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Last Updated: 3:10 AM GMT on June 11, 2013
— Last Comment: 1:34 PM GMT on June 19, 2013
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Yesterday I made a little detour.
I was returning from a celebration of my aunt's 90th birthday, an event for which members of three branches of my mother's family met for lunch on Friday in Asheville, North Carolina. Saturday a group of us visited Cherokee. We cooled off with watermelon and wading in the Oconaluftee River. Later we adjourned to Sylva for pizza. Sunday it was time for me to say goodbye. My usual practice, when driving home from my parents' house, is to hightail south on Interstate 26 to Asheville and hang a left on I-40. This time I drove east through Windy Gap to US highway 19E, to Spruce Pine, thence along Altapass Highway onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a fine destination. Those of you who never had a chance to explore it should start making plans. As a Tarheel I'm biased in favor of the southern section, but it's all good. From the Smoky Mountains to Shenandoah Park in Virginia I can vouch for all but one thirty mile stretch north of Stone Mountain, NC. (I hope to fill in that gap one of these days.) This time of year the relatively cool mountain air feels great. Summer haze (air pollution) may obscure the view. Seeing is better in winter or spring, after a cold front washes the air clean. Alas, in winter the trees are bare, and you risk road closures from ice and snow. Fall may be the best time of all, but be prepared to share the road when tourists flock to see the autumn leaf color. On this occasion I partook of no more than ten miles of Parkway. I turned south on US 221, then left on state route 183. In less than a mile there's a side road with a sign for Linville Falls. There I pulled into a gravel parking lot to hike down to the river. (See Wunder Photos at right.) You can also visit the waterfall from the Parkway. That road and parking area are paved and maintained by the National Park Service. My dad took me there when I was a kid. The gravel lot where I stopped yesterday is a Pisgah National Forest project. After taking some pictures I returned to my car and continued down the narrow dirt road. So what led me to forsake a perfectly good interstate highway for an obscure jeep track? Curiosity! In fact, I tried this once before. In the fall of 2007 I approached the south end of this road near Lake James. As the pavement gave way to gravel I saw a sign recommending vehicles with 4-wheel drive. It was a rainy day; I was driving a sedan. I chickened out. Three tenths of a mile below the falls I passed a log cabin with a sign marked 'Information'. There, sitting on the porch, I found a friendly middle-aged couple and an enormous dog. The dog appeared to be bred for pulling a sled in the Iditarod. What was it doing here in the southern Appalachians? The lady led some other visitors inside to look at pamphlets, while I struck up a conversation with the man. ("Have you got ze information?" I queried in my best fake German accent.) For a quarter of an hour the man patiently fielded my questions, then chipped in with advice and observations of his own. I greeted sleepy Sassy, the dog, who was dozing in the afternoon heat. I learned that the road is called Old NC 105. You need a good map to find it listed. The unpaved state-maintained road runs for some thirteen miles alongside Linville Gorge. The route runs fairly straight for a mountain trail (few switchbacks). Most of it was in fair condition. There are places where it climbs or descends steeply. Steep slopes and gravel roads do not mix. The steep parts were eroded by rain and washboarded by traffic. Still, I managed to coax my Honda through with no major problem, just a bouncy ride. I've driven through worse. I mean, there was that one time amid New Mexico at about 9000 feet altitude with cows standing in the middle of the "road". The way was too rugged to back up and too narrow to turn around. The cows regarded me solemnly as I sat there with a CD playing. After a while most of the herd shuffled over to one side, and in the fullness of time I wended my way back to pavement. Everything was okay as soon as (~2 hours) I located a gas station (with a restroom!) and a car wash. All these amenities appeared within a few feet of each other in a place called Logan, which I recall very fondly indeed. [Meanwhile back on the east coast...] The thing about Ol' 105 that made it worth the trouble was a place called Wiseman's View. At the bottom of a short trail is an overlook on the brink of a cliff overhanging the gorge. The spot is walled about with waist-high stone and reminded me of a pulpit. Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a man often given to sermonizing, but if I were, that would be where I would stand to address the world. Previous Entry View (10) Comments For This Post
How long has it been since hair spray ads decreed that "the wet head is dead"?
Saturday morning my impromptu houseplant repotting activity got rained out. The thunderstorm arrived with gusty wind, so it wasn't long before I found myself dashing through the deluge to right a newly potted rubber tree after it had blown over. The result was a wet head, indeed, along with wet feet and wet t-shirt. The feet made sloppy tracks as I plunged back into air conditioning. A towel sufficed to repair my hairdo. The t-shirt dried by itself, eventually. Sunday brought more showers. My wife and I followed a rainbow home last evening after visiting her parents. It seemed a good omen to begin the week. Temperatures are down a few degrees. During the last heat wave daily highs were peaking near a hundred degrees. Yesterday, with afternoon clouds building, the mercury maximized at ninety. Humidity makes up the difference. There's no improvement in comfort level. The grass is green and growing, though, and there's no need to water the shrubbery. The local forecast says more heat is on the way. Rain chances persist through mid-week, while highs inch into the mid-nineties. Upper nineties return by week's end... but it will be a dry heat. If we could have, say, 98° with a breeze and low humidity, I would take that over 92° and muggy any day. * * * In other news, the cat wars continue. Thai Beau is incorrigible. He wails and stalks. There's a new critter in the house, and, if she runs, he just naturally chases. Siouxsie spends all her time either cowering under the couch or treed atop the shelves over the television. We hapless humans spend too much of our time vacillating between wrath and reconciliation. I believe I can start to detect a slow trend toward quieter times ahead. Thai Beau is more easily distracted now and less determined to harass Siouxsie. Little by little he seems to be getting used to her. Siouxsie doesn't help much. She is the stranger here after all. Under the circumstances it's tough to forge those bonds of trust that might enable her to relax and accommodate. We have been thinking that, if Siouxsie could form a partnership with shy Margaret, the pair of them would easily dominate wimpy Thai Beau. In terms of affinity and goals Siouxsie and Margaret would seem to be natural allies. Siouxsie surpasses the other two in force of personality. As she grows out of clumsy kittenhood and gains self-confidence, we look for her to become queen of the household. Meanwhile, until that new balance of power is struck, there's chaos in the building. Previous Entry View (1) Comments For This Post
Things are back to normal in the Dry Slot. It's dry.
The last big rain we had was over a month ago. Since then there have been a few afternoon showers, but those tend to be hit or miss. Mostly miss. On several occasions thunder rumbled by on one side or the other, and the cats would go hide under the bed, but there was no rain to show for it. Most recently we had a 'cold' front passing through. The weather radar showed a solid line of showers advancing southward across Virginia. By the time the line got here, it was the middle of the night and the convection was dying away. Next day the line reformed... a few miles south of here. Last weekend my wife and I drove to High Point to the campus of HPU to see our nephew ensconced in his freshman dorm for the summer term. We wanted to know how to find him, and we were curious about the university. The occasion appeared to be an auspicious beginning for a new college career. As the afternoon progressed I was watching anvil-shaped cumulonimbus clouds rising in the east, which got my hopes up. Maybe one of them would rain on my yard! Alas, when we got home, nothing. Not a drop. There's a new blob on the drought monitor, and it's creeping closer.  You should have seen the dust cloud my lawn mower raised in the back yard. Probably would have been good for a chuckle, if someone had captured the scene on video. (Sweating away inside the cloud, I was not amused.) I'm out of beer, too. Previous Entry View (39) Comments For This Post
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