May 1, 2015 - Horse Camp

Friday, May 01, 2015 – Big Creek

Andy reported that the temperature was 47 degrees when he got up. It had warmed up to 48 by the time I got up.

At 0830, we heard a ranger on the radio calling dispatch to say that he saw a car driving very fast and passing on the winding mountain road, but he could not go after him because he was giving a ticket to a guy who was doing 65 in a 35 mile per hour zone. Are they crazy?  Of course they are! There are no wide, straight roads in the park. About eight minutes later another ranger pulled Sean Christian over for speeding again.

We heard several road crew people talking about putting “ice melt” on the roads and sidewalks at Clingman’s Dome. Then they decided it was safe to open the road.

We walked around the campground early this morning. I took this picture from the campground road. I decided that I should write a hot book about the park and call it Fifty Shades of Green.

We heard 118 calling dispatch to say that he was in the Greenbrier area and could hear a lot of gun fire. He knew he was near the park perimeter, but could not determine whether the gun fire was in the park or not. Dispatch called 422, Ranger Heath, to check it out. Some time later, we heard Ranger Heath report back that the gunfire was a church group having target practice outside the park.

I made an excellent stir-fry with the leftover pork loin from yesterday. I tried a trick someone had shared on Facebook. It was called Kitchen Hacks. The one I used was for peeling garlic. I put the whole bulb (well, what was left of it) in a jar and shook it hard for a minute or two. When I opened the jar, all the cloves were loose and peeled. Why didn’t I learn that trick 40 years ago?

Boss Larry stopped in to greet us and asked if we needed anything. It was good to see him again, but I forgot to take his picture. Larry and Kristen took a month-long trip to Australia and New Zealand . He said that when he was a marine in Cambodia, we was scheduled to go to Australia for R&R, but they sent him back to the U.S. instead. He told the sergeant that he didn’t want to go home, he wanted to go to Australia. So 45 years later, he finally did it. Uncle Sam did not pay for it though.

Maintenance Junior came over here from Cosby to check Big Creek on Spence’s day off. He stopped to chat with us for a few minutes. We talked about the improvements that he and Spence have made here since last year. Big Creek is looking good. Junior said he has worked in the park for 16 years and has never seen the likes of these little brown grasshoppers. He wasn’t exaggerating either; he said there are zillions of them. I forgot to take of picture of Junior too.

I decided to make some cookies in the afternoon and they were a complete culinary disaster. I don’t know what I did wrong except put the dough too close together. I spread out into very thin cookies and melded together. They were chocolate chip, pecan, and raisin. It was a big mess, but they tasted delicious. I put the last two batches in a pan and baked them as bars. We haven’t cut those up yet.

The tent campground had two people in each of six sites. We enjoyed walking around and chatting with everyone. One couple from San Francisco had come to the motorhome earlier looking for the campground. They had just finished hiking the Benton MacKaye Trail from the beginning in Georgia. Last year they had canoed the entire length of the Mississippi River. That’s a bit over 2,000 miles. The two men in Site 10 had a propane camp stove I had never seen before. It had two burners on top and a two-shelf oven beneath. He said he calls it his Easy Bake Oven.

I took these pictures of Big Creek from the bridge. This one is downstream.

This one is upstream.

There were two women in the horse camp with two horses. One of them is towing  a 32-foot RV/horse trailer and she was talking about how hard it was to cross the one-lane bridge. I agreed and said the big boulder is the worst part. Their two horses watched us coming from way up the trail.

I don’t remember the fence around the horse water trough.

When I inspected it closely, I realized that it is creek water running through it. I couldn’t follow the pipe, but think the faucet is tapped into the creek up the hill. The pipe at the center back pours the water back into the creek, which can be seen in the background through the fence. This creek runs into Big Creek.

I have not been able to get on line for two days. The MiFi is blinking magenta and green, which is not normal. We are going to take it into the Verizon store in Newport to get it looked at. It is frustrating as I had intended to post this stuff on my Big Creek blog.