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.

May 04, 2015 – Walking Stick

Monday, May 04, 2015 – Big Creek

When Andy turned on the radio at 0800, Dispatch and 118 were having a lengthy discussion, but we could not figure out what was going on.  Dispatch told 118 that he got a phone call from someone saying that other hikers had given someone some of their gear and he was hiking out to Gatlinburg.  Dispatch told 118 to stay on the trail.  118 replied that the next two days are his days off, but Dispatch said they wanted him to stay on the trail anyway. We don’t know what the problem was with the hiker or why poor 118 has to work on his weekend.

Mondays are usually a bit quieter in Big Creek. Here is Andy as we got underway this morning to walk around.

There were no people in the picnic area today that we saw. We did have six campsites occupied this morning. This yellow trillium is in the tent campground.

The ferns are beginning to unfurl.

The three men from Cincinnati in Site 5 are having such a good time that they decided to stay for another day or two.

Spence did not show up for a cup of coffee before we left to walk around the campground, but he did drive up on the Gator just as we finished walking around and chatting with the campers. He drove it down to our site for his cup of coffee after cleaning the toilet building at the campground.

I asked my scale model Andy to stand near these boulders along the campground road, but he was too far in front of them and they appear smaller than they really are, especially the big in back and center. I think it is as tall as Andy.

Our 23^rd anniversary was on May 2, but we don’t leave Big Creek on weekends.  We celebrated today by driving over to Pigeon Forge for a pizza at the Mellow Mushroom.  Down at the entrance to Big Creek, we saw two turkeys sitting on the bridge railing over the creek. As we drove up onto I-40, we saw a small truck pulled over onto the shoulder near what looked like an elk lying on the side of the highway. It was way too big to be a deer. A turkey walked across the road in front of us on the Foothills Parkway, but when it saw us, even though it was already to the middle of the road, it turned around and went back into the woods.

I took my computer and the Verizon Jetpack  and did a send/receive with the email while we waited for the pizza to arrive.  After we ate, I posted a couple of my logs onto my Big Creek Journal blog.  For some reason, the pictures did not copy so I had to paste them in.  It was tedious. Andy got tired of waiting so I did not finish the job.

We stopped in Walgreen’s to get a refill for Andy’s fluoride for his daily treatments. The young girl at the pharmacy asked him if he wanted jail and he replied, “No, I don’t want to go to jail”.  It took several tries, but he finally realized that she was saying the Tennessee version of gel. Of course, it is a tube of fluoride gel.

We spent some time hanging around the bridge over Big Creek after our evening walk around. I walked to the far bank and took this picture of the swimming hole below the bridge. The water below the little waterfall in waist to chest high on adults.  The little waterfall was about two feet high today.

This is the rock wall side of a mountain at the far end of the bridge.

I went over there to look for the orchid-looking flowers I saw a few days ago, but they had faded. I did find this flower I can’t identify.

Andy stayed on the bridge, playing it like a xylophone with his walking stick.

This Virginia Creeper is on a tree in the picnic area.

A group of three young men was just packing up their vehicle after three nights on a loop hike up the Baxter Creek trail and around the Big Creek watershed and back down the Big Creek Trail.  One of them had an amazing walking stick. He said his father had made it a long time ago.  It looked as though a vine was wrapped around it and fused to the branch.  I couldn’t tell if that was the case or he carved it to look like that.

If I had a walking stick like that, I would poke at least one of my eyes out.

As we walked on up the campground road, Andy expressed feelings of inadequacy because I was admiring someone else’s stick.

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.