Travels with Jeanne and Serge: North Carolina

We embarked the next morning for North Carolina, wondering how long we would stay ahead of the storms that brought tornadoes to Mississippi. A short stint on I-75, then winding along state routes and through small towns took us to the Cherohala Skyway. This National Scenic Byway opened in 1996, and offers a route less traveled for a scenic crossing of the mountains. Starting as low as 900 feet, its high point is 5400 feet. We pulled over at an early stop to stretch our legs.

Photographer Serge was on duty.

The chill grew as we climbed higher, and the clouds slowly thickened. The view, however, was unlike anything Jeanne and Serge had seen so far on their visit.

Serge loved the light, mountains, and clouds. This photo is his:

As is this documentary one.

After leaving the Skyway but before reaching Robbinsville, we passed several local township road signs that were printed in both English and Cherokee. This discovery prompted us to describe some Cherokee history to Serge and Jeanne, focusing on the forced removal (Trail of Tears) in 1838, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee that hid in the mountains to escape that evil.

There was an occasional raindrop, but no real showers yet, as we drove down the Nantahala River gorge. Serendipity brought us a conjunction of kayakers and a Great Smoky Mountains Railroad excursion.

There was even a caboose!

We stopped at Bryson City, and steady rains descended, but this didn't block us from a welcome lunch at Mountain Perks. Afterwards, we started our soggy foggy journey towards the Pisgah Inn and the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP). Serge took this shot through the car windshield.

Given the weather we elected not to join the BRP at Balsam Gap, but stayed on lower roads until the climb up to Wagon Road Gap, just three miles or so from the Inn. Route 276 snaked along a valley and then wiggled up to the gap. Just before reaching it, we entered dense fog, as often happens on this stretch of the BRP. We crept along inside a small bubble surrounded by gray on all sides, barely seeing either side of the road. Joan, driving that day, was greatly relieved when the reached the Inn. Also at the Inn was a wedding party, executing plan B; the original plan had been to have the wedding at an overlook. Not today.

One of my duties on this trip was wine chooser. Naturally we wanted to expose Jeanne and Serge to American wines as much as we could. Later, we would even try some Ohio wines. This night Jeanne took a picture of the selection, a good sign.

The rain continued to pound that evening, accompanied by a howling, umbrella-inverting wind. The windows in the dining room were not designed for sideways and even upwards rain (being blown up the ridge atop which the Inn was perched). A small puddle formed under our corner table during dinner, not deep enough to make us move.

By the next morning the weather had improved enough to take a few pictures of the inn. Jeanne's were the best.

Serge joined into the spirit of the trip with Squeaker, one of the two pigs accompanying us. French lessons, perhaps?

There were several closures along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. The stretch between the Pisgah Inn and Asheville is closed for months because of rock slide and undermining danger. Between Asheville and our destination for the day, Blowing Rock, there were two sections closed because of debris and fallen timber from a big ice storm during the winter. (They reopened during May.) So, we returned to Wagon Road Gap for the first detour. We would pick up the BRP again just before Asheville. At this altitude, the trees had not begun to leaf out yet. But we could see something this time!

Taking route 276 down off the mountain, we stopped at Looking Glass Falls, running full.

We rejoined the Parkway and soon stopped at the Southern Highlands Folk Art Center. Being several thousand feet lower, more trees were in bloom.

After visiting the center -- always worth a stop -- and taking away a few gifts, we began the climb up to Craggy Gardens and Craggy Dome (parking area is at 5650'). Rising out of the Asheville valley, we got a look back at where we'd been the night before.

After a brief stop at Craggy Gardens we parked at the trailhead for Craggy Dome. It's a 1.4 mile round trip, moderate, that takes you to a wonderful viewpoint.

Faced with two potential detours, and the day advancing quickly, we decided to link the two detours rather than get off - get on - get off - get on. Joan and I wanted to guarantee that we had time to explore the Linn Cove Viaduct, close to Blowing Rock. Soon it was time for a late lunch. Fortunately, Serge and Jeanne were quite flexible.

Our French friends acquired a great many food firsts on this trip. They were introduced to, among other things, grits, catfish, maple syrup, cheesecake, pecan pie, cottage cheese, cream cheese, hush puppies, and collard greens. Cheesecake was a big hit, and we found a recipe for Jeanne on the Web that used ingredients available in France. Only the hush puppies failed their taste test.

There were plenty of sights to see along the extended detour. North Carolina is the second-ranked state in production of Christmas trees.

Serge stayed busy with his camera, ignoring the car windows.

At the Viaduct, we took the walk out to the structure.

The story of the Viaduct is amazing. It was the last link the Blue Ridge Parkway to be built, because a method had to be found to construct the road without disturbing the environmentally fragile Black Rock area of Grandfather Mountain. Here's that link again.

There was plenty of evidence of the ice storm that had created our detours.

By now it was after 4 pm, and another of Serge's rules had come into effect; although he and Jeanne were avid flower photographers, he was usually reluctant to take yet another flower picture after 4. Jeanne coaxed him into capturing this red trillium even though it was late.

After the walk we investigated the visitor's center, which included a scale model of the construction of the viaduct. Some purchases were made. Blowing Rock, our motel, and dinner, were not far away. Thank you for these pictures, Jeanne and Serge!

Even with the storm that caught up to us on the mountains, it was an excellent couple of days.

Travels with Serge and Jeanne: Chattanooga

Joan and I spent two and a half weeks on the road this April/May, most of the time in the company of Serge and Jeanne Brasset, French citizens making their first visit to the United States. The trip deserves several posts.

First, the backstory. Joan spent her junior year of college abroad, in Nantes, France, where she lived with a French family, and not in a dormitory of foreign students. Another boarder in Mme Lélan's house was Serge Brasset, and although Serge left at the end of the term to perform his military service, he and Joan have kept in touch over the years. We visited Serge and his wife, Jeanne, briefly in 1980, and, along with Joan's mother, spent a day with Serge, Jeanne, and their daughter Alexandra in 1990. Now Serge and Jeanne have both retired, and their itinerary in the United States was 1) visit Kathy Calhoun, who had lived in Nantes the year before Joan, and 2) visit us. Kathy made the wonderful suggestion that Serge and Jeanne should, instead of flying from Gainesville, Florida to Columbus, Ohio, be driven to Chattanooga where we would meet them and "exchange custody."

Kathy and her husband Tom hosted Serge and Jeanne for a week while the travelers recovered from jet lag. The timing was impeccable, as they arrived two days before the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, closed much of European airspace.

Here Serge is given a turn at the grill. (Thanks for letting me use these pictures, Serge and Jeanne!)

Jeanne got her turn as well.

Here are Tom, Kathy, Serge, and Jeanne at a Florida restaurant.

Tom and Kathy introduced our French friends to alligators, energy-efficient appliance shopping, and who knows what else.

They then brought Serge and Jeanne up to our Chattanooga rendezvous ...

where we met and had dinner.

The next morning, after saying our goodbyes to Kathy and Tom, the four of us set off to see Rock City. We left the congested Interstate 24 and were approaching the base of Lookout Mountain when an ominous ting! announced a glowing tire pressure warning. I pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid to inspect ... and found a chunk of metal in the tread of one tire, and a steady hissing.

Within a couple of minutes, as I called Budget Rent-A-Car's roadside assistance number, it was flat.

After navigating the initial menus ("Press one for an Avis car, press two for a Budget car"), I was chatting with an operator, whose first request was to see if there was a spare. Huh? Serge and I both looked, but there was no spare! This meant that a tow truck, rather than a tire-changing assist, was called for. Now it started getting strange; the operator could not locate either of the cross streets north or south of our position in his computer. Until the computer was happy, he couldn't initiate a tow truck. Finally, I walked into the Rite Aid and got their precise street address, and that was sufficient. It seems quite odd because we certainly were not in the boonies!

One ironic aspect of our location was that we were next to the International Towing and Recovery Museum.

The tow truck came much earlier than the promised 2 hours, a welcome development.

The driver/operator, Cecil, was sympathetic. "They'll make you wait out here while they send another car," he volunteered, "and that's not right. You can ride with me to Budget, if you want." We said yes! and he phoned in that he'd be bringing us back. I don't know how much time was saved, but it could have been another hour. We climbed up into the truck's cab and retraced our path along congested I-24.

At the Budget facility, the staff were friendly and eager to minimize our disruption. Signing the accident report ("tire went flat") took about 30 seconds, and the new car was already prepped. We came out ahead in the exchange, in fact: the Chrysler 300M that we were driving, while it had plenty of luggage space for 4 persons, had tiny windows. I kept trying to flip up the sun visor to unblock my view, but it was already up. The passengers had even narrower windows, so we all felt as if we were riding in an armored vehicle. The 300M is a car you buy to inflate your testosterone level. The new car -- a Mercury Grand Marquis -- made a huge difference. Normally I'd call it a "grandpa car," but it was perfect for the next week of touring.

We'd intended to make the 11:00 raptor show at Rock City, and we made the 1:00 show after again negotiating the congested I-24.

The show was great, with hawks, owls, eagles, and vultures.

The tiny screech owls are be simultaneously cute and fierce (and can be stroked).

The barn owl was also striking in his bright speckled plumage.

The black vulture was the easiest predator to train. (Will work for food.)

The birds in the show are all unreleasable either because they were raised by humans, or because of injury. Their bald eagle was missing a wing because he'd been shot (not a good commentary on the human race). Here Serge and Jeanne pose with him.

Then we were off to see Rock City. Here's the viewpoint where you can, on a good day, see seven states. Or so they say, I'm skeptical of Kentucky and Virginia.

Rock City is full of paths that loop and pass over each other, with viewpoints, flowers, a deer park, a climbing wall, and kitschy but authentically vintage exhibits -- the park opened in 1932 -- such as a miniature moonshine still hidden in the crevices.

This point was the beginning of Serge's Law. Joan looked up "kitsch" in the French/English dictionary on her iPod, and discovered it was the same (with a slight difference in pronunciation). We kept encountering other cognates, until Serge proclaimed his law a few days later: "If you don't know what the English word is, try the French word with an English pronunciation, and 80% of the time you'll be right." I insisted on 50%, but over time, with each new twin ("mechanism", for example) I ceded him another 1%, and he won.

After Rock City, we briefly visited Point Park at the tip of Lookout Mountain. We were not going to tramp battlefields on this trip, but the wide view of Chattanooga deserved study, and Serge devoured the park brochure on the battles of Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Lookout Mountain.

Another linguistic excursion: idioms. Serge and Jeanne had gone through my blog before arriving, to brush up on English, and some of the idioms I used had led them to a wrong meaning. Above, I speak of Serge devouring the brochure: I do not mean that he ate it, but rather that he studied every bit of it.

We rested briefly at the hotel and then headed down to the Bluffview Art District for dinner at the Back Inn Café. This required traversing I-24 over Missionary Ridge twice, and the inbound leg was sluggish. There was a pulled-over traffic accident, road construction near the exit ramp, and a minor-league baseball game between us and Bluffview. We were glad to have allowed extra time to stroll around. But, yikes, it was still heavy traffic at Bluffview. The traffic gods smiled on us, perhaps to compensate for the flat tire, and we got the last parking spot within several blocks of the restaurant. I will proudly say that I parallel parked that Mercury Grand Marquis with only one front-and-back to tune the job. Our stroll took us to the nearby Hunter Museum of American Art, and the light dawned. So that was why it was so darned busy tonight ...

It was a major prom night (a Friday night in late April), and the mansion was where everybody gathered for photographs before the dance. We explained the concept of the American prom to Jeanne and Serge ... a spring dance held by every high school (the four years before university), fancier and much more expensive than in our time (the late 1960s).

We moseyed over to the Back Inn Café and had a great dinner.

Then, one last time, we drove over I-24 to our hotel and concluded a very busy day.