May 24, 2015 - Spence's Cherries

Sunday, May 24, 2015

It was another busy holiday weekend kind of day in Big Creek. The tent campground stayed full. As soon as two sites were vacated, they were occupied again. We had put a man and his two daughters in the group site last night and told them to get up to the campground early to get a site there. They didn’t get up there until after 0900 and it looked as though they were not going to get a site until the couple in Site 6 began to pack up.

Spence stopped by for a cup of coffee and brought me a bucket of sour cherries from the trees in his yard. I began to pit them in the morning, but didn’t finish until afternoon.

Here was another first in the parking lot. The man at the table had set out all the fixin’s for lunch and  four others were standing around waiting to prepare their lunches. The name on the side of the van was “WildlandTrekking.com”.

The nurse in Site 8 said that she went down to the Pigeon River to watch the rafters launch and start downstream. The constable told her that 3,500 rafters went down the river yesterday.

The party of six in the horse campground was packing up to leave for Cataloochee this morning. Actually, the women had already left on their horses. The men were tasked with cleaning up and packing up. Then, they would take their trailers and horses to the Cataloochee campground. The men’s horses were in the stalls. Two of them were standing there peaceably, but the one in the back was raising a ruckus. One of the men told us that he was unhappy because his girlfriend had left.

Andy and Spence both spent a large part of the day in the parking lot directing visitors to park in the horse camp day-use lot. Some still parked illegally. One couple had a small dog with them and Andy told them we would dog-sit while the family hiked. They arrived at our site and I fell in love. She is a designer dog, half poodle and half something else. I really don’t know my dogs. She is still a puppy and is all wiggle and lick. Her name is Abbey.

She yipped for a while after her family left, but then calmed down. She was busy watching down the horse trail and up to the road whenever there were people or vehicle sounds, looking for them to return. Andy took at chair out to the mossy lawn to be with her and she jumped up in his lap.

A teenage girl came up the hill through the forest and said she could not find her family. She had no idea where they had parked. Spence took her on his Gator to the horse-camp day-use lot to find them.

It was late in the afternoon before I got the cherries prepared. There was not enough for a pie, so I planned on a tart. Part way through prep, I simply dumped the cherries into a pie plate and spooned my slightly wet dough on top. I did not use a recipe for the cherries or the crust so I was a bit apprehensive about how it would turn out. I pulled it out of the oven and walked up to the parking lot to tell Andy and Spence it was done. Ranger Heath was in the parking lot. How did he know?

Ranger Chase was with him and he wrote some parking tickets. In both cases, the people parked right in front of the No Parking signs.

I suppose that if you are a car length away from the No Parking sign, it doesn’t count.

When they were finished with the tickets, all four men came to our site for my cherry concoction. It was delicious.

These leaves are above the campground road. I think they are walnut, but he could surely be something else.

The couple in Site 7 had put a huge webbed strap up between two trees. I asked them what it was and the guy told me it is a Slack Line and demonstrated it.

She sat on one end of the strap to stiffen it up a bit and make it easier to do. He told us that she is more skilled than he is. Andy and I joked that we could not walk that strap on the ground.

On the radio

Just before noon, someone reported that there was a two-mile traffic backup on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. Someone had parked a car partially in the road and cars could not get by. Someone said to close the gate so that no more cars could enter and then see if some of the ones stuck could turn around and come back out. The reporting voice said that a large man was attempting to pick up the car enough to move it off the road.

The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is an extremely narrow, one-way, paved trail through a mountainside forest. There are old cabins, waterfalls, and plants. There are a few spots for parking and maybe some pull-offs, but very little opportunity to pass the car in front of you. I have no idea how long it took to clear up that mess.

A ranger called in a vehicle license for some people who had a passenger riding on the bumper of a Chevy Blazer. I assume the person was standing on the back bumper and holding on to the top of the vehicle.

BOLO for a Honda that had been involved in a minor motor vehicle accident.

The Smokemont host called the Cataloochee host to ask if they would look for a child’s scooter that a family had left behind. Later, the Cataloochee host called to say they had found the scooter if they wanted to come back and claim it. Those two campgrounds are 43 miles apart.

A large white pickup truck (3500) on the loop road was disabled. The owner said it weighs 8,000 pounds and was worried that a regular tow truck would be inadequate and he wanted a large tow truck. Dispatch asked if it had “dually” back wheels, but the answer was no. I would think the tow company would know what kind of tow truck to bring for any vehicle.

There was a bear in the Chimneys picnic area that took food from a picnic table. The reporting party said he ran him off into the woods, but he would come back. The wildlife person responding said he was on his way with a trap.

Another bear was just past the Methodist Church in Cades Cove.

Yet another bear was in the stables at Cades Cove. It left before the wildlife people could get there to chase it away.

There was a two-motorcycle accident near Look Rock. The ranger called it in as an emergency and asked for EMS. He said there were three people who would need an ambulance. He called back and asked for Life Star, the helicopter ambulance.

Wildlife specialists, 355 and 344, were planning to meet somewhere and net bats.

In the evening, a ranger reported that he was following a motorcycle going at a high rate of speed. We could hear his siren wailing. He said the biker would not stop and that he was passing multiple cars. The bike was headed north on US 441 from Cherokee. Other rangers chimed in and would place themselves in position to pursue the motorcycle. One blocked the road with his car, but the biker swerved and went around it. Then the biker made a U-turn and headed back to Cherokee. Dispatch called Cherokee police to be at that end of the park, and then set the radios so the Cherokee police could hear the park rangers. Other rangers were closing gates to prevent the motorcycle from driving on side roads. Four Cherokee units reached Smokemont, but had not seen the motorcycle. Then they were sure that the biker had ducked off the road somewhere. One reported that there was a big black mark on the road at the Smokemont campground. The biker ditched the bike and ran into woods. We could hear that ranger huffing and puffing as he was reporting and then we heard him say, “one apprehended”. It was a Honda motorcycle with Wisconsin plates. The guy had a Florida driver’s license. Both good.

Like most other events on the radio, there came a point when the rangers were not talking to dispatch anymore. We never heard any more about it except when 518 called in the license numbers. We’ll never know why he didn’t stop for the ranger in the first place.