Fall Creek Falls - Day Five

Saturday, October 20, 2012 - Homeward Bound

I woke up at 7 a.m., ready to go home.  We'd packed away the food, the dishes, and the cookware before bed last night.  I started the coffee perking while we yanked the linens off the bed and hauled the suitcases and coolers to the truck.  We drank a cup of coffee, then battened down the camper hatches before going to the inn for the breakfast buffet.

A little after 10 a.m., we hitched up the camper and pulled out.  Our plan was to go home a different way than we'd come, so we used the back exit to leave the park.  A few miles later, the road grew curvy and steep.  The camper brakes clicked and groaned, the truck down-shifted and roared as we eased around u-shaped curves.  It took us about an hour to get to flatter, straighter pavement, and when we did, we realized that we were actually on the same road we'd used to get there (the name of the "Bent Beetle" car lot gave it away, as we both remembered having seen it on the way in).

We drove through Murfreesboro and Franklin.  At Franklin, we pulled the camper straight through the middle of the old downtown section, where yuppies were drinking expensive coffee at tables outside hip cafes and strolling their babies down tree-lined sidewalks.  We waved and drove on.  We got on the interstate west of Franklin - enough of these backroads!  It was almost 6 p.m. by the time we backed the camper into our driveway.

Cousin Stephen next door was having a birthday party for himself.  Cousin Stephen is a drummer.  He'd hauled his drum set out in the yard and was testing them out.  His buddies were standing by with their electric guitars.  Together, they comprise a heavy metal band.  Clearly, they were planning to serenade the neighborhood.  Once we'd unloaded the truck, I stepped out in the yard and hollered, "Stephen?"  One of the buddies yelled back that Stephen had gone inside the house for a minute.  I hollered, "Tell him Cousin Joel said he'd bring his banjo over if y'all need him."  We heard muted laughter, but they said they'd tell him, for sure.

A minute later, Stephen came out and gave the drums a good pounding.  One of the other boys played a warm-up riff on his electric guitar.  Suddenly, from across the road, we heard Stephen's Uncle Roger yell from the front porch of his trailer, "Stephen, y'all cut that sh*t out!  Don't nobody want to hear that #*@(! racket!  I'm trying to watch a ballgame over here and can't even hear the #(@)! TV!"  Stephen gave his drum set another pounding in response. 

Joel and I chuckled and went in the house.  We were hungry, and decided we'd go out to eat instead of trying to scare up something to cook at home.  When we came back out to get in the truck, there were two po-lice cars parked in Stephen's yard, blue lights just a-flashin'.  Apparently, Uncle Roger meant business.

When we returned home, Cousin Stephen and the boys had moved the concert inside the house;  the neighborhood was relatively quiet.  I put on my favorite old nightgown and went to bed with a book, not one bit bothered by the soft thumping coming from next door.  I hadn't reached the end of the first page when I conked out.

It's good to be home!

Fall Creek Falls - Day Four

Friday, October 19, 2012 - Pikeville and Places Unknown

This morning, as soon as we’d cleaned up the breakfast dishes, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”  Last night, Joel had mapped out a route to Pikeville.  We climbed in the truck and headed out.

Just outside the park was an Indian trading post, and we stopped to browse.  We told the guy running the store that we were going to Pikeville.  He said we’d miss it if we blinked.

We found it.  We parked the truck on the main drag and got out to look around.  I found a store called “The Loom” that had fabric and a little bit of everything else.  I scored a few tiny skeins of honest-to-goodness tatting thread (I haven't tatted in years, but now I may have to dig out the shuttle and re-learn the art).  Joel found a gun & ammo store that was going out of business and lucked up on a bargain or two.

After we’d pretty much seen all there was to see in Pikeville, we decided to just drive south for a while to see what was there.  If we’d kept driving, we’d have been in Dayton, Tennessee.  I’d already been to Dayton, site of the Scopes Trial, and had no urge to go back there.  We eventually turned around and headed back the way we came.  Before we got back to Pikeville, Joel suddenly turned left and said, “Let’s see what’s up here.”

Pikeville is situated in the Sesquatchie Valley.  To the west was the escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau.  We drove up a little road that was very steep, and so curvy we could almost see our tail lights as we rounded bends.  At the top of the hill, the road forked.  We picked a direction and kept driving.

All this time, I had the laptop open with Streets & Trips loaded, and I was trying to find us on the maps.  The road signage wasn’t the best in the world, and I couldn’t determine our location.  Figuring it was futile effort, I plugged in the GPS and told it to take us to Fall Creek Falls.  After about 10 minutes of “Acquiring Satellite” (during which time we aimlessly drove around) it finally located us.  It said we were only 12 miles away, and that we should keep going the way we were going. 

The roads got narrower and narrower.  If we met a car (and we didn’t meet many), we had to move onto the shoulder to let it pass.  Finally, the GPS shouted "Turn left!"  onto Fire Tower Road.  Joel didn’t much like the looks of the road, but the GPS showed that it led straight into the park.  I convinced him to go.

The pavement gave way to gravel real fast.  We went across washboard ruts, and through mud holes so deep that we feared being swallowed up by them.  Took us about 20 minutes to go two miles.  Joel said, “I hope we find civilization soon, ‘cause I need to whiz.”  I said, “Well, hell…just get out and go.  Who’s going to see you?”  About that time, we topped a little hill, and there was the main road into the park.  We both breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of pavement.

Back at the camp site, we decided to start packing up to leave tomorrow.  When that was finished, we sat outside the camper and spent the afternoon feeding peanuts to the squirrels.   It doesn’t take much to entertain us, eh?

At 6 p.m., we drove over to the Inn.  We’d heard that they put on a good seafood buffet on Friday nights.  Apparently, everyone in three counties knows this and comes to eat on Friday night; there was a line a mile long to get into the restaurant.  Thankfully, the line moved quite swiftly.  To be honest, the buffet wasn’t “all that.”  Catfish, fried shrimp, fried frog legs, crab legs, hush puppies, and sides.  There was also salad and dessert.  We left the restaurant as full as ticks, but thinking that the food hadn’t been quite worth the $24 apiece we’d paid to eat there.  At least we didn’t have to cook.

It’s dark at the campsite now.  The kiddies are hanging close to their own camp sites.  It’s pretty quiet, save for the multitude of dogs barking around the park.  There's an owl hooting somewhere in the trees above us.  Joel said, "I hope that owl swoops down and carries off that little yappy-ass dog up the road so we can get some sleep tonight." 

We leave in the morning.  We’d thought about driving on down to Georgia to see some friends, but we are really just ready to go home.  After four nights in the camper bed, I’m longing for my sleep number mattress, and my garden and my sewing machine are probably missing me.

Fall Creek Falls - Day Three

Thursday, October 18, 2012 - Sparta

It was wet outside this morning.  Last night's rain soaked everything - picnic table, folding chairs, our firewood, everything.  Water dripped from the leaves overhead.  Instead of cooking outside on the stove, we fired up the stove inside the camper and scrambled some eggs to go with the sausage left over from yesterday. 

Today was road trip day.  There isn’t much to see in the immediate neighborhood outside the park, so we looked up some surrounding towns on a map and decided to go to Sparta.  We’d been told there was a Walmart in Sparta, and we needed to go there for some toilet dope and a few other supplies. 

On the drive up to Sparta, we oooh’d and aaaaah’d over the beautiful scenery. 

The hills were riots of color.  I said to Joel, “I’m going to make us a Fall Creek Falls quilt when we get home – yellows, oranges, browns, greens…I can see it in my head.”  He nodded, just to make me think he was listening.

In Sparta, we found a parking spot on the court square.  As luck would have it, our front windshield was aimed directly at a quilt shop!  Joel kind of groaned when he heard my swift intake of breath and followed my gaze.  “It’s fate!” I said as I bailed out of the truck.

It was a really nice little shop, with a really nice little lady running it and nice little ladies shopping in it.  One of the ladies struck up a conversation with us.  It turned out that she and her husband were also camping at Fall Creek Falls; he’d dropped her off and gone to Walmart.  I told Joel that he could go run some errands while I shopped, but he stayed close by.  I’m thinking he was scared to leave me alone with the credit card in a quilt shop. 

After we left the quilt shop, we walked a few blocks down the street to the county museum.  Lester Flatt lived in (or near) Sparta, as did Benny Martin, and one nook in the museum was dedicated to them and their music.  We have never had such personal service at any museum.  One of the attendants stayed at our side, telling us about each display.  It was great.  When we left, she armed us with a flyer or two, and even gave us a 2006 calendar (“It’s out of date, but it’s got pretty pictures of White County in it.”)

By that time, we were hungry.  I was thinking about salsa, chips, and a margarita, and as we drove around, surveying our culinary options, I kept an eye out for a Mexican restaurant.  As we drove, I glimpsed a red, green, and white sign down a side street that said “Casa [Something].”  "I see a Mexican place!" I shouted.  Joel turned the truck around, and we went in.  My first hint that I’d misunderstood the sign happened when we walked in and saw a dessert case that contained cannoli.  Cannoli in a Mexican restaurant?  Sure enough, it was an Italian restaurant.  We ate there anyway.  It was delicious, but the lunch special – two calzone and one personal-sized pan pizza – was way more food than two people ought to eat.  Guess what we’ll be having for dinner tonight?

Back at the camp site, we saw that our next door neighbors had brought a cat with them.  The wife was walking the cat on a leash.  Have you ever seen a cat on a leash?  I hadn’t, but this cat was acting exactly like I would have imagined a cat on a leash would act.  It hunkered, and darted, and fought the leash, and looked utterly pissed and embarrassed to have found itself in this situation.  I wondered if the lady was walking the cat for exercise or if she was taking it out to potty, and as she neared our campsite, I worked up the nerve to just ask her, “Does that cat go potty on the leash?”  You know how funny cats are about their “business.”  They like to sniff, and dig, and squat, and cover it up, and they like some privacy while they’re doing it.  The lady said he “sometimes does,” but they carry a litter box with them anyway.   

Take this to the bank:  you will never, ever catch me taking a cat and a litter box on a camping trip.

Fall Creek Falls - Day Two

Wednesday, October 17, 2012 - Touring the Park

Since it was not very chilly this morning, we opted to cook breakfast outside – sausage and scrambled eggs on the Coleman stove on the picnic table, and gooey, sugary, cinnamon monkey bread in the microwave.  As soon as we’d washed up the dishes, we climbed in the truck for a tour of the park.

Our timing of this trip is perfect; I don’t know if the leaves could be more beautiful.

 

We’ve stayed here before, and on that trip, we hiked down to the falls, so we weren’t all fired-up about hiking down to the waterfalls again.  Instead, we stopped at the overlooks and peeked at the falls from a distance. 

 

 

 

We were back at the campsite by early afternoon.  I made ham sandwiches, and we ate them at the picnic table, watching squirrels play between the campsites.  One of the afternoon’s more entertaining activities went on in the campsite behind ours.  When the campers who were at this site when we got here decided to leave, they backed into a tree while trying to get their camper out of the site.  When the next campers arrived, they backed their camper into a different tree while trying to get in it.  We tried not to giggle, having done some pretty dumb camping sh*t in our day, ourselves.

About 5 o’clock, we started dinner – steaks on the grill, and fried potatoes on the Coleman stove.  It was almost dark by the time we finished eating.  We attempted to build a fire in the fire pit.  It smoldered and smoked, and finally burst into good flames about the time we gave up and went inside for the night.

Some time during the night, a whale of a storm came up.  Acorns, pine cones, and sticks rained down on our camper until it sounded like we were in a popcorn popper.  And the thunder!  Good heavens!  It shook the ground and rattled the dishes in the drain rack.  Joel worried that the wind would twist the  awning right off the camper, and he went outside a couple of times during the night to adjust it.  I couldn’t sleep, either; the little pull-out that contains our “bedroom” collects heat like an oven, and at some point during the night, I crawled across Joel, pillow in hand, and bedded down on the skinny little couch up front.  Between the heat, the uncomfortable bed, and the storm, neither of us slept much.

Mt. Rushmore...NOT; Fall Creek Falls...Maybe

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

We’ve been contemplating a road trip to see Mt. Rushmore.  We figured we’d need about half a day at the monument, and then we’d spend the rest of our two weeks driving here, there, and yonder out west.  But a couple of weeks ago, I checked the weather at Mt. Rushmore, and it was already 28 degrees and snowing.  Neither of us cherished the idea of driving on snowy mountain roads in terrain we know nothing about.  We decided we’d better formulate Plan B.  As our vacation dates approached, I checked the 10-day forecast for Mt. Rushmore.  It looked safe (weather-wise), but by then we were sort of out of the mood to drive that far.

Plan B ended up being a camping trip to Fall Creek Falls, in east Tennessee. 

We pulled out of the driveway at 7:30 this morning.  Stopped at a convenience store for sausage biscuits to go, and then hit the road to Jackson, Tennessee, where we intended to catch highway 412 east, which would take us nearly all the way to Fall Creek Falls.  Long story short, we spent about an hour driving around Jackson, looking for 412.  We found it briefly, then lost it again, and ended up w-a-a-a-ay the hell out in the country.  This, with a GPS, Google Maps on the telephone, and Microsoft Streets & Trips on the laptop.  We couldn’t even find ourselves on a map.  Finally, we found two good old boys loading stuff into the bed of a pickup truck, and they gave us directions that (we hoped) would set us back on course.  Good thing we enjoy traveling the back roads, eh?

Around 1 p.m., we reached Murfreesboro.  Though we had already sampled nearly every “road snack” we’d brought with us, we started thinking about food – real lunch.  I’d brought chicken salad and chips for lunch on the road, but I told Joel, “It wouldn’t upset me to find a Mexican restaurant.”  Evidently, he didn’t take me seriously; he kept driving. 

1:30 p.m. – my legs have commenced cramping.  I said, “I sure would like to get out and stretch.”  He kept driving. 

 2 p.m. – I said, “I NEED TO GET OUT.”  He kept driving.

2:05 – I unbuckled my seat belt.  After a moment, the seat belt alarm went off.  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.  Joel acted like he didn’t hear it.  So did I.  After another moment, it dinged again.  He glanced over at me.  I pretended not to notice.   The third time the alarm went off, it was insistent.

Dingdingdingdingdingdingdingdingdingdingding…!

Joel looked over at me.  I could see a little irritation on his face.  “I’m not buckling it until I’ve been let out of this truck,” I told him. 

“I’ll let you out, allright,” he said.  “I’ll put you out, and not let you back in.” 

“You wouldn’t,” I said.

“I might let you get in the back of the truck.  You could stretch out back there,” he said.  I stuck my tongue out at him.  Thankfully, despite my attitude, he pulled over at the nearest convenience store. 

We got out, ate our sandwiches standing up, and were back on the road in 20 minutes.

4 p.m. – We finally arrived.  There were six campers lined up on the road ahead of us, waiting to check in.  We’d already paid in advance with a credit card, so we zoomed past them, found our campsite, and unhitched the camper.  While he lowered the legs and leveled the thing, I went back to the camp office to formally check in.  It took two tries around the loop before I found my way out of the camping area.

This is a nice park.  The camp sites are roomy, so we’re not jammed up in anybody’s front door.  However, the schools around here must be on fall break; the place is swarming with children.  Loud children.   And one of them has the croup and periodically belts out loud, seal-like, barking noises.  No telling when all these little monsters will finally go to bed.

I told Joel that campgrounds need to have “senior” sections – no kids allowed – for us old farts who travel without children.  Naturally, we would not feel this way if they were our own grand-rug-rats kicking up a racket.