May 3, 2015 - Andy's Selfie

Sunday, May 03, 2015 – Big Creek

Most of the campers were heading out this morning. The men in Site 10 had planned to move to Cade’s Cove, but decided Big Creek is too nice to leave. They will drive to Cade’s Cove as a day trip.

The two women in the horse camp were pulling out. The one with the fancy RV/horse trailer was having some problems. She thought she had a dead battery and used her generator to charge it up for several hours. That didn’t solve the problem. She jiggled a wire and that did the trick. That incident reminded me that we do not have the battery charger/tire inflator machine that we used last year. We could tell something was wrong when we saw her truck and trailer parked diagonally across the road.

When she was ready to go, she led her horse from the stall to the trailer. He didn’t want to go in and balked on the ramp. The woman just led him around in a small circle and right into the trailer before he knew which way was out. She said he is young and is still learning.

I told him goodbye and took his picture as he rolled by.

Heard on the radio: a car had been broken into and a purse was stolen from it. A park ranger and dispatch were talking and the ranger said for them to bring the car to the ranger station so he could see the damage and determine whether it was a theft or a loss.

A horsewoman named Cindy stopped by as she was heading up the Big Creek trail. She wanted us to know that when was out there, in case something happened and she did not come back. She expected to be out for a few hours. I said I would watch to make sure she returned and would call the rangers to find her if she did not.

I don’t remember where I took this picture. It looks like a buttercup, but the stem is very tall, maybe more than twelve inches.

I took my computer and the Jetpack (mobile hot spot) and drove down to the ranger station. Andy brought his iPad along. No signal there. Then we drove to the picnic pavilion at the power plant. One bar there. The pavilion even had electrical outlets overhead.

The pavilion has a wood stove in the front of the chimney and a huge grill on the backside. There were a number of picnic tables and two large tables, I assume for the food. It is a great place for a group picnic.

The Jetpack and the computer power supply were hanging from the outlet on the beam above.

Yes, I did have to climb up onto the table to plug them in.

I was able to receive some emails, but could not send out my logs or function on line. We drove down to the Pigeon River, where they launch the rafts and kayaks. Two bars there; it is next to the interstate. I set the Jetpack on top of the car and operated the computer with it sitting on the back seat while I stood next to the car. The logs went out. I know I duplicated some that I already sent out, but couldn’t remember which days I had sent before.

Boss Larry dropped by just as we finished eating dinner. He brought us the reservation reports for the group and horse camps. There are no groups scheduled until Friday and no reservations for the horse camp for the next week. We got to hear more about Larry and Kristen’s trip to Australia and New Zealand last winter.

Spence and Linda dropped by after they finished cleaning the toilet buildings. It was Linda’s first day back at work for the season. I guess her work year is about six months long. Spence had come back earlier than most seasonal workers because he did some other maintenance work around the park.

Linda cleans the Cosby campground and sometimes comes to Big Creek on Spence’s days off. Spence goes to Cosby to help Linda clean on the weekends. Cosby is a big campground and has eight toilet buildings.

I listened to Spence and Linda talk about being unemployed for half the year. Some people get unemployment checks, but apparently some do not. Spence mentioned a woman who didn’t get her unemployment checks until she was already back at work the next season. Linda told me that it is very difficult to get a year-round, full-time job in this area. She said employers do not want to pay any benefits, especially health care.

Horsewoman Cindy returned while Spence and Linda were here.

Andy went into the motorhome to get some water and I asked him to bring me my camera so I could take pictures of Spence and Linda. Tonight, when I put the pictures on the computer, I saw this one.

I asked Andy, “What is this?”

“I took a selfie!”

I’m still laughing.

There were new campers in the afternoon. This stump is beside the horse trail and it always fascinates me. It is larger than it appears in this picture. It looks just right for a cozy fox or bear den, but we don’t see any signs of animals going in or out.

As we walked down the trail to the horse camp, we saw some deer leaping in the woods from the horse stalls. We guessed that they were eating horse hay that had dropped to the ground. We walked around the loop and saw the deer in the horse camp day-use lot. I found a spot where I could see them clearly through the trees and took five or ten pictures before I got one with both deer looking toward me.

I hate to have to tell you this, but they were eating horse poop.

May 02, 2015 – Camping Oven

Saturday, May 02, 2015 – Big Creek

Two more campsites were filled after we made our walk-around yesterday. I adjusted the numbers on my census form this morning. Campsite 10 was rather smoky as we walked by.

I got a picture of their camp stove.

We had to move on because the smell of breakfast was driving Andy crazy.

We took the path along the creek to the bridge for a look at the creek before continuing on to the horse camp. It was a beautiful, clear, blue-sky day and we marveled over it at least once an hour. I took a few more yellow trillium pictures. Andy suggested I take one with the creek in the background. The only problem was standing back up; I should have had my walking stick with me.

Since the sun was shining, I went back to the large rock in the woods to get a better picture of the little spiky white flowers growing on it.

Here they are from the side. Of course, they were not in my Wildflowers of the Smokies book. They are about three or four inches tall.

Rather than taking the horse trail back to our campsite, we walked out of the horse campground onto Big Creek Road (that’s what I call it anyway). The road is in fairly good shape this year except for usual rutted curve down by the ranger station and the pot holes at the end of the one-lane bridge over Chestnut Branch.

I spent far too much time this morning trying to get on line and eventually gave up to fix dinner. I had told Spence on Wednesday to come here at 1400 today for some beef stew. I used the leftover pot roast and added some vegetables. Then I made a pan of biscuits to go with it. It was one of my better efforts at both.

Ranger Heath and Boss Larry showed up just before 1400 to empty the pay envelopes out of the iron ranger. Andy served them cookies, since they both refused beef stew. Heath had already eaten lunch and Boss Larry does not eat meat. They did sample the biscuits. Ranger Heath asked me if they were hard to make “or can any fool do it?” I assured him that any fool can.

Boss Larry is a Visitor Use Assistant. He takes care of us.

I told Ranger Heath that I had made the cookies for him since he would have to wait three weeks for Andy’s monthly birthday cake. He said he had cake last week for his own birthday. He had turned 48. His oldest son is graduating from high school this month.

Ranger Heath also announced that his wife Dana, the park’s Public Information Officer, was named Park Employee of the Year a few days ago. She is the one who recommended Big Creek to us as a place to volunteer in the park. If I ever get a phone signal, I’ll call and congratulate her.

After eating cookies and biscuits, Ranger Heath told Boss Larry that he needed a nap and Larry would have to drive his ranger truck back to Cosby. Boss Larry asked if he would be allowed to flash the lights and sound the siren. Then, he told of a time when he was riding with Ranger Jared and tried to talk on the car radio. He was calling Dispatch, who did not respond to his call. Then, Ranger Jared noticed that Larry was using the microphone for the exterior loud speaker and not the park radio. 
When they left, Ranger Heath was driving and said good-bye to us with the loud speaker.

We took the MiFi to the Verizon store in Newport, Tennessee in the late afternoon. The young man who served us said we were due for a new one anyway and replaced it with a newer Jet Pack. While he was looking at our account, he said we were also due for a new phone. We got another basic Samsung flip phone. He said the newer one had a better antenna. I was sorely disappointed when we got back home and still could not get a signal on the Jet Pack or the telephone. We were able to get on line last year sitting in the very same spot (when it wasn’t raining).

Ten of the twelve tent sites were occupied in the early evening. We chatted with everyone and handed out the Smokies Guide newspapers.

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.

April 30, 2015 - Wildflowers

Thursday, April 30, 2015 – Big Creek

Andy was up early and figured out why we could not get a signal yesterday; the signal booster was not plugged in. He said it was 48 degrees outside when he got up this morning.

The first thing we heard on the park radio this morning was a report that the 350 (a bear) was running over the hill. We obviously missed the best part of that story.

Maintenance Spence was off work today; Thursday and Friday are his weekend. Boss Larry was in a training class so we did not see him either.

It is a one-mile walk for us to leave the motorhome, walk around the tent campground, check out Big Creek at the bridge, pass the motorhome and take the horse trail  to walk around the horse campground, and then back to the motorhome. We plan to do it three times a day to get in our three miles.

The sun was in and out behind small clouds for the morning walk. The leaves were wet from and early rain. It was brilliant. There was no sun as we walked up the road to the tent campground.

Yellow Trilliums are everywhere. Many of the leaves had been chewed on, but I found a number of bite-free ones. These were in the picnic area next to the creek.

Big Creek was a torrent by the tent campground. It was mostly white water behind the gnarly old tree.

I spotted so many wildflowers today, but have not looked them up to tell you what they are. This tiny violet-type thing was on the path by the creek.

This amazing yellow one was just a little farther along the path. Those are impossibly tiny flowers.

Here is the first of many pictures of the bridge over Big Creek you will see in May and June.

The gorgeous cluster was on the far bank of the creek.

I walked down to the water’s edge and took a picture of my scale model Andy on the bridge.

These, my favorite of the day, were also on the far bank.

On our way back to Sao from our morning walk around the campground, a car stopped by us and a man said that someone had left a backpack sitting in the parking lot. We walked past the cars blocking our view of it and saw the backpack sitting out by itself, not near any cars. Someone drove off without it. It was open and full of gear, so I zipped it up and handed it to Andy to carry. It was heavy. I planned to examine the contents for some identification when we got back to our campsite and report it to Dispatch. Just as we got to the sidewalk at the end of the parking lot, a car came speeding in, driving the wrong way in the one-way traffic circle. When he got near us, he held his arm out of the car and yelled, “That’s mine! That’s mine!”  Andy handed him the backpack and told him to slow down when he leaves. He said he was speeding to hurry back to retrieve his pack.

The horse camp is immaculate and ready for the season.

Andy laid out our plastic outdoor carpet and staked the corners. Then we set up our new screen room. It fits nicely over the picnic table. We were anxious to get it up as the gnats are swarming around our heads.

Spence had mentioned them yesterday and today we saw them for ourselves. There are a bazillion small brown grasshoppers here. That is no exaggeration; it’s an estimate. When we walked by them in the forest, their jumping in the dry leaves sounded like rain. We had not seen them here before, but this place is alive with them now. I mean grasshoppers in Biblical proportions.

At 1345, someone at Clingman’s Dome called dispatch (700) to report that it was snowing up there. It started raining here in Big Creek at 1400 and rained lightly for the rest of the day.

There was a mildly interesting conversation on the radio between two park employees.

“ You are leaving a lot of smoke behind you.”

“Yeah, this thing is using a quart of oil every three or four days. Your spotlight in on.”

“Thanks.”

Someone reported a tree down across a guardrail and asked for someone to come with a chain saw to remove it. Another person responded that he would send someone and, then a few minutes later, a third guy said he was on his way.

It was raining for the afternoon walk around, but I carried my umbrella and took pictures until it was too dark to get them in focus. This cluster of small white flowers is growing on the moss on a boulder lining the campground road.

 The Sweet Shrub is in bloom along the campground road too.

I took another, close up, for a better look.

The field of large boulders is green as ever.

We chatted with the campers huddled under their tarps to stay dry. Everyone seemed happy. It was getting colder so Andy stopped back in the motorhome to put on a sweatshirt under his raincoat. I saw this turkey on the horse trail while I waited outside.

It’s not the best picture ever, but it is better than my usual turkey butt.

At 1800, someone reported from Clingman’s Dome that the snow was starting to stick. At 1920, the park closed the road to Clingman’s Dome. There was ½ to ¾ of an inch at that point. A ranger called in tags for two cars parked there to see if they belonged to backpackers. Dispatch checked and both cars belonged to people who had registered for backcountry campsites for tonight so they didn’t have to worry about them driving out in the snow.

A woman was walking by our site as it was getting dark so Andy went out to see if she needed some directions. She said she was looking for a place to pitch her tent. Andy asked where she came from and she said she had walked from Georgia. Surely, not today. Then Andy told her where to find the tent campground.

April 28, 2015 - Return to Big Creek

Wednesday, April 29, 2015- Orangeburg, South Carolina to Waterville, North Carolina (230 miles in 4 hours 37 minutes)

              

Of course, we owed it to the Cracker Barrel to eat breakfast there since we had spent the night in their parking lot. I don’t like to eat breakfast, but did enjoy the country ham biscuits and coffee. Andy had a real breakfast. We were back underway at 0800.

There was still a misty rain, but not as heavy as yesterday.

At Asheville, North Carolina, we took I-40 to Waterville at the North Carolina/Tennessee border. At the exit, we crossed the Pigeon River and followed the road to the hydro-electric plant. I pulled over in the parking area where the white-water rafters and kayakers put in the river at 1237. Andy disconnect the car while I called the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Dispatch office to let them know we had arrived.

This is the Pigeon River. The kayakers and rafters put in the river in front of the power plant, behind that gray shed. That is also where Big Creek enters the river, from the right.

Andy drove on ahead of me so he could convince anyone driving out of Big Creek to back up to a wide spot in the road for me to pass them. I certainly was not going to back up. Maintenance Man Spence was just getting ready to mow the grass at the ranger station. When he saw us, he came out to direct me across the one-lane bridge across Chestnut Branch. I don’t think I could do it without someone directing me as the bridge is on a curve and there is a large boulder right where I would want to swing wide to line up.

We never met another vehicle coming down the road. I pulled up in front of our host campsite and waited for Andy to direct me to back in. Andy hooked up the utilities and I walked around and took pictures of Sao in the host site. This one is looking down the road to our site. The ditch in the foreground is to divert rainwater around our campsite. They have dug it out since last year and that is a good thing.

Here is a look back up the road to the parking lot. Green is powerful here.

For this picture, I was standing on the road between the group site and the host site.

Here is a look at our yard from the door of the motorhome. Big Creek Trail, leading to the horse camp, is just beyond the green moss lawn. I have learned to love gravel. If it was not there, we would be in mud.

Then I walked down to the horse trail and took a picture back at Sao.

The leaves are not fully out, so we will have some sunshine if it comes out from behind the clouds.

Spence stopped in to welcome us back when he finished working. I took four or five pictures of him, but none of them turned out well. This was the best of the batch. I’ll get a better picture of him later.

His hair is still long, past his shoulders, and in a ponytail.

It has been a year since his father died and left Spence the farm. Now, the sisters are taking him to court for some cash from the estate, which has no cash. He said the court date is in June. I was hoping that the family feud would be over by now.

We set up our signal booster antenna, but still have no signal to get on line or use the cell phone. Hopefully, we’ll figure that out soon.