Blue Ridge, Part 4

Day 5, Walking to Kentucky 

July 4

We have been really busy, gang. 

Lots of driving and seeing stuff. We met re-enactors at the Wilderness Trail State Park in Virginia, climbed the Wilderness Trail, and walked from Tennessee to Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, got very hot on another trail with more climbing and quit, got a ride back to my car from a kind man and his wife. That was all before noon yesterday. I finished the day after picking my way through the inevitable traffic jam that followed the fireworks at Asheville, N.C.

I started the day by going to the wrong place. The Wilderness Road has been partly restored so you can walk it from a parking lot in Tennessee to another in Kentucky, and cross the Cumberland Gap in the middle. More on that later.

My search for that place took us too far. We wound up in Virginia at the Wilderness Road State Park. But that’s all right. The place contains a replica of a stockade called Martin Station and is full of re-enactors--Park Service employees dressed in 18th century costumes.

We spoke to one who was posing as the General Martin for whom the station is named. His pony tail was longer than mine. 

He had actually led a group that had spent six months one year building the station by hand. They camped here and used 18th century tools. The only compromise was that, because they couldn’t cut the trees they needed, they had logs delivered to some inconvenient place on top of a hill. They pulled the logs in with oxen. So I guess he has a right to impersonate somebody who did the same kind of thing before.

We also met Captain Titus, one of Gen. Martin’s sidekicks. Joanna snapped a photo of him and me, and I e-mailed it to him today.

Joanna had left her hat in the car, and the captain advised her that she needed a “sun bonnet.” Joanna has stopped using the word “hat.”

Gen. Martin (whose square name may be Hick) told us the real Martin Station is about seven miles away, discovered 50 year ago when a subdivision was built on the site. No one living there now remembers anything about it. 

We stayed for a program about the Declaration of Independence, in which a young man got up and pretended to have difficulty reading all the words. He was using one of the artificially aged replicas that are supposed to look like Jefferson’s original. So maybe the difficulty was real.

Gen. Martin would stop him from time to time to comment on the text. So our discussion ranged from small government and its role in regulation to the rights to bear arms and overthrow repressive authority. Not wishing to upset anyone on the solemn holiday, I didn’t get into my right to pack a spring-loaded pocket knife or to consume cannabis. 

It was a great time, but we had exploring to do. So we got directions to the place I was really looking for. It is appropriately enough in Cumberland Gap, Tenn.

I had been at the foot of the trail two years ago, but hadn’t taken that route. That time I had walked through the Gap going eastward, like someone who had been chased out by the Indians.

It was about a hundred degrees out, maybe two hundred. I believe it was much the same up north at home. I left my jacket in the trunk.

The trail is a reconstruction that follows the approximate route of the original. A highway once ran through the gap but that was pulled up in the 30s or 40s and the ground was restored to its pre-highway days. 

The trail is steep in spots and for a couple of stretches is almost vertical. I don’t know if they could bring wagons through here in the old days.

We got to the Gap in fair condition. I was soaking with sweat, but otherwise fine. So I felt like Superman. Joanna grew up in Hong Kong, which is a short walk from the Equator, so she didn’t even breathe hard. Here's proof:

Now, here’s where Harry was punished for his arrogance. There is a branch trail off the Wilderness Road, and this takes the route that the pioneers were avoiding when they went through the Gap. But the sign said “Tri-State Overlook” and, remember, I was Superman.

I made it halfway when I ran out of water, out of breath, and out of steam. Joanna was fine, but I must have looked pretty bad. We sat on a rock and the minute I stopped I was dizzy. That’s a bad sign of dehydration: the blood isn’t pumping efficiently.

A guy came by while we were sitting there and asked if we were going up or down. He said he was going to press on and would call down and let us know what the trail was like above us.

We sat on our rock. He did call once, but we couldn’t make out what he said. We both tried to hail him but got no answer. I hoped he hadn’t been eaten by a lion.

I decided to be like the pioneers and stick to the Wilderness Road, so I gave up that climb.

We walked the Wilderness Road to Object Lesson Road. There’s a sign that explains the name. The road is less than a mile long and was built more than a century ago by the Department of Agriculture to demonstrate what a country road could, indeed should, look like. It was graded and covered with gravel for drainage.

Most of the country’s roads at the time were ruts in the mud, because nobody wanted to pay taxes to improve them.

By the time we got to the parking lot at the end of Object Lesson Road, it was time to walk back to Tennessee. I had had it. Joanna, of course, was still doing fine.

As we started back, we met the man who had called to us on the overlook trail. He looked like he was doing fine, too.

Don’t know what I looked like, but it apparently it wasn’t in the doing-fine range, because the first thing the man did was offer us a ride back to the Tennessee side of the mountain. 

He introduced himself. I think his name was Dan and introduced us to his wife, Sharon, who had been waiting in the air conditioned car.

They were from Alabama and were on a road trip after visiting their daughter in Memphis.

After Dan brought us back to my car, we drove all afternoon to Asheville, which was getting ready for a big Fourth of July celebration. There are also four Holiday Inns in town. 

I learned that because when I came off the highway I saw a Holiday Inn sign and went for it, even though Google Maps said go the other way.

When I tried to check in, my reservation wasn’t in the computer. So I took out my notes and said, “Is this the Holiday Inn Asheville-Biltmore East?” 

No, it was the Holiday Inn something else. The one I wanted was easy to find, just stay on Tunnel Road till you get there. 

There is a tunnel, by the way. You go through it to get to the center of town, where the Weinhaus and the bars are.

We went to Tall Gary's Cantina and had duck and peach tacos and a flight of Highland Brewery beers. The Highland label shows a kiltie, but the highlands in question are those not of Scotland, but of North Carolina. Excellent brews: a Gaelic ale (appropriately like a Scotch Ale). a pale, an India pale, and an oatmeal porter (not stout, like Samuel Smith's, but a little lighter). Porter tends to run bitter, the Gaelic ale dry, the pale ale somewhat Belgian, and the IPA crisp and sharp.

Also had a frozen Margarita, of course.

The fireworks followed a show of live music in the city park. The rockets, red glare and all, were launched from the top of a nearby parking deck. There were some amateur additions in the distance from time to time. It was like being back in Chiang Mai on New Year’s Eve.

Because of all the traffic afterwards, I couldn't turn left and go back the way I had come, so I turned right and got lost. Made it back to the hotel eventually. It was a good day.

Day 6, Up to Roanoke

July 5

Asheville to Roanoke today, by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Roanoke is very difficult for Cantonese speakers to say, I have found, but not as difficult as Cantonese is for me.

One of the stops on the way was an overlook that looked up at Craggy Dome. It's so high that trees don't grow on the top, only rhododendron. This area, we learned, is something like the continent's or the world's largest concentration of wild rhododendron. the stuff hangs over the road the way it does in the Delaware Valley. Craggy Dome does its part. 

On the way here, we stopped at an overlook that was the site of the Brinegar cabin. It's an old hill farm that was bought by the government in the '30s when they were building the parkway. Mr. Brinegar was already gone at the time, and Mrs Brinegar, already at an advanced age, was entitled to live out her life there, but it got too noisy and she moved in somewhere else with her daughter. 

It's on the crest of the Blue Ridge and the wind was blowing hard for a storm when we got there. I had to hold my hat. Joanna was laughing out loud. The rain was coming. It was spectacular.

We stopped at Mabry's Mill, an actual mill built early in the 20th century and operated until 1935. It sits right next to the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. We got there around five and everything was closed by then. It was still interesting, but nowhere near as cool as being able to go into the mill and see the water wheel working.

Besides the mill, the site has artifacts--wagons, plowshares, syrup-making equipment--salvaged from the area and said to represent rural life around here in the old days.

The log cabin and blacksmith shop were closed. I was here once before, and when the cabin was open, you couldn’t enter but could look into it. The blacksmith shop had a blacksmith in it who answered tourists’ questions and made a few things. 

There is something like that at Rose Hill Manor, too, with a man who does smithing demonstrations. When we were there, we saw some of the hooks and horseshoes he had made, but it wasn’t one of his demonstration days.

There is a sorghum mill near the big mill. It was turned by a mule or by Conan to grind the stalks and catch the sap. The sap was rendered into syrup in a large evaporating pan over a wood fire. The syrup replaced molasses when the sugar trade was disrupted during the Civil War.

My favorite thing sits in a hollow across a stream in the woods. 

Somebody found a still in the hills and brought it here to set it up as an exhibit.

Went to downtown Roanoke. It was a ghost town, except for an open-air concert, which was winding up, so they were no longer selling tickets. 

We had a glass each of California pinot, merlot, and cabernet sauvignon with dinner. Well, now we have an open bottle of Don & Sons Sonoma Coast pinot noir that I bought yesterday at the Weinhaus in Asheville.

So I'm signing off. There's drinking to be done.