November 29
[Taken 26 November 2005 | In the Chess Display at the Cleveland Public Library | Cleveland, OH]
I need to play more chess.
I can remember playing a lot of chess with my parents, especially my Dad, on family camping vacations when my brothers and I were growing up. For a little while my Dad had a wager going on that if one of us (my brothers or I) beat him, then he would pay the winner $5. I don't remember ever winning the money, but it sure was good motivation to challenge Dad to a lot of games.
Edited to add: According to my Mom, "Regarding the $5 bet to beat dad at chess. Dad stopped that after Jeff beat him twice during our drive out west one vacation. Dad wasn't concentrating (?) and or Jeff was getting too good as a 10 year old."
November 28
[Taken 26 November 2005 | Family Dinner | Cleveland, OH]
Now for the Great Thanksgiving Recap.
Wednesday morning it started to snow… during a morning meeting, we all kept staring out the window watching it snow harder and harder and the snow start to stick on the sidewalks and parking lot. After the meeting I wrapped up everything I had left to do as quickly as possible and then left so I could hit the road as soon as possible.
The drive to Cleveland was painful.
It was snowing the whole way – not ever really hard, but certainly steadily. Because it was the first real sticking snow of the season, people were driving stupidly slowly (even though the roads really were not in bad shape), and some people were just driving stupidly. I saw a lot of cars that had slid off of the road and were stuck in the berm.
On a good (normal) day it takes about 3.5-4 hours to drive from Dayton to Cleveland. On Wednesday it took almost 8 hours. I left my house at a little bit after 2, and I didn't get to my parents' place in Cleveland until almost 10. Before I left my house I called and left a message that they should expect me around 7:30. My Dad and I had a good laugh over that one when I finally got in. The roads were so slow… there was a portion of I-71, which is in the middle of absolute nowhere between Columbus and Cleveland, where the traffic was inching along at less then 5 miles per hour. Idling speed. I could have walked faster. In fact, I don't think that I got over 20 miles per hour at all the entire stretch of I-71 between Columbus and Cleveland.
Ah well. I got home all right in the end.
All of my brothers made it home for the holiday as well.
Thursday… Thanksgiving… the usual round of the relatives' houses. The usual chatting and laughter and great food all around. My favorite Thanksgiving food? This year, definitely the candied yams. So yummy. And of course the turkey with Grandma's stuffing recipe… crusty bread and butter and eggs all shoved inside the bird to cook and soak up the juices. Mmmmmm.
First early dinner/late lunch with Granny and Gramps and my Mom's family. It has been getting really difficult for me to understand what Granny says… she speaks really softly and sort of mumbles, so I find myself saying "What?" a lot and leaning forward. Or just holding her hand, and smiling and nodding… and hoping that smiling and nodding is the appropriate thing to do. I have been getting along with her and Gramps a lot better since she had her aortic aneurism a few years ago… I regret that I didn't make more of an effort to connect before she started to have so many health problems.
Then a second dinner at Grandma's with my Dad's side of the family. Grandma has been starting to talk about possibly selling her house and going to live in an apartment, so she has been starting to divest herself of possessions. This holiday she invited everyone to go upstairs to Pop's old studio space and pick out some of his paintings and drawings to take home. I already have some of his paintings hanging up in my house, but I was happy to be able to pick out some more. In addition to some finished and framed paintings, I also picked out a number of his still-lifes and studies that I have always admired… I will mat and frame and hang them up as well. I hope that Grandma will be able to come to see my house someday, and she can see all of Pop's work that I have hanging up.
Mom had to work on Friday, so I just hung around home and relaxed. I don't think that anyone could have paid me enough to go anywhere near a retail establishment on Black Friday. I did get out of the house of a little while… Dad and I went to the metropark right up the street from their house and tramped around in the snow for a little while. I commented to Mom when she got home later that afternoon that the weather was more like Christmas then Thanksgiving.
One of the things that I like best about going home to visit my folks, besides my Mom's cooking, is in the evening, playing scrabble while sipping wine and eating cheese and crackers. My Mom favors using the "Official Scrabble Dictionary" to settle disputes, while I prefer Webster's or the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED). The official scrabble dictionary seems to have a lot of words in foreign languages, and abbreviations, and slang, which I always thought was verboten in scrabble. There were several points where my Dad was insisting on checking for words in multiple dictionaries. Heh. :)
Mom was off from work on Saturday, so she and I went out for a day together.
We started out by going to the West Side Market so that I could stock up on gourmet ravioli from Ohio City Pasta. I wish I could get ravioli like that in Dayton, but I cannot, and Ohio City Pasta does not (alas) take internet orders. So I have to wait until I go to Cleveland to visit my folks and then stock up.
We stuck around downtown Cleveland for a little while, and went to St. John's Cathedral and the Public Library, which we haven't had a chance to do for several years. St. John's is very cool and pretty old (1840s), but of course no where near as big and as old as anything in Europe. But still neat. Very peaceful and quiet. I have always liked the way that it smells in there… layers and layers of fading incense. We also got to hear a little bit of an historical tour that one of the caretakers was giving to some out-of-towners.
The Cleveland Public Library has some very special collections. This month they had a display set up on chess, and were using pieces from their large collection of chess pieces from around the world to decorate the display cases in the hall leading to the special collections room. In the special collections room itself were the rest of the chess sets. My favorite was the 19th century carved ivory set from China. There were also several cases of miniature printed books, some of which were obviously more then a bit tongue-in-cheek… like the miniature book on miniature horses.
Mom and I had lunch at Legacy Village and wandered around the stores for a little while, but neither of us really felt like doing much more then looking, so we really didn't stay there for very long.
Then… well, then we ended up buying fur pieces. Here is the story on that, and it is a good story. Every year, for the past 21 years, the Cleveland Sight Center has had a charity fur and leather sale. They took donation of new and gently worn leather and furs and sell it, with all of the proceeds going to benefit the Sight Center. This is the last year that they were going to be doing it, so I said that we should at least go and check it out. So we did. And, damn! Racks and racks and racks of fur and leather jackets and coats, all of which were going for extremely reduced prices. There were a lot of very beautiful vintage pieces that Mom and I just drooled over. I ended up getting a silver mink stole and a blue mink short jacket, both from the 1940s or 1950s and both in beautiful condition. Mom got a silver mink stole and a chocolate brown squirrel stole. (The squirrel was especially incredibly soft... which is not what you would have expected, so we were both surprised at what the fur was.) Both were also from the 40s or 50s. The prices? Well, I got both of mine for under $90. That would be $90 total. Mom also tried to talk me into getting a full length seal coat, but it was a little big on me, and a little worn, and a little bit much (it made me feel like a robber baron) so I decided against it in the end. Eventually we both just had to leave. If we had kept looking, we would just have found more that we wanted to buy. In some ways, I wish that we had stayed a little longer and looked a little more, and in other ways I am glad we left when we did… because, as I said, we would have just found more to buy. And really, I don't need mink pieces, but I think that it is nice to have a couple of mink pieces, especially since I was able to get them for such good prices and it was for a good cause. It was a very cool experience. I think that it was just about the coolest shopping experience I have ever had.
When we got home and showed our purchases to Dad, and told him about the prices, he said, "For $25 you might as well wear it camping." (I got the mink stole for $25.) I suppose that I could, but I would rather save it for going out to plays and the opera.
Sunday morning I left to come back to Dayton. Before I left, we managed to get everyone together for a couple of family photos in the great room. I will print them out and mat and frame copies for everyone.
I am glad that I got to spend a longer time visiting in Cleveland then usual…
November 23
[Taken 19 October 2005 | Depression Glass | Cleveland, OH]
50... 60 years ago or so these dishes would probably have been used on the table for Thanksgiving family meals... now they are collectables and are probably only ever used for display...
It is snowing... there is already about an inch worth of accumulation. I got done what I had to get done at work and left early... if the weather is going to be bad I would like to get as much of my driving done during daylight hours as I can.
The iPod is loaded with tunes. I am ready to go. I will be with my family, but not with John, which really sucks.
Happy Thanksgiving.
November 22
[Taken 19 November 2005 | Birds on a wire | Dayton, OH]
I am pretty scattered right now... I have such a long list of stuff that I need to get done before I go to see my folks for the holidays, and I will not get to check off everything tonight, though I had hoped to. Argh.
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Sarah and I have a friend from grad school who is very crafty (quilting, knitting, etc) and who sent us each a fluffy scarf that she made for a holiday present. (I am wearing mine right now) I don't know what kind of yarn she used, but it feels and looks just like muppet fur. How many muppets died to make my scarf? Probably just one, and, judging by the color, it was Gonzo.
Sarah and I and some other co-workers went out to lunch today… it is T's birthday, and in order to properly embarrass her, Sarah arranged for the waiter to bring out balloons at the end of the meal so we could all sing to her and watch her blush. Sarah and I had to leave lunch a little early (meetings) and T gave me a balloon as we left because "I looked like I wanted one". In the car on the way back to work I proved how immaturity lurks deep (or maybe not-so deep) within all of us by sucking all of the helium out of the balloon and making Sarah laugh by talking in a very squeaky squeaky little voice.
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Three years today! I love you, John.
November 21
[Taken 19 November 2005 | Evergreen bonsai | Dayton, OH]
I was planning on making butternut squash soup for dinner today. When I got home from dance class I found that John had made a brioche to go along with the soup. Man... life is GOOD!
There was a bonsai show at the Cox arboretum over the weekend... a lot of very very cool stuff that was on display from members of the local bonsai soiety, plus some younger bonsai that were for sale. There were some bonsai there that were pretty old, 75 to 100 years. My personal favorites were a display of three bonsai Japanese Maples, and a bonsai chrysanthemum. Unfortunatly, the lighting conditions were pretty bad, and even with an ISO of 1600, I wasn't taking a heck of a lot of good shots.
I have had a couple of bonsai over the years, and, uh, none of mine ever made it past a few months. Forget 75-100 years. I would call it good if I could get one to hange on for one year. I killed a couple of them by not watering them enough, so they dried out. Then a killed a couple more by overwatering them and causing the roots to rot, in an attempt to compensate for underwatering earlier bonsai attempts.
John has had (he calls it "trained") bonsai as well, and much more successfully then I. He would like to try training the clementine trees we have in a pot near the kitchen, which, in my opinion, would be pretty cool.
November 20
[Taken 15 October 2005 | Etched glass daisy | Cleveland, OH]
November 17
[Taken 26 October 2005 | The last thistle of the year | Dayton, OH]
I still think that iTunes has about the worst file system ever. However, my god, does iTunes make it soooo easy and soooo quick to rip CDs. I am currently very methodically going through and ripping every single CD in my collection. (Fun fact: the first CD I ever bought was "Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes". The second CD I ever bought was "Monty Python: The Final Rip-Off")
Ripping my entire CD library is something I always meant to do, but never quite got around to actually doing because ripping CDs and then converting the files to MP3 format was so time consuming. But now... Last night I ripped a stack of CDs that was four inches high, and it only took me a couple of hours to do so. And that would be a four inch stack of disks. Not disks in jewel cases. Just the disks.
I figure that at this rate (I am ripping even as I type) I should be completely finished ripping all of my CDs before the end of the weekend.
In entertaining local news that inexplicably goes national: a few miles south of here on I-75 there is a huge statue (really, really, tackily huge) of Jesus. He is depicted from the waist up, seemingly rising out of a reflecting pool, and is holding both hands above his head while gazing at the heavens. Seriously, he looks like a referee calling a play. (We call him Touchdown Jesus. Sometimes I also refer to him as Zombie Jesus Who Is Rising From His Watery Grave.) Every time John and I drive past him, we both yell, "It's good!" Anyway, today Zombie Touchdown Jesus was profiled in the national section of the New York Times online. Must have been another slow news day.
November 16
[Taken 26 October 2005 | Fallen Leaves | Dayton, OH]
Last night, coming out of fencing practice to go to the bar near UD that we fencers like to frequent after our practices, it was a balmy and breezy (albiet rainy) 66 degrees. In the car we heard on the weather that we ought to expect snowshowers today. My response to this news? "Yeah, right!"
You know what the weather is link right now? Snow flurries. Light and fitful flurries... but nevertheless snow.
I guess it is mid-November after all. Time to stop wearing the light fall jacket and break out something a bit heavier.
November 14
[Taken 13 November 2005 | Hood Ornament | Dayton, OH]
There was a great story on NYTimes.com over the weekend about people
who tie, bungee, strap, or otherwise afix stuffed animals and other toys to
the front bumpers of their cars and trucks. Everything about the article
screamed "slow news day", but I thought it was funny and kind of
wacky. The person who did the article talked a good talk, anthropologically
and sociologically speaking. Basically, the article can be summed up as follows
-- people afix stuffed animals and other toys to their car bumpers because:
A) They can
B) It is just another way or personalizing a vehicle... kind of like custom
paint jobs and fancy rims, only a lot cheaper
C) Some stuff about Vikings and figureheads on ships
Read the article. Its a hoot.
Anyway...
The following conversation took place in my car on the way to the theater
to watch Wallace and Gromit on Sunay...
Me: After reading that article in the New York Times, I want to see a stuffed
animal wired to the bumper of someone's car.
John: Yeah?
Me: And I want to have my camera with me when I do. But, like that will ever
happen.
Coming out of the theater after the movie, the car which is parked right in front of ours has the top half of a Power Ranger duct-tapped to the nose like a hood ornament. And. I had my camera in the trunk of the car, since we were going to go to CompUSA and play with iPod-and-camera configurations right after the movie.
Rarely do the fates so conspire in my favor.
November 13
[Taken 29 October 2005 | Autum leaves with the SMoky Mountains as a backdrop | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
If it wasn't for the fact that I occasionally need things like socks, I would forgo the mall altogether in favor of online shopping.
Case in point. I need new shoes, since the black loafers that are my daily wear have worn so thin on the soles that the rubber has gotten all bubbly and soft. (I can't actually remember when I bought those loafers, but I think that it may have been in 2001 sometime. Regardless, I have gotten good use out of them.) I briefly looked in the shoe store at the mall, but since I never really was that impressed with their selection, I wasn't expecting to find anything. So I wasn't disappointed in that respect.
I ended up going to zappos.com (I forget exactly who pointed me toward that site… it may have been Sarah) to do my shoe shopping. I found some very nice loafers (in oxblood) and a pair of dressier flats (bright red suede), both by Clarks. No taxes on the purchase. No shipping charges either. Which is nice. Then a little bit I get an email from them saying that they will be shipping my order out Monday (tomorrow), and that it will be shipped priority at no extra charge so that I should get my new shoes on Tuesday. Very nice. That is a site/company that knows how to achieve almost instant customer loyalty. I have not even received my first order from them, and I am already thinking that I will order my sandals for next summer from them. Two thumbs up for Zappos.
To continue the consumerism trend of the weekend, I also bought an iPod. A 60G iPod photo to be precise. I want something that I can download the RAW image files from my camera to while I am on the road or on vacation. I don't always want to have to drag a laptop along with me. And I have had my Archos for quite a while, several years, which is very old when you are talking about MP3 players. It has started to have some disk issues, and the sound quality has been going downhill rapidly.
I didn't have to get an iPod… really, just about any portable media device would have done just fine, as long as it could play music and was willing to acknowledge my camera as its lord and master. The iPod was just the best available, for both functionality and cost. The iPod is fine. I like the iPod. But I hate iTunes.
I have only been using iTunes for about 15 minutes and I already hate hate hate it. Worst. File. Storage. System. Ever. I have my files all organized in folders on my hard drive just the way that I like them, and I don't want some upstart piece of software like iTunes thinking that it knows better then I do how all of my music should be organized. Aarrgghh! If I had an installation CD for iTunes, I would be ceremoniously burning it right now. I miss my drag and drop. But the iPod needs iTunes, alas.
A good movie – The Triplets of Belleville. French animation. Enjoyable, entertaining, and quite surreal. Yes, it is dubbed. That is, the conversations are dubbed. The songs, television, and newspapers are not. And it might as well be a silent film for all of the conversing that goes on. Worth a watch. As is Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which John and I saw a matinee of today.
November 12
[Taken 29-30 October 2005 | Fall leaves in the Smoky Mountains | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
Well, I have a lot of my photos from the trip to the Smoky Mountains up on my flickr site. Not all of the photos... just a selection of the ones that I liked the best and thought were the best of the bunch.
November 10
[Taken 29 October 2005 | Loop the loop on the Newfound Gap road | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
I think that this is one of the best road signs that I have ever seen. Yes, the road really did exactly that. About halfway up Newfound Gap road, the road did a complete looping circle over itself... kind of taking the whole concept of switchbacks to the extreme. It was a lot of fun to drive.
To get this picture, I hung out of the window of the car, while John slowed down to about 10mph. We couldn't really pull-over because there were no real shoulders to the road around this area, and to stop altogether, just to take a photograph, would have been to incur the (well-deserved) wrath of everyone on the road behind us.
Believe me, we got stuck behind plenty of people who, for some reason, couldn't even manage to approach the posted speed limit. Please, slow-driving people, we do need a little bit of speed in order to build up sufficient momentum to get up this mountain. When it comes to a narrow, steep, winding, and twisty road with vistas of incredible beauty around every turn, some people just seem to forget how to drive. Heh. Probably a good thing that I wasn't driving then... the vistas of incredible beauty would have been a horrible distraction. John drove the whole time we were in the park. Which really was for the best... besides the whole issue with the vistas, he had pervious experience driving in mountains and knew how to use the engine to slow us down (by throwing it into lower gears) when we were driving down the Gap road in order to spare the brakes.
November 9
[Taken 30 October 2005 | Grotto Falls | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
I love the way that faling water turns all milky and misty when you set up a tripod and do a long exposure...
November 7
[Taken 29 October 2005 | The view from Chinmey Tops | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
The Chimney Tops trail was a pretty steep one... over the course of a couple of miles, the elevation rose some 1700 feet from about midway up the Newfound Gap road to the Chimney Tops themselves, which was a steep rock craig on one of the many peaks in the areas. Basically the trail kind of dead-ended at the foot of this fairly steep craig, and when John and I got to the foot of the craig we pretty much went streight up. Not all of the way to the top of it though. We got about 3/4 of the way up, and decided that it would be pretty stupid to push it any further. Sure, there were plenty of cracks and little ledges for hand- and foot-holds, but it felt like we might be pushing our luck a little bit to go all of the way up without any climbing equipment.
This nice vista with the rock sloping up at about a 45 degree angle? This was about two feet to the right of where I was sitting on a little series of ledges about half-way up the Chimney Rock. Just beyond that line of little bushes? About a straight drop down to the valley floor. All the way down to the valley floor. I looked.
Really nice views, though. The sign at the trail head advertised the trail as "a tough hike up, but worth it for the views". We kept meeting people who were on their way down while we were on our way up who assured us that "it was a really tough hike, a tough climb, but totally worth it for the views". And boy, were they right.
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A ladybug (asian lady beetle? whatever it was) drowned in my mug of tea at
work. I went to take a sip, and there it was. Drowned.
Stupid bug. I don't care if they are supposed to be good luck.
November 6
[Taken 28 October 2005 | Sunset shots at Clingman's Dome | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
When John and I were driving into the park on the 28th, we pulled into one of the first senic overlooks we came accross to get out of the car, stretch our legs a little bit, and look around. We could barely see a lot of white objects near the tops of the mountains, but it didn't look like snow to either of us. I thought that it might be birch trees, and we were seeing the white bark. John voted for an aluminum Christmas tree farm. When we got up to Clingman's Dome that evening, we found out that it was actually ice and snow caked onto trees that looked to have been pretty blasted by the wind. And it was cold up at the dome... at one point (this was on October 30, when we went up to the dome the second time) I was wearing a silk undershirt, a long sleeved shirt, a fleece shirt, a fleece jacket, and then another fleece jacket on top of that. I wish that there had been a way to find out what the temperature was at the peak...
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I gave my lawn the last mowing of the season today -- and I plan on not breaking out the lawnmower again until after the snows fall and then melt away again.
Homeowner lesson of the day: I learned exactly how many leaves on the lawn is "too many" when you are trying to just plow right over and through them with the mower. Also, raking leaves on a windy day is a pain in the a**. Guess I ought to be glad that I got to do work outside at all today, as ther weather report for the weekend called for unremitting rain. Instead we got a pretty nice, brisk fall day.
November 5
[Taken 28 October 2005 | Moss covered tree at Newfound Gap | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
Up around Newfound Gap in the SMokies, a lot of the trees were almost covered with this odd-looking fluffy greenish-grey moss. I thought that it looked pretty neat... a lot like the Spanish moss you can see on trees further south, but not nearly as long and stringy.
We are having a minor infestation at home -- ladybugs. Or asian lady beetles, if you prefer. Whatever their official designation, they are somehow managing to find their way inside in decent numbers. It is only minorly annoying at this point... just a bunch of bugs (admittedly, bugs which are reputed to be lucky) buzzing along the ceiling and doing kamakazi dives into the halogen lamps. They really like those lamps. And Merlin is no use... she just ignores them. If only she would make herself a little bit useful and try to catch them.
By the way... Happy Guy Fawkes Day. today is not just a normal Guy Fawkes Day, but the 400th anniversary. Here is a paragraph of the article that I linked to(and which is quite a good read if you have a subscription to NYTimes.com ... and if you do not have a subsription, just go ahead and get one since it is free.)that I found particularily interesting... apparently Guy Fawkes, with his 36 barrels (I am assuming wine barrel sized, which would make them pretty big) of gun powder would have done quite a lot of damage if he had not been discovered. "Two years ago, although allowing for the difficulty of comparing 17th-century gunpowder to modern explosives, the Center for Explosion Studies at the University of Aberystwyth concluded that the explosion could have obliterated the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey and surrounding streets." First, the Center for Explosion Studies sounds like it would be a pretty neat place to work, if this is the sort of thing that they do all of the time (though I suspect not). Second, damn... that is a lot of damage. I have been to Westminster, and I cannot imagine London without it.
John and I will neither be blowing anything up, nor burning anyone in effigy, in rememberance of the day. Instead we will be going out to play laser tag with some friends. Which is still a pretty good way of spending Saturday night.
November 2
[Taken 30 October 2005 | On the trail to Grotto Falls | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
Just for the heck of it, I decided to push the saturation up all of the way on this one. I kind of like it.
And now for the trip synopsis, which, by the way, is more for me (so that I can remember what we did) then anyone else...
Friday, October 28
We hit the road at 10am.
Overall, the drive wasn't too bad, and it was nice watching the landscape get more and more hilly and the foliage on the trees getting more and more colorful as we drove down through Kentucky and Tennessee. The last little bit of the drive through Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood!) and Gatlinburg was kind of painful due to lots and lots of very very slow traffic. We (finally) arrived at the park and checked into the Elkmount campground at a little after 5pm. We quickly set up camp and then drove up to Clingman's Dome (the highest point in the park) for sunset, stopping at Newfound Gap and the Rockefeller Memorial on the way up. Unfortunately, John didn't have his camera with him for that little bit… while we were unpacking I put pretty much all of our gear in the tent, and John had packed his camera into his duffle bag. Oops.
I enjoyed the drive along Newfound Gap road. Very twisty and lots of gorgeous overlooks. Really, we couldn't look anywhere without seeing something absolutely beautiful.
There was already some snow and ice up near Clingman's Dome, which I suppose shouldn't have come as any surprise to me since the National Park website had said that it could snow in the park anytime between October and May. At the dome, there was a short (.5 mile) and steep path up to the peak, and then we could climb a spiriling concrete ramp up to an observation platform. The ramp up to the platform was covered with packed snow and ice. I wished that I had brought my tripod up to the peak with me.
Historical fun fact: the Rockefellers donated well over half of the land that comprises the park.
Saturday, October 29
We hiked to Alum Cave bluffs and back in the morning, and then hiked to the Chimney Tops and back in the afternoon. Combined, that makes over 10 miles of hiking, almost all of it up or down significant inclines. Pretty hard on the knees and other joints, but oh so worth it for the beautiful scenery and views.
On the map, though, it looked like we had covered hardly any ground, which was a little bit disheartening.
On the trail back from Alum Cave bluffs, we met a couple of people who had gone on past the bluffs to Mt LeConte and spent the night at the backcountry lodge there. One of the guys said that it was a beautiful hike, but that the last mile up to the top was "the hardest mile he had ever done". This goes on the list of things to do next time we go to the Smokies.
Sunday, October 30
We realized that we probably overdid it quite a bit on Saturday, and decided to take it a little bit easier.
We did a couple of easier hikes to some of the waterfalls in the park, and also hiked along part of the Appalachian Trail from Newfound Gap. We actually ended up not going much further out on the Appalachian Trail then a mail and a half or so… there was a lot of packed snow on the parts of the trail that didn't get a lot of sun, which made the trail a little less then fun.
We went back to Clingman's Dome for sunset. We both had our cameras and tripods with us, and stayed up there until after dark taking photos.
Monday, October 31
After having breakfast (pancake house!) in Gatlinburg, we broke camp and packed up the car. On the way out of the park we did the Laurel Falls trail, which was only a couple of miles long and a pretty easy hike.
On the drive home we stopped for lunch at Krystal, which is a very southern fast-food burger chain, and which is also referenced by the Sweet Potato Queens in the many Sweet Potato Queens books, all of which I recommend reading. But I digress. Krystal was very disappointing. I felt as though I had had the experience of eating at White Castle, without actually eating at a White Castle. Ugh.
We arrived back home just in time to meet the first wave of trick-or-treaters. No, we did not turn them away empty-handed. Our last stop before home was to swing through Meijers and pick up a couple of bags of candy… candy and beer. The beer was for us, and the candy was for the kids… and us. Heh. Actually, not too many kids came by… and at least ¼ of them made very little to no effort in the costume department. Weak.
The vacation was great, but it is still good to be home.
November 1
[Taken 28 October 2005 | Beautiful vistas 1 and 2 from Clingman's Dome | Great Smoky Mountain National Park]
This past weekend John and I took a long weekend and went camping in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
I took almost 4G worth of RAW photos. This would be the equivalent of about 14 rolls of 36-exposure 35mm film. Digital images being essentially free, I followed the philosophy that I should simply shoot everything that I wanted to, and then sort out the images later. Since I only have two flash cards, which hold 1G each, I also brought a laptop with me so that I could download images and clear the cards. That was on Saturday night… I had filled up both cards by that point, so while dinner was cooking I booted up the laptop and set everything to download. It is a good thing that I only had to do this once, since that one downloading session pretty much drained the laptop battery. Next time I will either get more/larger flash cards for the camera or a flash card reader, so whatever downloading (to whatever non-camera and non-flash card storage device that I have with me at the time) I need to do goes a lot faster.
Trip summary and more photos to come... I am still getting back to the daily groove after four days gone.