Camping, Glamping...and then there's JELLYSTONE!

Like everything  else in life, there are all kinds of campers... Hard-core back-packers who sleep under the stars, tenters, basic vans, pop-ups, campers, trailers, 5th wheels that can be small, or even bigger and more fancy than the big class A motor homes, big fancy diesel pushers up to 45' with as many bells and whistles as you can imagine, and now many campgrounds have cabins and trailers to rent as well.  So, "camping" has taken on it's own meaning.

In our 4 years of full-timing, we've camped in a couple of rest stops, some state parks, national parks, small and large family owned campgrounds, KOA's, a county park, a city park, two farms, and a few "resorts".  Almost all of them have been quite nice, a few have been really beautiful.  Most have been "natural", peaceful, and quiet...what we would call "camping"... until we came to JELLYSTONE.

Two weeks ago we had the pleasure of meeting up with our eastern grandchildren who live in up-state New York.  Because they are so far East, we don't get to visit with them very often, so when we do, we try to spend as much time as we can with them having fun.  There are five of them, ages 5 to 14, so keeping them entertained, is quite a challenge!  It was suggested that we try camping at the Jellystone Campground at Garrattsville, a half hour away from where they live, as "it has everything!"  So, that's what we did. 

Well..."camping" is a very loose term for it.  Yes, you are in an RV, or a tent, or a cabin, but it pretty much ends there!  First of all, forget about the "peace and quiet", and I'm not referring to the kids, because I expected that (and honestly, they were pretty good) it was all that traffic!  I've never in all my life seen so many cars, trucks, vans, and golf carts coming and going, back and forth, up and down all day & night!  You'd think people forgot how to walk!  Granted, the park was pretty large...but not that large! I also thought how strange that a park who's sole purpose was to entertain kids, had a staff that, for the most part, was completely bored!  Only 4, out of about 20, were friendly and smiled at the kids and interacted with them, while the others couldn't be bothered at all.  Granted, I tend to watch staff a bit closer, having been a supervisor over this type of staff for so many years...but still...

The campsites themselves were a bit odd.  Each area was completely different, and if you didn't know the campground before you booked (we didn't, and really lucked out!) you could be in a great place, or in an awful one.  Our site was in a cul-de-sac (yellow) that was always in the shade, no matter how hot or sunny the day was.  That would be great if it had been in the 80's +, but unfortunately, it wasn't and it even rained several times.  The sites there were very uneven, very lumpy and bumpy, making it difficult to level the rig.  Worse tho, was that the hook-ups were way up front of the "back-in" site.  Now, for anyone reading this that doesn't own a motorhome, what that means, is that, it doesn't work for us - as our hook-ups are in the back!  Weird.  This is the very first time we've ever seen this at any campground we have been in!  We ended up moving 3 times to find a spot that would work!

Now, my son's campsite was just across the road (brown across from the blue), out of the cul-de-sac, and his was in total sun, not a bit of shade!  The one great thing about both our sites tho, was that they were close to all the activities - the pool, the pavilion, the boat dock, the slip-n-slide, the lake and the arcade.  That sure made it nice for all of us! 

The pool and the slip-n-slide were not heated, and the temperatures just didn't stay hot all week, so we still got some "I'm bored", but we all seem to manage.  Rainy days turned into "movie days" (thank goodness for Grandma's movie collection!) and "baking time"!

Like all vacations, it comes to an end.  Dirty cloths, art projects and souvenirs gathered, along with our newly baked goodies, all packed and ready to go back to Mom & Dad's. 
Hugs & kisses given and off they went.  Jack and I sat back, looked around and just sighed.

Don't think we'll do a Jellystone again...just not our style...looking forward to the good ol' fashioned peace and quiet kind of camping...;-)

...On the road to Vermont,  Marie

A quick visit to Pittsburgh!

I've been remiss in getting a blog out lately... I've had a bad case of the "retired lady relaxing syndrome".  Have you ever heard of it?  It's where you just want to sit around and do a lot of...nothing!  ;-)  So, that's pretty much been my "symptoms"!  I've read a couple of nice "summer books", taken some leisurely strolls around the towns and campgrounds we've been in, done some very mild sight-seeing (with very little photography) and sat and enjoyed late afternoon & evening campfires...and that's about it!  So, not much to talk about...except...I did want to share the last stop we made before we left Pennsylvania, and that was to Pittsburgh!

One day in Pittsburgh was not enough, but we jammed in as much as we could!  We started off at the Cathedral of Learning at the  University of Pittsburgh.  The University itself is quite something to see, but all we took time for was the Cathedral of Learning.  It is a 42 story Gothic Revival building that is the tallest educational building in the Western hemisphere and the 2nd tallest university building in the world!  Building began in 1921 and the first class was held in 1931.

But why we were there, was to see the "Nationality Rooms"!  29 Classrooms, designed to celebrate a different culture that had an influence on Pittsburgh's growth, depicting an era prior to (or in the singular case of the French Classroom, just after) 1787, which is the year of the university's founding and the signing of the US Constitution.  The Nationality Room programs began in 1926 when Bowman decided that he wanted to involve the community as much as he could in constructing the Cathedral, so he proposed that each nationality that had a significant number of people in Pittsburgh would be allowed to design their nationality's room for the Cathedral. Each group had to form a Room Committee, which would be responsible for all fundraising, designing, and acquisition. The university provided only the room and, upon completion, upkeep for perpetuity. All other materials, labor, and design were provided by the individual committees. These were sometimes aided by foreign governments and the rooms contain many authentic artifacts and materials from the country represented.

 They give you a mobile tour guide and a key, and you are on your own to check out each room at your own pace.  Appropriate "theme" music accompanies each of the narration.  Each room was spectacular!  We thought we would just "check out a couple" and then go on about seeing the rest of the city, but we were captivated.  With my love of photographing architecture, doors and windows, I was in heaven!  I have to say, this was one of the most unique experiences we've come across in a very long time!

Indian Room

 Swiss Room

 Polish Room

 Chinese Room

 Chinese Room

Well, that took us all morning, so it was time to eat!  Jack's cousin said to "be sure and head over to 'the strip' to Wholey's Fish Market for the best seafood you'll find anywhere!"  So that's what we did...and he was right, yum!  Cool place too, that "strip" area!  

                            The Strip Mural by Carley Parrish & Shannon Pultz (c2010)

Time was getting away from us, so off we dashed to the Duquesne Incline that goes up to the top of Mt Washington.  This gave us a wonderful view of the city!  It was such a clear day, we could see all over the city and down all three rivers: The Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Monongahela.  Incredible!  

                                                   Duquesne Incline (c1877) elev 400'

Well, by then it was "commute time" for those poor people who still have to work for a living...so, we decided the best thing to do, was to take a little walk down the street and have a nice cool glass of wine and just sit back and enjoy the lovely view and wait for the traffic to clear...and then head slowly back to our nice quiet campsite.  

The rest of Pittsburgh will have to wait until another day...we will be back again, I'm sure! 

...kicking back in New York state,  Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/  

Saying goodbye to Tennessee and hello to Virginia...

As we left the area around Gatlinburg, we still had a couple of stops I wanted to make before we left the beautiful state of Tennessee...A couple of "must sees" on my list!

You know how we like to visit "factory tours", or at least see where, if not how, things are made!  Well, Bush's Best Beans are made in Chestnut Hill Tennessee, not all that far from where we were headed, how about that!  So, off we went!  Unfortunately, they didn't offer a factory tour, but they did have a great Visitor's Center, that included a wonderful museum of sorts that told you their history and showed about "how it all started" and how's it's done!  We probably spent an hour or more there, going through it all.  We even got ourselves weighed in beans!  Lots of opportunities to get your picture taken (they even give you a free one to take with you!)  One of the surprising things, I thought, was that they didn't start out in the "bean" business!  Did you know that?  They actually started out in the "canning" business...and by hand, at that!  Each one was soldered individually by hand.  They canned tomatoes, and other vegetables long before they discovered that beans were the way of the future.

 They started canning tomatoes in 1904, and didn't start canning beans until 1969!  They are still a family owned and operated business.  It was a fun stop, and now we know more about beans than we ever new before!

As we continued north, we came to the town of Harrogate, where the Abraham Lincoln Library & Museum is located.  He's my most favorite President, and I was so glad to finally be near enough to get to his library!  It's actually on the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial University, which is interesting.  It's a small library, but done very nicely.  It had some furniture, and Mary Todd's china along with some of their clothing.  But mostly it was paintings of him, maps of the time, speeches he made, and lots about the Civil War of course.  I loved one note from the gentleman who ran the telegraph office that said he got to know the President "on a personal level" since he came every day, and stayed there most all day long, writing/composing.  Once, he remembered, he would sit, write a line or two, then look out for long moments and ponder, then write another line, and then ponder some more.  He asked the President what he was writing about, and he answered, "I'm writing a speech to end the war".  It turned out to the the Gettysburg Address.  Wow.

Our last stop we ended our stay at, and that was at The Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.  The Cumberland Gap itself covers three states:  Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky.  Depending on the drive, and the moment, you could be in any of the three states!  Our campground was in Virginia, the Cumberland Gap National Park Visitor's Center was in Tennessee, and the grocery store down the street was in Kentucky!  ;-)  What a beautiful place though!  We thought we would spend a couple of days there at their National Park Campground, and ended up spending a full week.  Most of the time we were only one of maybe 4 other campers in the whole park!  The only time it ever got busy was on Saturday, when "weekenders" came in, and they brought in a great bluegrass group for our evening entertainment, then the place was hopping!

We spent several days just driving through the many thousands of acres of beautiful forests, hills, rock formations, wildflowers, valleys and great vistas.  We had a few rainy days where we just sat back and read our books and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the quiet nature around us.  The campground was gorgeous in and of itself, it was hard to leave it.

Cumberland Gap Tunnel VA

Fern Lake KY

L-R: TN, (bottom: VA) KY - The "Gap" is the area along the ridge on the right

Benge's Gap, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park VA

Eventually, it was time to "break camp" and move on...through West Virginia (which, by the way, have very few campgrounds!) and on to Pennsylvania to visit with family for a bit!

...kicking back in PA,   Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/ 

Our last days in the Great Smoky Mountains

With just a few days left in The Great Smoky Mountains, we still had a couple of places we wanted to see!  Our campground was nicely situated where we could easily get to Knoxville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg easily (we were already in Sevierville which is where Dolly was born, don't ya know!).  So, with our list in hand, we set out to check out the towns! 

Weather played a big part in what we did first...Dollywood was big on our list, but since it was going to be a "full day" outdoors, we needed to make sure to save it for a day it wasn't going to rain.  So far, this week, the weather proved to be an "on & off" rain cloud variety - one best to do "other things" with...so we chose to "wait" on Dollywood til later in the week..

So...we went shopping!  Now, Gatlinburg & Pigeon Forge aren't "our" kind of places, actually.  They're best for young families...the kind that have kids who enjoy lots of miniature golf, dinner shows, Wonderworks, and Ripley's Believe It Or Not, etc.  But, Gatlinburg does have an 8-mile loop off of it's main road that is called Great Smoky Mountain Arts & Crafts Community that has about 120 artists from the local Appalachian Mountains.  Wonderful drive and terrific artists!  We found a great wedding present for our nephew and his bride-to-be this fall.  I think something "hand-made" is so much more special than what anyone can buy at a commercial store, don't you?  All the artists were in homes, tucked in along the creek & trees, it was a lovely drive and so nice to be away from the main road that screamed "tourist $$!" 

Outside one of the artist's shops

Our next visit was to Knoxville.  Very different! It was so much more metropolitan, and no "screaming tourist $$!" at you!  Nice.  Hard to find parking tho...But we managed.  We had read about a noon radio show being broadcast at their Visitor Center downtown, called the "Blue Plate Special", so we headed to that as soon as we got settled.  Good thing we got there at 11:30, because the place was filling up fast!  Two groups were playing that day, both bluegrass groups (we love bluegrass!) but get this, one was from Sweden and the other from Iceland!  I guess "the world" loves bluegrass!  Each group played for about a half hour, and they were each great!  What a treat!  Jack spoke with the banjo player from Dunderhead (Sweden) and asked him what got him interested in playing bluegrass & banjo, he said he heard Earl Scruggs when he was 7 years old, and after that, started looking for a banjo in Sweden!  Wow, amazing, huh? 

 

Dunderhead, from Sweden

Arstioir, from Iceland

After we left there, I had read about an old Victorian cemetery, so we went in search,  The Old Gray Cemetery was established in 1850 and absolutely beautiful. The massive oaks and hackberry trees are part of a wide variety of trees and vegetation here that are living witnesses to the history of Knoxville since before the Civil War at which time this area was an open pasture.  Some of the headstones here are pure art...

We also made a stop at the Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville.  They had a wonderful exhibit called "Voices of the Land" that had everything from the Civil War with a cabin you could walk into, right up to an 1800's trolley and pharmacy with a soda fountain you could walk into.  Lots of recordings of people and experiences, crossing through the Cumberland Gap, the music, just about everything.  Very nicely done.

Virginia Road Wagon

"Betsy", David Crockett's First Rifle

Well, with the rain gone, by the end of the week...we finely made it to Dollywood!  Yea!  Well worth the wait too!  We pretty much filled our day with music & food!  We caught every show they had, and all were great (of course!), and each just different enough.  Her "My People" is fun in that her brother, sister, two nieces and two cousins are in it and she appears above in a video that is so well done you almost forget it's not "live".  Her museum is fun to go through as well as her RV (especially since we have one to "compare" to:  Hers has a well lit dressing room tho!).  They did have one really unusual show, we'd never seen anywhere, and that was a "bubble" show.  We couldn't take any pictures, and you wouldn't think "blowing bubbles" wouldn't be that amazing, but I have to tell you, what this guy does with bubbles and lasers is truly amazing!  After 7 hours, we called it a day.  A nice way to end our stay in the Great Smoky Mountains...

"My People" (sister, niece, brother, cousins)

Dolly's "coat of many colors" in her Chasing Rainbows Museum

The make-up spot in Dolly's Home-on-Wheels

Dolly's Childhood Home

...kicking back in Tennessee,  Marie

If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/ 

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park Tennessee

Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina rise up to greet each other in a mighty panorama of rugged mountain peaks along the southern spine of the Appalachian Mountains.  Wave upon wave of mountain ridges are separated by deep valleys.  This amazing natural landscape has been preserved for all of us to enjoy.  The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park within the US, with almost ten million visitors a year.  Its two main entrances are from Cherokee, NC and from Gatlinburg, TN next door to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville where we entered it from.  Covering over 520,000 acres, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park ranges from the pastoral meadows of Cades Cove, which measures 840 feet above sea leavel at its lowest point, up to Clingmans Dome, the park's highest peak at 6,643 feet.  The Great Smoky Mountains has over 36 miles of continuous mountain ranges reaching heights above 5,000 feet, making it the largest stretch of high land in the eastern US.

The Great Smoky Mountains is one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.  Worn down over time, its peaks are now covered with an abundant carpet of trees, pines, shrubs and plants.  Over 100 species of native trees and more than 1500 flowering plant species can be found in the Smokies.

Birthed during the Great Depression, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was officially established by the US Congress on June 15, 1934, and dedicated by President Franklin D Roosevelt at Newfound Gap in 1940.  This particular park was carved from the homesteads of families as well as the forced closure of logging businesses.  All the land had to be bought and paid for; school children of the time even donated their lunch pennies.  A number of historical homes and farms have been preserved to represent the hard-working early settlers.

Unlike a lot of other national parks (Yellowstone, for instance) there are not a lot of wild life roaming around for visitors to view easily.  There are estimated to be 1500 black bear, along with a small herd of about 130 elk.  After nearly vanishing from the eastern US by the mid-1960s as a result of widespread pesticide use, peregrine falcon reintroduction efforts in the Smokies have resulted in recovery of a small population in the park.  River otters were also reintroduced in the park after a 70-year absence.  But...it does have over 200 species of birds, 66 types of mammals, 50 fish species, 39 varieties of reptiles and 43 species of amphibians!  ;-)

We were just excited to see a young bear trying to cross the road in front of us!  Once he saw us, he quickly scurried away though...(but we did get to see him!)

One of the things I wanted to "see for myself" was if the mountains really did look blue "in person", like all the pictures showed!  I had seen lots of ads for the Great Smoky Mountains, and they always showed the iconic scene of the mountain range all misty in shades of blue.  I'd always wondered if that was done on a certain day early on a fall morning, when the weather was "just right", and that it wasn't something one sees very often.  So, when we arrived and got set up in our campground, I was anxious to "go to the mountains"!

Doing my research, I learned that there are several driving tours of the Smokies you can take, each one taking a full day, and each very different from the other.  So, we decided to do the Newfound Gap Road first.  This one was more "natural sights" vs "man-made" sights.  It also started at the lowest elevation and took you to the highest.  This gave us the best view of those "blue mountains"...and yes, the views are blue!  ...and beautiful, really beautiful.  It made me just want to stand there and stare at them forever...I really was in awe.  I've really never seen anything quite like it before.  It's almost mystical...

But, one must move on... after all, there were other sights to see here...

Our second trip was into Cades Cove.  This secluded, flat little valley is only 4000 acres in size and is sheltered by the mountain ridges.  It's a wonderful 11-mile, one-way loop that follows the outer edge of the cove through intermittent woods, sheltered fields and historical buildings.

By the mid 1800s there were 132 families (about 500 people) farming the precious flat land in the cove.  Today, Cades Cove is home to one of the most complete collections of historic structures in Southern Appalachia, letting visitors see firsthand how people subsistence-farmed and lived off the land.  Early churches, homes, mills, barns and even cemeteries are left just as there were.   

Carter Shields cabin (c1910)

Missionary Baptist Church (c1915)

John P Cable Grist Mill (c1870)

Each tour came with a self-guiding tour booklet that told you all about each stop, which was wonderful.  I especially enjoyed the one for Cades Cove because it shared all the personal stories about each of the houses and the people who had lived in them.  My favorite was the Walker home (1841-1921).   John and his wife had 11 children.  Six of the children were girls,five never married.  Eventually the home passed along to them and they all stayed in it together.  In the 1930s, the commission responsible for acquiring land for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Walker sisters to sell the homestead.  To avoid negative publicity, the commission finally opted not to force the Walkers off via eminent domain.  The Walker sisters eventually sold the farm in 1941 in exchange for a lifetime lease.  Legend claims the sisters were paid a visit by President Franklin Roosevelt, who convinced them to sell the land.   (don't you just love it!)

Walker Home (c1841)

As I've said after every visit to a National Park, thank you, thank you to our fore fathers for saving these beautiful lands for us, and our children and their children to enjoy!

...kicking back in Tennessee,  Marie

 If you wish to view the rest of the photos from this trip, you can at my Flickr account at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/