On the Road Again With My Sister For LOADS of R&R!

Because of COVID, I have a backlog of timeshare usage and I'm trying my best to use it up before it expires.  So I traded in a week for a trip to Gatlinburg and dragged my sister along with me!  We ALWAYS have a good time together.

We crammed a HEAP of fun into one week!

Bud Ogle Cabin

Naturally, we spent a lot of time in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park since we were pretty much right there.  We hiked some trails, explored some old homesteads, nosed around some campgrounds, and got our National Parks Passports stamped!

We drove the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.  Our first stop was at the Bud Ogle cabin, where we decided to hike the 0.7-mile, 30-minute, "easy" loop nature trail. 

Well...!

 

We got our fill of hiker's R&R (Roots and Rocks) on that trail.  And we had to clamber over fallen trees, cross streams on either log bridges (where there WERE bridges) or teetering rocks.  My sister actually fell (gracefully) at the last crossing.  The rock rocked one way and she went over the other way.  Luckily I had packed a couple of hiking poles for us and we used them, or it would have been harder on us.

It was NOT an "easy" trail.  I'd call it a moderate trail.  At one point we (I) missed a turn and we had to backtrack a little.  And the "30 minutes" turned into 90 with picking our way through the R&R, which seemed to be most of the trail.  

It was beautiful and QUIET, though, and we enjoyed it.  A bit of a challenge when you're not used to doing that sort of thing, and challenges are good for you - they stretch your horizons!  Right?

Newfound Gap

Our stay overlapped with the 72nd Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in the Park, which a couple of my friends, one of whom is a presenter, attend every year.  So before they arrived, we had our own wildflower extravaganza - they were everywhere!

Geranium

We visited Newfound Gap where there were banks and banks of wildflowers along a stretch of the Appalachian Trail which crosses the road there and continues on to Clingman's Dome and Charlie's Bunion.

Fringed Phacelia

Spring Beauties

White Trilliam

Bluets

Appalachian Trail
 

Iris

Fleabane

Yellow Trillium

It's often rainy in the Smokies in the spring, but we lucked out with the weather that week.  Every day was dry and beautiful except for one, which we used as our day of R&R (Rest and Recovery) before going out and doing it all again!

We did much more in and out of the Park, but I'll stop here for now.

My June Vacation in September (Part 2) - Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas

If you haven't seen the previous post in this series, my sister and I try to take a vacation together at least once a year, and this year, we had originally planned to take the trip in June, but life intervened and we postponed it to September.  I picked her up in Louisville and drove to Nashville, where we did a little sightseeing.  From Nashville, we drove to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the main event of the vacation.  At 97 degrees, Nashville had been hot, and we were looking forward to going somewhere milder.  But when we arrived in Hot Springs, it was 98 degrees!  And no relief in the immediate forecast.

The first day in a new place is always our orientation day.  Where are the grocery stores, shopping centers, and gas stations?  How do we get to the local places of interest?  So Sunday we drove all over the place, reconnoitering.

We wound up walking around downtown Hot Springs and ended at the Arlington Hotel, a historic building and the largest hotel in town, with 500 rooms.  The dining room was elegantly old-fashioned and the food was amazing!  I ordered a lunch portion of meatloaf, but a dinner portion arrived at the table - three huge slabs - a mountain of meat!

Arlington Hotel

The town was way different from our expectations.  We thought there would be a row of bathhouses and not much else, plus the mountains on either side.  But it's a real for-real town!  The historic downtown sits on the opposite side of the street from the bathhouses, and the newer parts are south of the historic street.  There's a casino and a horse track - the track has been there since 1905!  Hot Springs is where spring training for baseball started.  Babe Ruth and other famous old-time ballplayers were here - and gangsters, too.  So much history!  So much fun!

Our first day, partly because of the heat, we took a couple of tours at the National Park visitors center.  One was a walking tour outside and focused on how the thermal springs work, and we walked to an open

Hot water cascade

spring, plus up to the Grand Promenade to see a whole lot of springs that have numbered protective covers over them.  All the water is piped to holding tanks and sent to thermal jug fountains, drinking fountains, and bathhouses - about 700,000 gallons A DAY.  Unbelievable!  There was also an unnumbered seep in a grassy area.  When one of the people on the tour asked about it, the ranger said it's a new spring that showed up about five years ago!  The hot water from that little spring flowed across the grass and the Promenade, and into the grass on the other side, then soaked into the ground.  The water was hot enough that any grass it touched was brown.

Tufa Trail

After that short presentation, we walked farther down the Grand Promenade to the Tufa Trail, which connects the Grand Promenade to the Arlington Hotel's historic grand lawn and a hot water cascade.  Then back along the main street, Central Avenue, to the visitors center for a tour of the Fordyce bathhouse, which houses the visitors center.  We saw the changing rooms, the bathing rooms, the shower rooms - everything!  There were HUGE bathtubs, sitz baths, "needle" showers, cooling rooms, "vapor cabinets" that looked like something straight out of a 1930s Popeye cartoon, and the hydrotherapy room.

Fordyce Bathhouse "skylight"

The men's changing room had a fancy fountain - an Indian maiden offering a duck to DeSoto.  Seriously - a DUCK.  The guys' side also had a beautiful stained glass ceiling/skylight that included naked ladies.  Oh my!

DeSoto and Duck fountain

Nothing like that on the gals' side!  Upstairs were a gymnasium, gathering rooms, resting rooms.  There was even a roof garden.

Then we walked down to the Superior bathhouse, where they've opened a microbrewery and cafe.  They use the spring water to brew their beers, including ROOT BEER.  We had fabulous portabello sandwiches, potato salad, and root beer floats.  YUM!

Lamar Bathhouse

After lunch, we walked to the Lamar bathhouse, where the National Parks has the gift shop.  They sell glass jugs to fill with spring water if you didn't bring your own.  There were always people filling jugs at the spring fountains, many with multiple gallon jugs.  We had a good time looking at all the fun stuff, then walked back to the Fordyce where we looked at the exhibit rooms and watched a couple of videos - one told about Hot Springs history, and the other demonstrated the typical sequence of a bathhouse treatment.

Hot Springs Mountain Tower

The next morning, I drove up to Hot Springs Mountain and North Mountain to look around and explore the loop road.   There weren't many people up there, so it was quiet.  On North Mountain, I saw a doe and a fawn at the side of the road.  On Hot Springs Mountain, I checked out the tower and discovered that with a National Parks Passport you get a discount on the ride to the top.  Then down to pick up my sister for lunch.

Tower view of North Mountain 

We ate The Purple Cow, a doo-wop style diner - great onion rings, lots of I Love Lucy memorabilia, oldies playing in the background, and PURPLE milkshakes!    After lunch, we headed back to the mountains and up the tower.  Expansive vistas of green hills and deep blue skies met us when we exited the elevator.  We couldn't avoid the gift shop at the base of the tower, and we parted with some folding money there.  Driving down from the mountains we saw another doe and two spotty fawns.

 In the morning I drove up to the mountains again and hiked the two-mile trail that loops around the top of Hot Springs Mountain.  I only encountered two people on the trail, hiking in the opposite direction from me.  It was definitely warm, but shaded, and it wasn't miserable in the mid-morning.  Later the heat was oppressive - again.  That's the way it was every day of this trip - hot hot hot.  Ugh.

All these trips to the mountains sound time consuming, don't they?   But the truth is the historic town of Hot Springs is situated in a narrow valley between Hot Springs Mountain and West Mountain.  Hot Springs Mountain rises directly behind the bathhouses and the historic buildings across the street are backed right up against the face of West Mountain.  When you drive up Hot Springs Mountain, you can look directly down at the roofs of the bathhouses.  There are a couple of steep trails that start downtown and end at the Hot Springs Mountain Tower, and I saw crazy people climbing them in that terrific heat.  Looked like unnecessary self-inflicted torture.  Not me, thank you very much!

The following day, we "took the waters," but that's in Part 3, so you'll have to wait to hear about that!

Take a Hike!

One of my favorite things to do is to HIKE.

I love being outdoors, watching wildlife, and seeing historical sites.  I haven't been able to do much hiking for a while because I've been plagued with plantar fasciitis off and on.  My feet would hurt if I walked too far or too fast, so I slowed down and scaled back.  Then my feet did better, but my balance and confidence deteriorated.  

The plantar fasciitis has finally retreated, and I've gotten better at walking.  Because I had to slow down for so long, I have to continually remind myself to walk a little faster - to "stop walking like an old lady."  It's a hard habit to break!

Anyway, the past few weeks, I've started hiking again.  It's crazy how drastically it has changed my attitude.  I feel like the old me - or more accurately, I feel like a younger me!

For my first "official" hike, I went to Shades State Park one day and hiked to the Pine Hills Nature Preserve, one of my favorite spots in the state.  To be honest, I didn't hike the entire trail and go down into the ravine because I was afraid - afraid I might fall, afraid I would have a terrible time getting back up out of the ravine.  Just afraid.  But I made it all the way to the end of Turkey Backbone, where the trail heads down about a zillion wooden steps to the bottom.  I missed seeing the honeycombed sandstone bluffs, Indian and Clifty creeks, the warm water upwellings in the creeks, the old woolen mill site, and Devil's Backbone, but I made it as far as I thought I should for my first time out in the woods alone.  And I reveled in it!

What hiking at Shades did was give me the confidence to hike someplace unfamiliar again.

Six days later, I drove to Berea, Kentucky, and attempted The Pinnacles in the Berea College Forest.  The first part of the trail headed up and up and up.  And up.  And then up some more.   It was relentless.  When I reached the first trail crossing, I turned toward the East Pinnacle, and the trail leveled out at last!  Easy walking for a good half mile, then a sharp little turn and a little uphill, a narrowing of the trail, and out of the shade of the trees into the baking sun.  That's where I turned around.  Back along the nice level portion, then down, down, down, down, down to the trailhead.  I never made it to the East Pinnacle, but again, I reveled in making it as far as I did, especially that first uphill section.  It convinced me that I could do even more!

Two days after that, I traveled farther south to Cumberland Gap National Park.  I found the Iron Furnace trailhead and headed up the trail in intermittent rain showers.  There were plenty of people on the trail to the furnace ruins, but once I left the furnace behind, I was completely alone.  Again, the trail climbed relentlessly up and up, to the historic gap where the Wilderness Road crossed the Cumberland Mountains from Tennessee into Kentucky.  As the trail approached the gap, it became steeper.  When I reached the gap, I heard voices!  A family hiking in the opposite direction took my picture.  They were the only people I encountered.  

And here's the proof I actually made it!  I didn't turn around until I reached the actual historic Cumberland Gap.  I walked the road blazed by Daniel Boone in 1775.  What an experience!  

So now I'm searching for interesting places to hike.  Any suggestions?  Leave a comment!