Tuesday, December 21, 2010

North Carolina, and then Atlanta for Thanksgiving

From Virginia, we headed south, following the general direction of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We knew we would have a Walmart experience at least once on the trip, and this was the night (ran out of campground options).   Aside from our neighboring trucks running their generators all night, it was a welcome spot, with shopping (and toilets) available 24 hours.  And the price was right, so we were content. 

We scheduled a brief stop at the Camping World in Statesville, North Carolina, to have a vital part installed and complete the repair of our precious toilet.  We stayed overnight at a fascinating campground that we just happened to pick out of the rv books.  It was called the Van Hoy Campground, and it occupied at huge site with a lot of forested trails and a big stadium that has been used for an old time fiddler's convention.  It was very late in the season, and many sites were empty except for full-timers. It seemed like there was no one running the place.  But we enjoyed walking the  grounds, in between efforts to organize the RV repair.

Our efforts were successful, and we were able to move on after only one night in Statesville, continuing down the highway to a short stop near Hickory, North Carolina.  Our luck with campgrounds continued, with a lovely spot located in a wooded bowl near a local river, quite far from the highway, quiet, and with excellent birding.  The weather was continuing cold in the morning, but warming during the day to quite acceptable levels.  Hickory itself was largely uninteresting, consisting almost entirely of giant shopping malls, so far as we could see.  But they had a movie theater complex and that was welcome.


Our explorations near the camp focused on a local museum devoted to the history of the Waldensian movement in North Carolina.  The museum was located in the nearby town of Valdese, which was founded by the movement and still holds many of its adherents today.  I was surprised to learn that this is one of the oldest surviving Protestant movements still around, dating from the late twelfth century.  As a result it was one of the most persecuted sects in history, almost wiped out on some occasions, but eventually many of the adherents moved to our shores and settled in North Carolina.  Their adventures here make a fascinating story, as does the history of the European phase.  And there were some wonderful crafts and churches that the group created.  Among the interesting factoids was the startling news that the Sunbeam brand of breads was founded by the Waldensians as a small local bakery and grew enormously until it was purchased by the mega-corp that owns it today.

Next, on to Asheville, an attractive town located quite close to both the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Once again, we were lucky in our choice of campground, locating one on a local creek halfway between Asheville and the park.  Using that as a base of operations, we explored both areas over the next few days.  A nice find was the small and charming community of Waynesville, near the campground.    It's a bit of an arts center, with a very nice main street containing local arts and crafts places along with community watering holes which we took full advantage of.

The next day was spent exploring the National Park.  We drove the Blue Ridge Parkway from our campground to the park, enjoying the views and countryside.  It was late in the fall, heading into Thanksgiving, and the trees were bare and traffic was light.  But the country was magnificent, as advertised.   On the Cherokee reservation we visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian.  This is one of the best that we've seen.  Native American history and lore have been a strong focus of our travels, and we've learned a whole lot.

That said, the town of Cherokee itself was a bit of a tourist trap.  Endless overpriced knick-knacks and all the trimmings of a town posted at the mouth of a popular national park.  There were hucksters selling Indian dance performances for the few tourists and the stores were mostly empty. Other attractions that looked interesting were closed for the season.   But we enjoyed it anyway.  On to the park itself.  We didn't have time for a full exploration - that's also a theme of this trip -  but we made our way up the highway that leads to the highest peak in the park.  The peak itself was shrouded in clouds, but we had great views in all directions.  We also took a good hike along some of the trails that led across the mountains.  We trod the Appalachian trail for a short distance and went off on a side route as well.

The next day was directed more to the neighborhood of the town of Asheville itself.  Close by, and located on the Blue Ridge Parkway, is the Folk Art Center, the most visited part of the Blue Ridge Parkway and a major national repository of folk art in the region.  The work there is extremely professional, and artists compete to get memberships and show their work.  We were not able to get pictures, alas, but the museum and gift shop were remarkable.

We returned to the Great Smokies the next morning, heading this time to a secluded valley on the eastern side.  The road there was challenging, gravel, narrow, and twisting, with steep dropoffs, and Ivy had a lot of fun driving in.  But it was worth the trip.  Before the area became a national park, there was a small village here and many of the buildings have been preserved.  There is a good-sized elk herd that has been established in the valley, and we spent some time watching these fine animals.  It was late in the season, and there were only a few tourists in the valley.  It was a lovely, peaceful day.

The next day, we headed down the road to Atlanta.  Since the very beginning of the trip,we had been planning to spend the Thannksgiving weekend with Ivy's brother and his family.  It was a rendezvous point over a very long distance, and I was very satisfied to have made it, after all of our various trials and tribulations on the way.  Albert and his wife and children were very welcoming, and we had a great time.  The food was fabulous.  The Thanksgiving dinner included twenty-two people, and we had a chance to meet some of  their good friends.  We also toured the city and visited some local attractions.  On our last evening in town, we went to a see a musical group called Hot Club from Cowtown, in a local spot called Eddie's Attic.  They were spectacular, a trio of very accomplished musicians that projected incredible energy onstage. 

Saying a fond goodbye, we headed east towards the Atlanta coast, and our wintering grounds in Florida.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

New Jersey, and then south for the winter

Ivy has a sister who lives in Livingston, New Jersey with her teenage daughter who is heading off to college next year.  So we took a drive in our little red car from Gettysburg to her place to stay for a few days and visit.  On the way, we stopped at my cousin Sheila's house in Rutherford, New Jersey to visit and catch up with her and her husband.  The New Jersey traffic was, quite frankly, horrible, and I was glad we had decided to leave the RV.  It was a lot simpler.  Even so, our GPS got confused and tried to send us on an unnecessary trip through the Holland Tunnel, and there was much anxiety and confusion over how to get where we were going.  But it all worked out.

We went out to lunch with my cousin and her husband.  Sheila is very knowledgeable in family history, so we had lots of discussion about that.  She also gave me a CD recorded in the twenties by my uncle Roger Kahn, who was a bandleader for a number of different jazz bands in the era.  He composed also, and his most famous number was Crazy Rhythm, which is on the CD.  It was a real treat to get it.  We enjoyed a relaxing and pleasant afternoon in Sheila's house with her many cats.



Later in the evening we went to Ivy's sister Susan's house.  She lives in a pleasant suburban neighborhood, and we luxuriated in having an indoor shower larger than a breadbox and a guest bedroom to sleep in.  Over the weekend we had a visit from Ivy's stepmom and sister from Long Island, who braved the traffic to come to New Jersey to visit with us.  And we did some shopping, and had some east coast luxuries, like good bagels and deli.  Then it was back to Gettysburg to continue our trip.


The next day we were back on the road, heading to Virginia.  It was definitely time to start heading south, as nights had been getting down into the low thirties pretty regularly.  We knew we didn't have too much time and we fled south to escape the frost line.  Our first stop was at the town of Luray, Virginia, just west of the Shenandoah National Park.  We happened onto a very nice RV park, run by a Swiss couple, a few miles outside of town.  Using that camp as a base, we toured parts of the National Park with our little car, travelling along the famous Skyline Drive that travels for about a hundred miles down the spine of the mountains.  The park was partly closed this late in the year, but the views off the drive were spectacular as advertised  

Next we toured the Luray Caverns, a cave system that advertises itself as the most visited in the country.  It is indeed a spectacular set of caves, equal to or better than the caves at Great Basin.  These are caves of the "decorated" variety, with huge complex formations made of limestone over centuries.  It's a much larger cave set than others we've seen, and has some huge rooms with dramatic formations.  I took lots of pictures.  And I took a great bike ride the next day, from the RV park into Luray and back, over some beautiful countryside with the Shenandoah National Park in the background.  Stopped for coffee in town and toured around taking pictures.



It was here in Luray that we managed to break our RV toilet.  One of the flushing levers broke and the toilet became unusable.  At our ages, the lack of a toilet is close to a crisis, so we had to work quickly to get it repaired and replaced.  Luray was too small to have the necessary resources, so we headed to our next stop, Roanoke, where we could get some repair facilities.  We camped outside of town at the Smith Mountain Lake State Park, a lovely spot in the hills about thirty miles out of Roanoke. From there, we were able to utilize the the big city resources to get a new one.  Unfortunately, may attempts to install the replacement ran into problems that the local folks couldn't deal with, and we had to push the repair down the road into a Camping World in North Carolina.

We visited Ivy's aunt and cousin while in Roanoke. Ivy's aunt is 95 years old, and still living in her home and taking care of it herself.  Since she no longer drives, her daughter and son in law help her frequently.    We all went to a local restaurant for an excellent lunch and then  took Aunt Annie to see the Roanoke Star, a monument atop a high mountain around Roanoke.  Although she had lived in Salem   for 20 or so years, Annie had never seen this particular sight.  So we had a good time taking her up there.

While we were staying at our campground, we visited the Booker T Washington Monument, which was located nearby.  This is a large scale restoration of the small plantation where Booker T Washington was raised as a slave before the Civil War.  It was small farm, typical of the period, where everyone worked in the fields and the slaves lived in dirt floor huts, cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  The buildings were simple and primitive, and gave us a bit of an education about conditions in that era. 


We headed off toward North Carolina, staying just a few miles ahead of the frost line.