Racing west away from the rain, we ended up in the mountains of North Carolina, known as the Appalachian region. Here you find the Great Smoky Mountains, which are famously known for the blue mist that seems to hang eerily from their tops. We admired the blue from a distance, as it was definitely too early season to go up to the high mountain areas.
We did spend some time on lower mountains, enjoying a few days of fun climbing on the south side of Looking Glass. The climbing here was similar to Lovers’ Leap, on excellent granite. The difference being that at Lovers’ Leap the routes make use of horizontal quartz dikes, the Glass has lots of short incut wrinkles known as ‘eyebrows’. These make for interesting climbing, as it’s hard to gauge until you reach the next brow whether it has a good hold (or placement) under it. Unfortunately the rain caught up with us after a few days, so we didn’t get to finish our climbing “tick list” at the Glass.
As a place to be rained out, Asheville was pretty friendly. Asheville is the major city of the region and is a fantastic place, full of arts and crafts, funky eateries and the best all-you-can-eat-pizza place ever. The pizza place became a favourite for us as alongside the pizza they showed second run movies for $3 where you sat in comfy chairs and could drink excellent local beer. Mmmm. We also checked out some local craft markets and got some great ideas about future craft projects…
Rain continued though we did do a lot of hiking around the Looking Glass area, hoping for some more dry days. We also got quite familiar with the Brevard Town library, another great place to be in the rain. And it REALLY rained. During the evenings, we have been moving right along on our Harry Potter books on our iPod. We started with book one in September in Peru, we’re now just finishing book five…They have truly been a sanity saver for some long evenings without electricity; sometimes a book doesn’t cut it, you just want to be entertained.
Psychologically we felt ourselves attempting to revamp our trip plan, as we were trapped by rain where we were but it was still snowing towards the north where we eventually wanted to head. Ideas varied wildly in quality. Instead of the Appalachian trail leg we had considered in Virginia, we flirted (very) briefly with the idea of hiking the Bruce Trail (across the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario) in May and early June and having our only source of entertainment be a portable, solar powered radio with the local CBC. (At this point we realized that we were a bit homesick for Canada) Other ideas included working on a local organic farm, staying in Brevard and working on craft projects, going to Florida, or just simply going back to Vancouver to work. Crazy. Most of our plans were based on our being in Kingston, Ont. in mid-June for a week-long sailing trip on a tall ship. Alas, this was not to be – maybe next year…
We had wanted to climb for April at the Red River Gorge in Kentucky however obsessive weather checking revealed an excessive amount of rain, sleet, hail and of course flooding in the area. Then we checked the Red Rocks/Vegas forecast – it showed extensive perfect, long-term sunny weather. Hmmm… So we booked. The 3.5 day drive straight back across the country to Vegas was slightly complicated by the fact that Megan had a pretty yucky flu bug for the entire trip. Dave gets major credit and bonus points for having driven the ENTIRE 2700 miles single-handedly, with the added bonus of a barfing ‘navigator’ throughout Tennessee… Fun times!
We stopped a few nights along the way and even lucked out with a motel room showing Ferris Bueller on our second night. Things were looking up! And we did have one token touristy stop, at a tiny town who's economy appears to be entirely based on having been mentioned in an Eagles song.
Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...
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