With a longing look to the west, east we go.

If it wasn't clear before it is now, the southwest will have to wait.  Heavy sigh.  The last half of our trip suddenly felt a lot shorter than the first half.  So from Nashville we have headed a bit south and then east and then north.  (11/11/10 - I will add more pictures later - extremely slow wifi here.)

But while in Nashville we did the following.  Ate well.  Christine and Michael cooked each night and it was wonderful to sit down to good meals.

Trupin's Nashville establishment.

We went to a grocery store that has a large Asian clientele as well as employees.  There were all kinds of vegetables and mushrooms and beany things but the most impressive was the meat selection.  A huge fish counter with all kinds of fish and other sea creatures.  Nothing is wasted so you can buy the heads separately or on the fish, your choice.  Shark, baby octopus and all kinds of shell fish.  Squid too.

Then in a freezer was poultry.  All in serving sized packages.  Whole duck (and I mean whole - well, no feathers or innards).  Duck feet.  Duck heads.  And gizzards and livers etc.  Beef.  Beef feet, beef innards, beef tail.  Pork.  Everything but the squeal as they say.  Ears nicely packaged up.  About 6 to a package I'd say.  Intestines.  And Pork Bung.  I had to look it up to be sure but I can tell you it's exactly what you imagine.

There were also many canned goods that we saw that we had little idea what they were, large bags of anise and other spices.  It makes the good old home cooking seem pretty bland and I felt embarrassed at all the food we don't use and throw out. 

Nashville has a full sized replica of the Parthenon.  We visited the outside.  It's pretty darn big, right in downtown Nashville.  http://www.nashville.gov/parthenon/  It's kind of neat to see that so much of the architecture in the south and certainly around Nashville is still using the influence of buildings like that.  Practically every house has some sort of columns in the front - tall and white, short and brick, iron and patterned, something that I imagine can trace it's roots back to buildings like the Parthenon.

Detail at the top.

I had the van looked over by a nice man, Sam, in Old Hickory, a few miles from Nashville.  He works on VWs and was happy to look over the van, tighten a leaky fuel line and check the vacuum.  My gauge insists on reading way too high and we seem to have proved that all is okay except the gauge.  But since it's not working I've decided not to pursue vegetable oil any more.  I don't feel comfortable not having the gauge working.  It is a key feature to tell me if things are awry so diesel it is.  He was a delightful guy working out of a two bay garage way in the back of this odd place - a whole warren of sort of over-sized self storage units.  All going whichy way - little one or two guy businesses, mostly vehicular, not very pretty but had all the appearances of guys that know what they're doing.  Piles of various things outside each one.  So we threaded our way through all these to Sam's Imports where we came upon two VW vans and two VW Bugs.  He had recently broken his hip - tripped over his jack handle - so was a bit hobbly still.  But he and his slightly odd assistant checked out the van - had a conversation with the veggie oil mechanic in Waitsfield, charged us $32 and sent us on our way.  We gave him and his assistant syrup and they were thrilled.  Great accents too.  The word 'it' is two syllables.  ee'it.  And it's often the emphasized word in the sentence.

One the way to Old Hickory was The Hermitage - the home of Pres. Andrew Jackson 'Old Hickory'.  We stopped there and spent over 2 hours.  It's very nicely set up - they have head phones and little recorders to hand out.  There are numbers posted on various locations that if you want to you can enter into your recorder and listen to an explanation of what you are seeing.  I usually don't go in for those things much but I thought this was very well done.  Clear, informative and easy to listen to - not hyped up with music or silly sound effects.  Sam and I both got the sets and we went all around the grounds, each at our own pace, and then had a guided tour of the mansion.  They still have over 1000 acres with the estate.

A glimpse of the front through the cedars lining the driveway.

The back of the mansion.  Not bad for the back.

And if you turn around from where I took the above picture you see this, one of the slaves cabins.  Interesting comparison.

Jackson and his wife are buried here.

And his aged, faithful slave, Alfred Jackson, is buried right next to him.  Another interesting comparison.

At the Hermitage we found a flier advertising a show of Impressionist works at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville.  They were from the Musee d'Orsey in Paris.  So one day we went to that exhibit where we saw more nice paintings.  They also had headsets and recorders to carry around and that was very nice too - lots of good information in a digestible quantity.  We also went to the Nashville Public Library where they have an exhibit on the Civil Rights movement.  They had several videos and we watched one about the Freedom Riders and we watched the "I Have a Dream Speech".   We've been thinking about how it is likely that the older black people we see around here experienced segregation.  It wasn't very long ago.  And neither was slavery really.  Andrew Jackson had 100 slaves.  So some of the people we see aren't very many generations removed from that, never mind segregation.

A stack of stone books outside the Nashville library.

We went to a great restaurant twice.  Rotiers.  The best milkshakes so far, Sam says.  Had a great meatloaf with black eyed peas and sweet potato fries.  Excellent regular fries too.   I've learned to ask for hot tea but it never comes with cream, always a slice of lemon, so I've learned to ask for cream too or I just drink it black.  Everyone else is drinking iced tea - amazingly popular. 

On Thursday we left Nashville.  I'm sorry to say we didn't do any music events.  When we drove out of town we went right down a street with all the music venues and it looked a lot easier to have gone to than I'd imagined.  Oh well.

Fall is planting time in these parts.  And everyone is putting in pansies.

At The Hermitage we also picked up a flier for Cumberland Caverns.  So that was our next destination.  We continue to take secondary roads and so many of them seem almost completely untraveled except by us.  We got to see a lot of Tennessee countryside.  It's been very dry and the pastures and fields are completely brown and if there are any animals the brown grass is eaten down to nothing.  Some places are feeding out equally brown round bales.  Lots lots of donkeys and goats.  Can't quite figure out why - if people have one they have the other.  And not just a few goats.  15 or 20.  And several donkeys.  A few mules too.  And people have gardens with greens growing in them - not sure what they are - it's a lot - more than any one family could use.  We've also seen a lot of kudzu.  That horrible, incredibly fast growing alien vine that grows feet in a day.  We'd go around a corner and there would be a little valley completely engulfed in kudzu.  The shrubs and trees and telephone lines look like odd topiary.  We took a wrong turn somewhere but went through a great little valley, up, up, and then down, down, all curvy and pretty bare bones living.  We have hit red soil country.  Just an amazing color.

Rather foreboding looking entrance.

We wound up a narrow two lane road up into the hills to Cumberland Caverns.  It's privately owned, a huge cavern - we were the only ones on our tour.  We had a nice young woman as our guide.  You walk up a short gravel road and there it is.  A door into the rocks.  A few facts.  99% humidity.  56 degrees farenheit always.  Over a mile of walking on the tour.  Less oxygen than outside - did she really say a third less??  We surely felt it climbing some of the steps from the depths.  Over 300 feet underground.  They turn on lights as you go for various rooms and sections.  So you go into a room and she turns on the lights and then click and the lights go black in back of you - a little disconcerting.  She asked us if we wanted to see how dark total darkness was and we did so off went all the lights.  We stood there in total darkness.  Total.  Pretty impressive and I'm very glad we didn't have to try to find our way out.  They've developed the cavern and in the biggest room - something like 200 x 100 feet, they have bluegrass concerts.  And weddings.  A little glum I thought.  (But it can be lit by this enormous chandelier that was rescued from a 'theAYter' in NY by the owner many years ago.) And they have groups come and spend the night.  No thank you.  When you get to the end of the trail - the half way point because you have to go back - they give you a religious themed light show.  So Sam and I sat there listening to the story of creation 300 some odd feet below ground with stalagmites and stalactites a gazillion years old being back lit by flashing colored lights.  Some of the parts of the cave are still 'alive' and dripping and growing, some are 'dead' - water sources have changed and there is no longer the moisture coming to keep the formations growing.   The cavern was originally mined for minerals to make salt peter.  No bats.  Probably they got sick of bluegrass.

The best we could do in a huge dark space where there is nothing for the light to reflect off.

While the soil looks thin and like it couldn't support much our guide told us that the soil is very fertile and a lot of things can be grown in that area.  We had seen acres and acres of nursery stock growing and I had wondered how it was possible.

An attempt at the red soil - we saw much more in construction places but were always driving too fast.

Our next night was spent in a town called Soddy-Daisy.  We went there purely for the name.  I saw it on the map - it had a campground with a description of the beautiful sparkling Soddy Lake.  And Soddy-Daisy is right in between Soddy and Daisy.  The camp ground's name was Possum Creek.  They had a dog, a cross between a black lab and a dachshund.  Short legged and black.  Very funny.  Sadly Soddy-Daisy is one of those towns that strip development has ruined.  Nothing but fast food places.  And churches.  I tried to keep count.  I would say there was easily one every half mile.  75% Baptist.  We went to a lovely little family restaurant - all you can eat for a fixed price.  I had some good kind of bbq beef, some odd flat bean thing and Sam had some really terrible mashed potatoes.  Way over salted and an odd texture.  I think they were in their former potato form many processes ago.


Soddy-Daisy is just north of Chattanooga.  Which brought up the song about the Chattanooga Choo Choo till I thought I'd lose my mind.  But since Chattanooga is on the Georgia and Alabama border we thought we'd just do a day of meandering/driving and put our feet in a few states.  We took the scenic tour around that town with the song along the Tennessee River.  By the way, we had crossed into eastern time just a little west of Soddy-Daisy - but as we went a little west again we went back into central time.  Then over the border we went into Alabama, still in central time.  We spent about 45 minutes in Alabama so can't really say too much about it only we drove long enough to see a wishing well or two.  They don't seem to have road names, they are all a route number.  So you drive along and think, oh good, here comes a road sign that will tell me what route I'm on and there's this nice official looking sign, highway such and such and it's a little dirt dead end road with grass growing up the middle.  We stopped at a roadside stand a got some fruit and things - turns out the lady had visited Vermont and been to Montpelier.  Just around the corner we left Alabama and drove into Georgia.

Alabama

Georgia looks a fair amount like Alabama but we lost that hour we'd gained in the morning and were back on eastern time.  Down, down from the height of land we'd been in in Alabama we went to just south of Chatanooga.  Fueled up - and we are in bp (British Petrolium) and Hess gas station land - and headed for the hills.  Partly we went south to avoid the cold and wet weather that was predicted for the mountains.  But it's very hilly in that part of Georgia - not really what comes to mind when you think of that state.  We went to the Chicamauga Battlefield.  http://www.nps.gov/chch/index.htm  It was only mildly interesting in part because so much of the Civil War history is really too detailed for the average tourist.  We followed a driving tour of the battlefield and each skirmish - if that's the right word - is posted on a large metal sign.  It lists the exact movements of the soldiers, how many were hurt, how many were killed, how many were lost, how many horses killed, etc.  Sometimes it's 1 or 3 or 6.  And it's all important and part of a much larger important thing and certainly life shattering for those involved and the families but it can bog one down.  We tried to imagine how it felt to run into a battle with the sounds and smells and fear.  How the horses might have sounded when they were shot, how wounded men sounded.  How decomposing bodies of all kinds smelled.  How bad the food probably was.  How it was so hard to know what was going on other than right in front of you since messengers on foot and horseback were the way things were communicated.  And to think all that went on right on the ground we were on.  And how much blood had seeped into that soil.  And how many artifacts were still under the surface.  And how the loss of life there transformed so many lives then and to come.

We left the battlefield and drove on into the mountains, winding steep roads with not nearly enough guardrails to suit Sam as he sat on the side of the van where he could peer over the edge.  We even got high enough to see some maples but I don't know what kind.  We found a campground in Hiawassee, GA, there's a huge funny shaped lake and it's quite a resort area.  We were at about 1950 feet in elevation and it was clear it was going to be cold.  In the morning we had ice on the inside of our windows and there were little snow pellets on the picnic table outside.  24 degrees overnight.  It was a gorgeous, crisp and clear day and so we headed for Brasstown Bald, the highest mountain in GA, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just a few miles away.  There is an access road that goes nearly to the top and then you hike for about 20 minutes to the top.  Or take a shuttle.  We hiked.  But it had snowed over night and it was white up on top!  Our furthest south point was the coldest!  It was beautiful and Sam got to throw snowballs and make a tiny snowman.  The woods was so much fun to see with snow - native Rhododendrons and Mtn. Laurel with snow on the leaves.  Something we don't see much of.  The mountain is 4784 feet above sea level.  Higher than Mt. Mansfield at 4395 feet.

Hairpin turn coming up.

The view to the north looking over North Carolina - we could see as far as SC and TN too.

To the south.  They had a nice visitors center on top - nice displays.  We hiked from the parking lot.

We drove across the top of Georgia - lots of woods, no agriculture, a good assortment of wishing wells.  Pretty run down looking places mostly.  And then, we were in South Carolina!  We spent the night at Kings Mountain State Park.  We seem to get to our destinations just as it starts to get hard to see road signs.  We had some trouble finding it - I bought a better road map - and we headed off into the woods (first we had to dip into North Carolina - then back into South Carolina) and the road got longer and the woods darker and deeper and it sure seemed like we were driving into the depths of nothing.  I was glad we were like a turtle with our house on our back.  We kept seeing mildly hopeful signs and finally saw a campground sign and turned to go down another long, narrower, very dark road.  And what did we find at the end - a huge wooded campground - well over 100 sites - mostly full - lights from campfires all around - a haze of smoke wafting through the woods - campers, tents, rvs - you name it - just a hopping place.  We had to choose our own location from an outdoor map and we landed in slot 107 - a little side hilly but a place to stop and rest and near a bathroom too!  No cell service or wifi though and by morning the relief of our off level site had worn thin.  Overnight we lost an hour to the time change so were basically back on central time.  But as we move east darkness falls earlier and earlier so we feel pretty much confused about the time.  Morning is equally weird.  

Kings Mountain Park

On to North Carolina!  We stopped at a flea market.  A crazy place - a regular site - permanent tables set up - folks selling old stuff, new stuff, half broken stuff - left overs from stores going out of business - socks - toothpaste - knives - used videos - food - it was amazing.  And the accents.  And the wheeling and dealing.  One pretty worn out looking woman asking a man how much something was - $3.  I ain't got that kind of money!  she said - Well darlin', much will you give me?  I'll give you $2 she says.  I don't know if he took it or not.  Probably.  Add your own imaginary southern accent.  Women hollering to their husbands sitting in the truck - how much less you gonna take for such and such?  We bought 9 very nice older hotwheels cars.

We drove pretty solidly for a couple of days to get to the coast and the outer banks.  We spent one more night inland, in Selma.  A lovely campground, best bathroom yet, but only about 250 feet from I-95.  There are also several train tracks right near by and evidently huge, long trains were going by because we'd hear the whistle in the distance, then the rumble, then the whistle right nearby and the rumble would go on and on and on and we'd hear the whistle way in the distance again while we were still hearing the rumble nearby.  We've heard trains from almost every campground.  I had thought trains were a thing of the past in this country.   One train snaking along the Tennessee River was 157 cars long with 2 engines.  If each car averages around 50 feet that's a long train.  Over a mile long.

The interior of NC was a little dull I have to say - plus we were sticking to the road although the secondary roads.  We did finally get to some agricultural land where we saw more soybeans, still waiting to be harvested, and finally some fields of cotton still in the fields.  I looked in vain for someone harvesting (surely not the right word) cotton but didn't see anyone.  And yes, NC does have wishing wells too.