, a blacksmith shop was very important to these mountain communities.  The blacksmith not only forged the tools needed on the farms, he made decorative items such as candlesticks as well.  He was often the one who shod the mules and horses, and repaired wheels.

Our last stop before leaving the complex was at the blacksmith shop, which is not an original structure; it was constructed as an example of a typical shop of the pioneer times.

The replica blacksmith shop and a surprise find — a wild hog trap.

Since it was very dark inside the blacksmith shop, and we could barely make out any of the details of what was stored there, we focused on the wild hog trap instead.  Wild hogs are considered “invaders to the circle of life” here.  They’re not endemic to the area.  European wild hogs were introduced into a private hunting preserve in North Carolina in 1912.  As one might expect, some of them escaped.  Prolific breeders that they are, they quickly formed wild populations throughout the GSMNP.

So what, one might ask; there are other wildlife populations in the park.  Well, the problem is that they are destructive to the natural ecosystem and they compete with native species for food.  Hence … the traps.  They are part of the feral hog management program implemented by the NPS to keep the non-native hog population in check and reduce the damage they cause.

The wild hog trap and information about why feral hogs are unwelcome in the park.

Having spent nearly 2½ hours in the Cable Mill area, it was time to move on to the remaining heritage sites on the loop, but that’s for part III of my missive.

The Drive That Wasn’t Meant to Be

Wednesday, 18 April

We went to bed last night to a downpour.  We woke up to a downpour.  And did it ever pour!  It was the kind of rain that overpowered the sound of Little River rushing over rocks and boulders.  It rained, and it rained, and it rained.  Finally, around 1:00p, it started to let up a bit.  So, we considered our options.  We could go to the Heritage Center; but the ongoing drizzle and possibly soggy ground was a deterrent.  We could stay at home; but we wanted to get out for some fresh air and a change of scenery.  We could go for a drive.  Perfect, see some sights in the park and stay dry in the process.

At the Cades Cove/Gatlinburg split a short distance inside the Townsend entrance to the park, we turned left to head towards Gatlinburg.  We didn’t know if we’d make it all the way there, but we wanted to see what we could uncover on Scenic Highway 73, which runs alongside Little River.  Of course, I couldn’t resist a couple of river shots.

After all that rain, there’s no lack of water flowing downriver.

As beautiful as the flow of the water is, it is endangering the trees along the riverbed by exposing their roots and eroding the soil that is supporting them.

Our next stop was at The Sinks, which is better described as a big cascade rather than a waterfall.  Regardless of what you call them, the turbulent waters rushing down into the gorge are very dangerous.  The currents are strong enough to trap victims underwater and keep them there.  I saw some photos of kayakers running the chute; all I can say is that they must be nuts to attempt something so obviously risky.  We didn’t see anyone jumping into the water from the nearby cliffs, nor was anyone wading, but it’s apparently not unknown for people to do both despite the warning sign posted in the parking lot.  People have drowned here; most recently a 17-year old girl last summer.  She was wading when she slipped and fell into the water.  Other visitors tried to save her by forming a human chain, but their efforts were to no avail.

A path hidden by the trees rewards us with this view.

Despite the ongoing drizzle, we find a dry spot for a photo op.

Mui has a request for proposals (RFP) out for events he’s organizing in May.  When we returned to the car, he had a message on his Blackberry that there were 43 questions from vendors interested in bidding for the job waiting to be answered.  We could have continued with our plans for the afternoon and he could have done his work the next morning, but it seemed like a better plan for him to get the job out of the way on a drizzly afternoon.

Thus we set off back to the campground, almost missing a great photo op along the way.  Mui’s eagle eye, however, caught a tiny glimpse of a treasure hidden by heavy brush on the far side of the river.  When I questioned why he had pulled off the road, all he would tell me was to take my big lens and the tripod, and walk back a few feet.  The big lens immediately made me think that he’d seen some wildlife, but it turns out that he’d seen a waterfall.  Yes, more flowing water pictures follow :-)

The picture on the left shows what caught Mui’s eye as we whizzed by at 30 mph.

At full zoom I can get only two of the cascades that make up Meigs Falls.
visitors can hike to many of the falls in the gsmnp; this one can only be seen from the road.
[though I’m partial to the B&W treatment, I couldn’t decide between the two photos,
so you get to see both.]

After this last stop, we drove back to the campground without dallying further.  Despite the light rain, we settled ourselves at the picnic table on the covered deck with cups of hot chocolate and our laptops.  While Mui did his work, I processed photos and tried to catch up on my reading — a lost cause, I’m afraid.

All in all, cutting our outing short was the right decision.  If the local forecast is to be believed, we have a really great day ahead of us to finish exploring the heritage sites on the Cades Cove Loop.

(By the way, for those interested, gas for the toad in Townsend today was $3.69/gallon.)

We Start the Year …

Sunday, 1 January

… as we intend to finish it next December 31 — with a fun outing.

When we were living in Salt Lake City, we started a tradition of going on a New Year’s Day outing.  It didn’t matter if it was short, or long.  It didn’t matter if it was near, or far.  It didn’t matter if it was a walk, a hike, or a drive.  As long as we were out and about, that’s all that mattered.  The idea was that if we started the year off right by doing something outside the house, the rest of the year would follow suit with travel a-plenty.

I have to admit that we’ve seldom had as nice a day as we did today for our traditional outing.  It was comfortably warm, with the temps in the mid-50F (13C) range when we left the house just before noon to head to Great Falls Park.  Though it was a bit cooler than yesterday, we had plenty of blue skies and sunshine for most of our two hours in the park.

Great Falls Park overlooks the Potomac River.  Here, the river tumbles over jagged rocks, gathering speed as it forces itself through the narrow Mather Gorge.  It’s not often that we come here at mid-day, but we wanted to give the day a chance to warm up so we could enjoy our stroll.  And our picnic.  Yes; as we did yesterday, we packed a simple lunch — PB&J sandwiches and grapes — to enjoy at one of the many picnic tables near the visitor center.

Simple food on a beautiful, un-winterlike first day of the year.

After our al fresco meal, we joined the throngs of visitors checking out the falls from the three overlooks.  We’re not used to sharing the sights and sounds of Great Falls with crowds as we’re usually at the park in the wee hours of the morning, well before the gates are even open.  But share them we did for a little while. 

At Overlook #1 we’re closest to the falls.

A slightly different perspective, but still from Overlook #1.

overlook #2 (top right) offers a view of most of the falls.

The best view of the falls is from overlook #3.

One thing we found surprising today was the volume of water roiling and tumbling, capped with white froth.  It’s been a fairly dry winter thus far, so we were expecting a rather puny showing, but the falls delivered on the promise of spectacular views.  Of course, the water level was nothing compared to how much the river can rise.

This pole shows the high water marks from past floods.
To give you perspective, I'm 5'2" (~1.57m)

proof that the river can wreak havoc in the park; this photo is from the 1996 flood.

As the clouds moved in to obscure the blue skies and sunshine, we headed away from the overlooks to walk the Ridge Trail.  Here too we paid the price of our mid-day visit; we actually had company on the unpaved trail that is usually deserted in the early morning.  In places, it’s more of a rock scramble than a walk, which can be a deterrent as well.  There are no views of the falls, but if you’re a little daring you can catch glimpses of Mather Gorge and the Potomac.  Of course, there is a difference between being daring and being stupid; we maintained a safe distance from the edge, though in some of the photos it may not seem so.

By the time we returned to the car, the skies were really heavy with clouds portending rain.  You could say that the front that will be bringing the forecasted winter chill on Tuesday was sending a warning shot across our bow.  No problem; seeing as how we were heading home, we didn’t mind the light rain that accompanied our departure from the park.

You might have noticed all the photos of Mui and me in this post — yeah, I know; hard to miss.  As I noted in a previous post, I’ve been scanning our pre-digital-era photos for several weeks now.  In looking at them, we were struck by how many of those photos included one or both of us in them.  Well, I guess we were inspired :-)