Road Trip

Bumper Bear

It is about 12 miles from the town of Robbinsville on US129 to where Deals Gap and its 318 turns begin. Up until then it is mostly smooth, mostly flat and mostly straight (well, straight enough that a Miata can run the distance at 55 MPH easy, but in other vehicles your speed may vary.) About 3 miles from the start of the curvy stuff we were barreling along, me & Donna in front and Kurt and Karen not far behind when out pops a small bear cub from the left side of the road.

I take my foot off the gas and tap the brake to slow down. He is probably just going to cross over, but he hears us coming and starts running, not continuing across mind you, but in the same direction of travel as us. I’ve slowed down now to around 30 and both Donna and my head are swiveling looking for the momma bear, because this guy looks huggable sized, maybe 30 – 40 pounds and might not be alone. We don’t see anything but the cub running in the left lane. Just about the time I think he is headed back to the left, he takes a hard right and disappears in front of the car.

I’m going about 20 miles an hour at this point and I’m waiting to feel us run over it, but all we hear is a bump sound and the next thing we see is the small bear sliding down the pavement in the left lane. He skids about 10 feet down the road to a stop in the middle of the left lane. I come to a stop about 10 yards ahead of him. I check my mirror, it looks like Kurt and Karen have stopped pretty much right beside him, and the bear shakes his head a couple times and walks off back to the side of the road from which he came.

Kurt tells us later that as he got to the guardrail and went to duck under, the poor thing bumped his head. He was probably still a little stunned. As were the four of us.

We then drove down the road about a mile and pulled over to look at the nose of the Emperor. Amazingly enough the only sign anything had happened was that that side of the bumper was wet from where I probably knocked the water out of his fur (it had been lightly raining in the area today.)

Coincidentally, about maybe five or ten minutes before this happened, Donna had remarked to me that she was going to be keeping an eye out for bears and deer and such because we are pretty much in the middle of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest nowhere near any civilization…

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1085

7,000 Widgets

Went to SOUTH-TEC 2011 Expo, AKA the Charlotte Tool Show, today with some co-workers. We were there to place eyeballs on a new fancy-schmancy CNC machine we bought and won’t take delivery of for another 16 weeks. And of course, wander every aisle and marvel at all the widgets on display, while managing to score free pens, cheap bags and multi-colored lanyards to give away to the unlucky souls back home who didn’t get to go. We might have even picked up some useful information.

When I first heard we going it was in the company’s Ford 9-passenger van. Ick, who wants to spend 3 hours each way in that thing. When it was confirmed that it was just 4 total going, I offered to drive the group in the Purple Whale. Even with it raining for almost all of the trip, I definitely enjoyed driving in my own car than riding in that van for 340 miles.

Somewhere just south of the South Carolina state line on the way home the Sonata hit the 7,000 mile mark.

Back in the Mountains

After a weekend off, we are back in the mountains again, this time the Georgia & North Carolina ones. We drove up to Hendersonville to see my sister and her husband at the SMH. For the first time in a long time we didn’t eat lunch at West One, but instead ate at Hannah Flanagan’s, where everybody’s Irish. While we are on this trip we are also doing wee bit of geocaching. Nabbed a couple of state parks, a couple of counties and a DeLorme page.

Started down, went up, went down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1069

Tourist Trap Loop

Brother Jim had promised his wife Linda a tour of the Biltmore House, so they left early to be able to take in that attraction before catching a plane back to Houston. Ninety-six year old Dottie made it known that she wanted to see Gatlinburg before they left on Tuesday morning, so Sandy, Paul and she did that today. That left Donna and I to entertain (or more accurately, be entertained by) the Canadian Cousins, Margret & John and Beth & Jim.

We talked them into a trip south to Clingmans Dome, over into Cherokee, NC before heading west and looping back into Tennessee along US129. 😉 Actually both men had heard of the Dragon’s Tail and were interested in driving it.

It was early enough in the morning that the trip through downtown Gatlinburg was easy, but as soon as we hit US441 in the Smokey Mountains National Park we ran into a couple of sections of road work, complete with one lane closed and flagman waits. The road to the top of Clingmans Dome was pretty, but we weren’t sure what we would see at the top because the fog/clouds were pretty thick in spots on the 7 mile road to the tower at the top of highest peak in Tennessee. And at the parking lot looking south into North Carolina, sure enough it was like an ocean of white with a few islands of blue mountain peaks sticking up. We still opted to take the 1/2 mile walk uphill (seriously up hill) to the circular ramp to the top of the 54 foot high tower for a 360 degree view. It was so worth it. NC was still a sea of white, but back north to TN you could a perfect example of how these mountains got their name (the above photo.)

On the way back down the mountain we had two delays, one short, for grazing black bear cub and one long, for a road crew trimming trees (that wasn’t there on the way up.) And as we were leaving the park in NC we had one more slow down, as there were cars pulled off to both sides of road to watch an elk grazing in a field. The 50 mile trip from Gatlinburg to Cherokee had taken us 3 hours and it was nearly lunch, but instead of trying to pick a spot in the tourist town to eat, Donna and I suggested we travel 10 more miles to Bryson City.

If you ever find yourself in Bryson City at lunchtime you can’t do better than The Iron Skillet. The six of us opted for the lunch special of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, cole slaw and a roll for just $6.95. Mmmmm.

The first ten miles of NC28 north of US 19/74 is 4 lane divided, but the last 20 miles is two lanes of awesome windy black top along the Little Tennessee River that is my favorite in the state. About 2/3rds into that span the call comes up on the FRS from the Canadian Cousins behind us in their Chrysler 300C, “So, is this the Gap?” “Nope,” I reply, “Not yet, but in short while we’ll stop at the beginning point for a quick break.” At the Crossroads of Time we were 2 of the 4 cars in the lot, the rest of the 40-50 vehicles there were motorcycles.

The gap run was fun in spurts as I followed some fellow on a cool looking chopper, but he couldn’t go very fast through any of the 318 turns because of how low it sat to the ground. I did what I could by slowing to a near stop until the Chrysler 300C caught up, before racing ahead to catch back up to the chopper. When we stopped at the dam overlook, John told he probably could have kept pace better if not for the two women in the back who were not having as much fun on the roller coaster road as he and Jim were in the front. I don’t doubt it for a bit, as John is a member of the Canadian Mounted Police and had spent quite a few years as a motor patrolman, so I bet he probably could coax a quick run through the Dragon out of that rear-wheel V8.

We finished up the 180 mile day by driving the Foothills Parkway to Townsend, TN for a gas stop, following US321 through Mega Tourist City, Pigeon Forge to Gatlinburg and the cabin.

Redbird Creek


Redbird Creek from the Lookout “Tower” in Fort McAllister State Park.

Just one GA State Park cache today and we counted it towards Bryan County as well. Since Thursday we managed 15 caches that counted as 21 towards our Georgia Challenges (13 counties, 5 DeLorme pages and 3 State Parks.) After the second day in a row of coastal Georgia we both agreed that we have seen enough salt marshes to last us for awhile. Which prompted Donna to ask why we never tired of the other coast’s big rocks and pounding surf? The only answer I could come up with is that it reminds our lizard brain of the sound of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb.

The blue-violet baleen has really needed a bath. Poor thing was just covered in jet exhaust film from ten days in an airport long term lot and the past three days worth of squashed low country bugs. This afternoon it got just that and an internal cleaning as well.

Crooked River


The sun reflects off the Crooked River as viewed from the Georgia State Park of the same name. Six caches, five counties, one DeLorme page and one GA State Park.

How Low Can You Go

We went on a Georgia Geocaching run today. We needed to check on our cache in Santa Claus because of a recent DNF and while we were out, take a route to capture 4 nearby counties of Georgia’s 159 total.

Neither one of us could figure out how we had hid a cache in Toombs county (Santa Claus) without having a find there. So our first stop of the day was to change that. We found LIFE’S A GAME, HAVE FUN! in a park in the town of Lyons. Next stop was to check on the DNF’d cache. Usually one person not finding a cache is not a concern, but the folks who couldn’t find it had over 1,600 finds, so they probably should have found it. The cache was right where we put it last December. That’s the thing with geocaching, no matter how many you have found, you can still get stumped by an occasional easy one.

In some of these small rural counties pickings can be slim, so we only had a total of 11 caches on our list along the route through all 4 counties. One county only has two caches total and we really started sweating badly after we DNF’d the first one we attempted. It was all I could do to talk Donna into looking for the second one because in is #2 on our Most Hated Style Hide List, the guardrail magnetic (the lamp post skirt hide is #1.) We had kind of a rough day, 4 finds and 3 DNFs, but we made the four count, one in each of the counties we wanted.

I don’t know exactly how many miles we traveled today, because I didn’t reset an odometer, but the Google Maps loop I did last night said 268 miles. When we got in the Purple Whale this morning the nifty miles to empty meter read just over 250 miles and the gas gauge was reading one segment over half a tank. We figured we might have to buy a gallon or two of gas in Georgia so we could make it back to the Kroger in Aiken to take advantage of the $1 a gallon off we earned by buying a stove. As the day wore on it looked more and more like we might make it home without having to pay the higher price for gas in Georgia.

We figured we were home free when the miles to empty read 80 miles and the sign said Augusta 41 because Aiken is only, at most 25 miles from Augusta. When the low fuel light came on as we entered the southern part of Augusta I was unconcerned as I figured that meant we had a couple gallons left which was more than enough to make it back. At about 5 miles from Kroger, the Miles To Empty display flat-lined. The last number I remember seeing was 38 a few miles back. We were right near a gas station, briefly considered pulling in, but didn’t. Let’s summarize: the low fuel light has been one awhile, the Miles to Empty display is blank and now the last LCD segment of the gas gauge has started blinking. Visions of the car stalling at the very last light before Kroger were taking form in my mind.

Well, we did make it the Kroger, even waited for a pump to free up with the car still running. I filled the tank with 17.5 gallons of gas and it cost $38.38 or $2.19 per. We had traveled 502.5 miles on that 17.5 gallons so since the last fill up the Sonata got 28.7 MPG. While I was outside filling the tank Donna was inside trying to see exactly how much the car’s tank would hold, turns out it is 18.49 gallons. All that worry about running out of gas and I could have traveled over 28 more miles. As long as all 18-1/2 gallons are usable…