Can you tell us apart

On the road again May 12, 2010 – Sept. 6, 2010 Finally arrived at Grindstone campground in Mt. Roger’s National recreation area in Jefferson National Forest in the southwestern Virginia. From here we are about 100 miles or less from Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and North Carolina, so there should be plenty for us to do on our days off including hiking in the area. While we are here we will be out of touch for most of the time as there is no internet and no cell signal. We will have to make at least one trip a week down off the mountain to take care of things and check voice mail. One of the first things we realized is that we would be working more than we planned as two couples had backed out for some reason or another and the manager’s wife was not well due to a heart attack. There was one couple who came to help out through Memorial Day and then was leaving and two other couples who were local who helped out on the weekends. We were the only couple to be there full time until the beginning of June, then another couple was coming, but then the one helping out would be gone. At the end of June another couple was coming and around the middle of July another couple was suppose to arrive. We took some time to drive around one day and see what was in the area, got ourselves off on some back roads and found out that this is the area where a lot of Christmas trees come from. There are miles and miles of evergreen farms with the hill sides covered in different sizes of evergreens. One day while the women were at the gate house the men were up splitting logs from where all the down trees over the winter had been cut up. Lunch that day was in a tent that had been set up for a family reunion, this family paid for an extra site to set up a large cooking and dinning tent. There were four picnic tables, a sink, two stoves and ovens, a refrigerator and several cabinets inside the tent. We had chili dogs for lunch and learned about a local favorite which is slaw (coleslaw) on top; Shirley found that she really liked them. Another day we drove to the top of nearby White Top Mountain, it was sunny when we started out but by the time we got to the top clouds started coming in which gave the view a hazy look. On another trip we drove to near by Bristol which is on the Virginia and Tennessee border where we found the Bristol Speedway where NASCAR races are held. On one of our days off we drove down to Greeneville, Tennessee which was where President Andrew Johnson came from. Johnson was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and as a young man moved to Greenville where he married and raised his family. He was a State Senator, then a US Senator, who supported the Union and stayed in Congress after the succession, and in 1862 Military Governor of Tennessee for Lincoln. In 1864 he was elected as Lincoln’s Vice President. He believed strongly in the Constitution and tried to help the South through the recovery of the war, but bills that he thought help the South back he vetoed, but congress over rode him and passed. This caused an attempt to impeach him in 1868 but the vote fell 1 short. He was in Nashville, TN when the confederates over ran Greenville and used his home as a field hospital, headquarters and as barracks for the soldiers. For this reason he sent one of his daughters back with 6 months to get the house in livable condition for the families return in 1869. The home still contains about 90% of the family’s contents. After Memorial day we were given a weekend off the so we took off to Asheville, North Carolina to see the Biltmore Estate which we had seen before and enjoyed it so much we wanted to go back. We packed a small suitcase, dog crate and food and off we went. When we got to Biltmore we walked around the new Antler Hill Village, a shopping and dinning complex, built next to the winery. Delilah did very well walking around people. When we went to go through the house we had to put the dogs in a complementary kennel supplied by the estate in the parking lot, again Delilah behaved very well and did not fuss when we left her. After touring the house which was built in the early 1890’s, contains 4 acres of interior space and is the largest private home in America and was last occupied in 1958 we set off to find a motel for the night. Both dogs behaved very well and Delilah even got to sleep on the bed with Jim, Shirley and Sampson instead of in her crate. On the way back the next day we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but were disappointed with the lack of scenic views, especially when we got into heavy fog around 5,000 feet. This had been Delilah’s longest car trip and she did very well sleeping most of the time in the back seat with Sampson. Just after we got back home Delilah learned how to get up into the bed here and so of course now she wants to sleeps there with Sampson, which means there are times when we get very little space in the bed. She doesn’t get to very often as she has a hard time settling down. One day we took off to the town of Damascus to rent bikes and be transported to the beginning, or at least the temporary beginning, of the creeper trail. This is an old railroad line that has been made into a multi use trail for horses, bikes and walking and is called creeper from the early steam engines that slowly struggled up the mountain. From Green Cove, where we started, back to Damascus is 14 miles down the mountain across trestles and bridges. We had a great time except for the last part when Shirley’s old fashion bike was hard going, it turned out to have a flat tire and so we walked the last mile. We plan to do it again when they finish working on the very top of the trail from White Top to Green Cove. Finally the last week of June the weather finally became nice with no more rain every day. So far we have had only about 4 fays without some rain. The weather has been so wet and dark in the forest that there are all kinds of mushroom growing, most of which we have never seen before, so of course we had to take pictures of them. About two weeks after the 4th of July the rain started up again. The weather station called for scattered thunder storms just about every day, but there were several days when we didn’t get any and others when it came in the late afternoon or evening. Again we took pictures of all the different mushrooms that sprouted. During the lull we walked on the nature trail in the campground, called whispering waters, that was a circle and went out by a water fall. This was Delilah’s first trail walk and she surprised us by not trying to eat every thing she saw like she usually does. On the 4th of July all the hosts and other workers got together and had a cook out at the manager’s site. Everybody brought something so there was more than enough for all, in fact we were able to enjoy left over’s at the gate house for almost a week. Afterwards there was a park wide watermelon party at the play ground. We had heard about some falls that were near by and took off to find them one day. After driving about three miles on a gravel mountain road we finally found the trail head almost hidden by bushes. This trail dead ended in the Appalachian Trail and there was no sign telling us which way to go, so of course we headed up the wrong way first and realized that when the sound of the water kept getting fainter with each step. We turned around and backtracked to the junction and then started down the other part of the Appalachian Trail until we came to a bridge that crossed the river just below the falls. Of course we did this without bringing the camera so we didn’t get any pictures. We thought that this would be our last walk as Jim had been having trouble with his right knee and it hurt to do much walking. July was a busy month for Delilah as she was groomed for the first time; she didn’t care for that very much especially having her beard combed. Then a week later she was spayed and had to wear an Elizabethan collar so she wouldn’t lick at the incision which wasn’t stitched on the outside but glued together. She did real well and didn’t complain too much. Jim went to the doctor and they told him he had torn cartledge in the knee and gave him cortisone shot to see if that would work. It helped a little bit but later his left leg started hurting because of the way he tried to favor his right. One day we drove around in the forest looking for a trail head to another water fall, but couldn’t find the one we were looking for so we drove over to the other end of the trail to see if we could that head. We found it but it was too late to walk, so we made sure we could find it again for another day. A couple of weeks later we went back to walk the trail and ended up sharing it with several horse, this was the first time Delilah saw any thing that big so she decided that she needed to bark and try to intimidate them. We eventually found the falls but they weren’t much and we decided that the first ones we saw were actually better. In August we headed into North Carolina to find Boone and Appalachian State University, that small school that beat the University of Michigan. Afterwards we headed to a place called Blowing Rock, so called because the rocky walls form a flume through which the northwest winds blow with such force that light objects cast over the void are returned to the top. Then we headed into the town of Blowing Rock which we had heard was full of interesting shops, we found a Kilwin’s Mackinaw Island fudge shop so of course we had to buy some. One weekend we had a park wide birthday party for Smokey the Bear with a big birthday cake and Smokey himself. When we went back to the doctor Jim’s knee really wasn’t any better so it was decided to have arthroscopic surgery to repair the cartledge. As we wind down our summer it was sad to say good-by to all the campers who had been so nice and the other hosts. Most of the campers were local and up there at least once a month, so we got to know them pretty well. We finished up with another cookout followed by a small party for Wendell and Tally, hosts who had been working at the campground for about 30 years and were finally calling it quits now that they were in their nineties.