May 05, 2015 – Pots and Mac!

Tuesday, May 05, 2015 – Big Creek

Drats!  The microwave/convection oven seems to by dying. It will only run for about 50 seconds before shutting down.  That’s either as a convection oven or a microwave.  Maybe it can be repaired, but who repairs stuff anymore?

Spence stopped in for his coffee refill and he and Andy were discussing the two dead walnut trees next to the motorhome. They have been dead for several years and Spence and Andy agreed that they should be cut down.

           

They look to me as though they could stand there dead for many more years.  But, if Spence cuts them down, I want him to convert them into firewood.  Neatly stacked. The men were talking about chain saws and Spence mentioned getting a chain saw stuck in a tree he was cutting down once. He said that once he was cutting down trees and another fellow was picking them up with a big claw.  The other guy told Spence to lay the next tree down on top of a stump to make it easier for him to grab it with the claw.  Spence felled the tree and it did land perfectly on top of the stump.

The Spence told us that he almost got into a fight in the market on his way home yesterday.  He was a real hot-head in his youth, but has mellowed as he has aged.  The market was crowded and there were two long lines at the registers.  The man in his 20s in front of him pointed to his place in line, said, “This is my spot”, and then walked outside to smoke a cigarette. When he came back inside he was very loud and cussing in front of women and children.  Spence told him that he needed to calm down.  Spence doesn’t take well to men cussing in front of women and children.  The guy told Spence that it was none of his business and Spence replied, “You better calm down”.  That’s when Spence thought the guy was going to start fighting, but he didn’t.  When the other guy left, the man in line behind Spence said, “I thought there was going to be a fight there. I had your back”.

Spence was telling a story of his wife Sharon and his cousin sitting at the kitchen table talking about what they would put in a personal ad for an ideal man.  His cousin was going on and on about the kind of man she wanted: tall, handsome, dark hair and so on.  When she finally finished and it was Sharon’s turn to compose her personal ad, Spence interrupted before she could speak and said, “Six Cocke County men to carry a coffin for a dead woman”.  I guess that meant she had better not be placing any personal ads in the newspaper.  Well, then he told us that his cousin was “laughing like a hen that just laid an egg”.  After that comment, I was laughing like a hen that had just laid an egg.

A beautiful moth was in front of Sao.  It looked dead, but flapped its wings when I touched it.

This pot was sitting in the parking lot. I had noticed it on the ground in the picture of the young man holding the interesting walking stick yesterday.  We set it up on the water fountain by the parking lot.

A group of five or six hikers was standing in the parking lot looking as though they could not figure out which way to go. Andy asked them where they wanted to go and one answered, “the Midnight Hole”.  Simultaneously, Andy pointed to the left and I pointed to the right.  Maybe we looked like a couple of lost idiots, but Andy was pointing toward the shortcut trail up in the campground and I was pointing to the Big Creek trailhead behind the group. After we explained the options and walked toward the bridge, I commented that we looked like a couple of idiots.  Andy added, “as usual”.  We never agree on anything.

I just had to take another picture of Sweet Betsy just because the sun was shining on it.

Someone has been stacking up rocks in the creek again.

This large rock, or these two large rocks along the creek are a mystery. We can’t decide whether they have been cut or are naturally shaped this way.  Andy is standing on a flat section and the side of the rock next to him is flat.  We can’t discern any cut marks.

I walked a bit down the creek bank to look at it/them from another angle. It looks more like two rocks from there.  Were they once one rock?  How did they get stacked like that?  We’ll never figure it out.

Andy got out the 100-foot measuring tape this morning and I asked to carry with us when we walked around so I could measure the length of the bridge and the width of Big Creek under it.

The bridge is 88 feet 5 inches long. The creek is 59 feet wide between the bridge piers.  Now I know.

On the radio:

People coming down a trail were reporting that a seventh-grade girl had been bitten on the hand by a copperhead snake.  Eventually, the medic sent to investigate caught up with the girl and said that she was not showing any signs of a severe reaction.  She had been bitten on the finger and the hand was swollen – only to her wrist. Dispatch had called for an ambulance. Some time later, the medic reported that she was sending the girl to the hospital in the ambulance.

A maintenance person in Cade’s Cove called 700 to report that some park visitors told him that a car was driving fast and recklessly and nearly ran over their two daughters who were on bicycles. They had a tag number and said the car was a red classic Chevy of the 1950s vintage.  When the Chevy driver saw that they were trying to read his tag, he took off at high speed. A ranger waited at the exit to Cade’s Cove.  He kept calling back for a better description of the car and to reaffirm the tag number.  I thought, “How many 1950s red Chevys can there be in Cade’s Cove at the same time”.  The ranger called in again and asked, “Did the car have a white top?” It was a convertible, so the top probably was white.  I figured out what his problem was when the ranger said there was a classic car club touring the park today and there were a lot of 1950s Chevys driving by.  He did eventually pull one over and the last we heard about it was him giving dispatch the driver’s license number.

I missed the beginning of this episode, but some park employee told dispatch that he was not going to do anything.  “That turkey looks like he is going to make it through the day”.

A 1930s car was broken down near The Sinks and was blocking one lane of the road.  The owner said it was just overheated and he could get it going again after it cooled down.  Dispatch wanted them to push the car off the road, but there was no room to do so. Dispatch told the reporting person to tell the driver that they would send a wrecker if he couldn’t get the car out of the road soon.

The campers in Site 6 had left a pot sitting on the log next to the fire ring. It was clean.

This group of four jolly hikers came off the trail to spend a night in the campground in Site 12.  They were college buddies from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  They live widely separated now. Two of them had not seen each other in fifteen years.  They had planned to stay out until Thursday, but were exhausted.

We drove back to the Walgreen’s in Newport in the late afternoon to pick up Andy’s prescription.  Then we stopped in the Subway where Andy bought us each a soda and I did a send/receive of the email. I did not read the email there, but did note one from Sue, our neighbor in Marathon.  She said that Mac would be in the mountains today.  Darn, it was already late in the day and we missed him.

As we were driving along the Pigeon River on our return to Big Creek, a guy on a motorcycle passed us going the other way.  Andy said , “That guy on the motorcycle waved to us”. I had not mentioned the email to him and replied, “It’s Mac”.  Sure enough, I saw him turning around in the rear view mirror.  I pulled over in the parking lot for the raft and kayak launch and Mac pulled in behind us.  Andy was stunned.  How did I know it was Mac?

Mac had checked out our campsite in the woods and said we are in a beautiful place.  He had been driving around the mountain roads and went to Hot Springs today. Mac didn’t want to come back up to the campground because it looked as though it was going to rain and he needed to drive back to Asheville, an hour away. It was already late in the day and he also didn’t want to be driving at night.  We talked for a while until it looked as though the rain would start.  Mac headed to the interstate and we drove up the hill to Big Creek.

Maintenances Junior and Spence built this set of steps from the parking lot to the picnic area before the season began.

We put up the rope lights around our screen room this morning.  Then, we sat out there until after dark enjoying the atmosphere. They look a lot brighter in the picture than they actually are.