Transcription of images can be found at the bottom of the page. A proper blog post with loads of photos will come along some time in the next couple weeks. Stand by!
TRANSCRIPTION:
I’m sitting at the picnic table at our Elkmont Campground site watching the first fireflies I can remember seeing since visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wenk on their Michigan (almost) farm as a child. They’re captivating and almost make up for the silly humidity.
We’ve had a very low-key day in the park. We only made it to Knoxville last night, so rather than waking up stupid early to beat the crowds, we caught up on a little work and a little sleep this morning then headed for Cades Cove this afternoon.
I knew (and still know) very little about this park before arriving except “old mountains.” Turns out Cades Cove is not the mountain part, but rather a secluded little valley tucked away in the park’s western comer. Not ten minutes after entering park, we passed by a mama bear and a tiny cub, blissfully foraging and ignoring the passersby. The road is so narrow, it could have caused bear jam, but it was also so narrow a road only the most block-headed of tourists would have completely stopped. I regretted not being just block-headed enough to get a photo, but Dustin was driving and is better-behaved than I.
We puttered oh-so-slowly around the Cades Cove Loop, enjoying the tunnel of green trees and occasional farmhouse or church that popped up. We’d still had no orientation, so we didn’t actually stop and get out until we got to the visitors center in the Cable Mill area. Rangers were a bit hard to come by, but we grabbed a couple brochures and did a bit of self-orienting. We also took ourselves on a tour of the Cable Mill buildings.
A volunteer at the grist mill was full of fascinating information. For instance, did you know that the wood from the wheel only last about 18 years before it decomposes and breaks? Or that they used to grease the gears with lard (historically authentic!) until the bears came, broke in, and licked all the grease out of the gears? Or that a mill stone weighs 400-500 pounds? I asked how often the stone would have been changed – since different stones were needed depending on whether you wanted to grind corn or flour – but he didn’t know. “Would have taken a few guys,” he added with a shudder.
Afterward, we headed straight up here to our campsite, since the day was wearing on and rain is in the forecast. As we were getting set up, I had the profoundly bad luck of forgetting I was standing in front of a boulder, which I proceeded to bash my ankle into at high speed. Pains shot up and down my leg as I collapsed onto the picnic bench and watched my hiking plans- a trip up to LeConte Lodge that we paid a million dollars for followed immediately by 5 days and 60 miles on the Appalachian Trail – crumble to dust.
I decided to try to walk it off. About a mile up a nice paved road from Elkmont Campground is a little called village Daisy Town, which was built when Elkmont was a mining camp but tourists wanted to come visit. The last person to hold a lease on one of the houses left in 2001, and since then the Park Service has been restoring the historic houses. Many are open for walking through, and they are quirky all get out. Some were built as early as the 1830s (though most after the turn of the century), and you can see where they were added to and expanded over the years. Bathrooms and kitchens were an afterthought in most, often shoe-horned in in very peculiar ways.
This adventure was a good test drive for my ankle, which held up okay. I assume it’ll just come out badly bruised, but I’m dreaming up contingency plans just in case. We’ll see how LeConte goes tomorrow.
Thither & Yon 