Posted on by Jo Gent

Gatlinburg!

The first reason we were excited about getting to Gatlinburg was that it took us two days to get there from Estes Park, our longest back-to-back drive on this 3-week trip. We drove ten hours to Kansas City, where we had a nice dinner with a friend of mine from college and her husband, then we drove 12 hours to Gatlinburg.

We were in a zombie-like stage until we got to the adjacent town of Pigeon Forge, then Gatlinburg itself. The closest thing I’ve experienced to these two towns previously is the strip on Las Vegas. Not that there were a lot of casinos, but there were lots of rides and attractions and flashing lights and music and people of all types out and about, even on a Wednesday night.

The next morning, we could see what we had missed in the darkness, which was also what we had come to see, the stunning scenery of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were surprised to learn this is the most popular of the 63 national parks in the United States, but much less surprised as we got to know at ourselves. The mountains are smaller and smoother than those of the Rocky Mountain National Park, but there are a lot of them, covered with beautiful deciduous trees, which were just starting to change color, and filled with black bears.

We really wanted to see a bear ,and kept asking rangers how we could see a bear, and the response was usually Oh, you’ll see a bear here all right. Honestly, that probably wouldn’t have happened if we spent most of our time near the visitor center, but we made an effort and we did see two bears, one while on a hike to Baskin Creek Falls and the other on a sunset drive through an area known for its bear population.

We only had one day in this beautiful area so we weren’t able to ride any roller coasters or play hillbilly miniature golf on a super steep hill or visit Ripley’s Aquarium, but we did make it to a local brewery with fabulous custom pizzas. We all agreed it was a place where we’d like to spend more time.

I should mention that while I planned the first part of this trip, from Santa Cruz through the wedding in Tahoe, our younger son planned the rest of it, including choosing the destinations. We will be leaving our 2013 RAV4 with him when we get to the East Coast, in anticipation of moving to Spain. I’m thinking I should culminate this blog and start a new one in Spain, though I may add a few more entries during the next four weeks or so while we are moving and visa-obtaining and taking a few more farewell trips.

If anyone has a good idea for the name of the moving-to-Spain blog please let me know.

Posted on by Jo Gent

So Many Mountains

How wonderful to be in Rocky Mountain National Park again! Also terrifying, at least for an acrophobe like me. I’m going to push back on the use of the word “irrational” in the definition though. As my fellow acrophobes know, we fear heights because we want to jump, or fall, or drive over the edge. We know it’s inevitable, even alluring, and also that we have to resist, which is hard.

Of course we are also scared when someone else is driving, which may be a little irrational.

I really am glad we were able to drive 25 or so miles of the Trail Ridge Road. Around every bend, one views oceans, fields, immensities of mountains, from near ones with discernable, rocky textures, to remote ones, a smear of hazy blue. There are 126 named peaks, 60 of them over 12,000 feet high. If you like mountains, and I do, the beauty and majesty are breathtaking.

The road is another matter. Peaking at over 12,000 feet itself, I would characterize it as despairingly twisty and primarily sans railings. There are opportunities to drive over the edge and plunge to certain death roughly every 50 feet. We did not try Old Fall River scenic drive, a one-way (up), 14′ wide unpaved road with drops on both sides which I surely would not have survived unless anesthetized.

I made the mistake of driving for TRR, for a short while. It was an excellent cardiac workout and also exercised my vocal cords. It felt like a video game in which I had to keep the car between the yellow line and the white line while ignoring the heart-stopping precipices, but for real, no respawn.

We also took a hike to lovely Emerald Lake, a hidden gem; saw a lot of elk, many hanging around our hotel grounds; and checked out the source of the Colorado River. The weather was balmy, even after dark. My husband and I made quite a few friends in the hot tub, a first for us. Ok that sounds weird, but it was quite a Midwestern group so no.

Happily we were able to make the most of our two days because we drove there. We had been at Lake Tahoe (6000′) for four days then Salt Lake City (4000′) for two more just prior, so we were well on the road to being acclimatized when we arrived at Estes Park (7500′).

This landscape earns its cliches, so I haven’t bothered to edit them out.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Silence of the Woods

Today was our older son’s wedding! Currently we are in the afternoon rest break, and I am thinking about trees.

Last week we hiked in Redwood National Park and other wooded locations in Humboldt and Del Norte counties. This is Big Tree country. Many of the trees are coastal redwoods, but all of the trees are big. I was especially struck during the drive from northern Humboldt to southern Del Norte, 100+ miles of huge trees lining the roads nonstop. They were thick and tall and endless, an enormous wall of trees. Very few towns and dwellings have taken root. Most highway exits advertize no services, and mention rivers or canyons more often than town names. As you move north, the trees get bigger and somewhat more spread out–think old growth forest–but the overwhelming impression is that this is Tree Country.

Tall trees are old trees. Old trees are not like old people. Old people are the age of the saplings here. The trees have presided majestically for hundreds or thousands of years, during which the lives of indiviual people might seem to them like movie shorts flickering past, though probably they don’t even notice us. People feel ephemeral in such land.

Western forests are quite different from eastern forests. I’m not sure whether deciduous trees can grow as old as pines and yews, redwoods and Douglas firs, but even if they can, they have had little opportunity to do so since European colonization of the eastern US. Having denuded Europe of trees and megafauna, including wolves, and having observed no problem with that activity, newly arriving Europeans proceeded to kill as much of the flora and fauna of the New World as quickly as possible. If you are made of stern stuff, I recommend Wild New World, a 2023 book by Dan Flores, unrelated to the older BBC series of the same name. Warning though: it’s hard to take.

Most forests in the continental US have not returned to old growth or even near-old-growth status, but there are more in the Pacific Northwest, and these are the forests we visited. Notably, they are silent. Really, really silent. Occasionally we would stop moving and just listen. The silence is palpable, a presence looming just below discernment, yet in the end, only silence. You think you heard a sound, but you did not.

Eastern forests are alive with songbirds and wind and babbling brooks. Why are western ones different? Obviously different climates lead to different flora and fauna; the western forests are bursting with life, but not the same life. Elk and bears, raptors and owls abound, but don’t announce their presence vocally. Rodents and reptiles hide in the leaf litter or among the branches.

It is also much drier. The rare flowing water is either a tiny stream or an enormous slow-moving river. The distances are larger; looking down and a river with multiple rapids, you simply may not be able to hear them because they are so far away. There is also less weather drama, with most days like the day before.

We’re in Lake Tahoe now, another very heavily wooded region, yet the difference between this and the Pacific coast forests seems very clear. There are lots of trees here, and most are firs, but they not very tall–50-100 feet say, instead of 300-400. Their trunk girths are much smaller, and they are spread apart in a way that allows sunlight to penetrate, rather than forming a canopy, so hiking through is more of an exercise in sun protection than like wandering through a cool, towering cathedral.

I have no idea why this is, but I look forward to observing and experiencing more changes as we continue our trip. Coming up next is Salt Lake City, followed by Rocky Mountain National Park.