Barenaked Ladies and Smoky Mountain Climbing

It all started with the band. We have been wanting to see Barenaked Ladies for a long time, but we usually just miss them.

Either we’re out of town when they come somewhere close, or we just miss them by a few days when we happen to travel to one of their tour stops. This time it was Joe’s work and the fact that he was in ratings that made us miss their concert in Nashville recently. So we did the next best thing, we went to see them in Knoxville, TN and decided to make a mini vacation out of it and do some hiking in the Smokies.

Joe was able to take that Friday off so we could leave early and have plenty of time to get there, find our hotel in Pigeon Forge and get back Knoxville and find the Tennessee Theater.Apparently, there was some other concert in the park going on down the street with a

performance by Blues Traveler, so traffic was a lot busier then we

thought it would be. We soon discovered that we would have to park a ways and walk. We found a place about a mile away and had to hustle to make it to the theater on time.

It was a cool place, a 1930’s era theater complete with a marquee in lights. If it weren’t for the marquee we would never have known this was a theater. It was just a big, old-fashioned, multi-story brick building with a lot of windows, something that belonged in 1930’s cityscape.After we got through the front door, it was a completely different building with a spacious front door, it was a completely different building with a lobby and two grand

staircases, one on each side.

The auditorium was a step back in time as well; it looked like this place had been restored to its original splendor.

The concert was awesome. It was great to see one of the greatest bands of our generation perform live. But of course, as with any band with twenty years of greatest hits, there were songs we wished they would’ve played but just didn’t have the time to.The next morning we had to be somewhere we weren’t looking forward to, a meeting that loomed over the first half of our trip.

Joe had gotten some pretty good deals on a hotel but managed to get wrapped into a time share pitch. On the phone they told us we could

choose any time we wanted, to get the presentation out of the way, but

when we registered into our hotel room we heard a very different story. We had to attend a 1:00 pm sales pitch that would last about 2

hours… so much for our plans for hiking in the Smokies. The morning of the meeting we called the actual place we were going and asked if we could squeeze into the morning presentation and luckily we could. Well, lesson learned. We will never do this again. It was a very lengthy, hard sale, one on one with a sales rep. That lasted over three hours including a tour of the grounds and a dream cabin that we could own 1/25th of for a nice little second mortgage. But we would get super low rates if

purchased today. We had to say no to three different salesmen, each pushing harder then the former. They just couldn’t seem to understand the concept of us wanting to live a debt free life.

With the time we had left in the day we grabbed our hiking packs and headed for the mountains. Joe had been researching hiking trails in the Smokies before coming here, and there were a couple of trails he wanted to tackle if there was enough time.

The first of which was the Chimney Tops trail.

This trail looked very interesting and challenging and we had

heard stories confirming its challenging nature. It was only 2 miles in length, but in those 2 miles, the trail climbed over 2,000 feet straight up to the top.

The road twisted and turned has we drove closer to our destination. We forgot how beautiful this area was. As we got closer to the trailhead, we approached an overlook where we could see the top of the jagged peak we were about to climb to. A few yards and a tunnel later we got to the trail.

The first hundred or so yards of the trail was relatively easy and crossed a couple large streams. Some people were down in the stream playing in the water. The sky was overcast, and sounds of distant thunder made us wonder if we should go back to the car and wait for a storm to pass,

but we pressed on, hoping that we might make it back before the storm came through.

After the first hundred yards the trail began to climb. It crossed over another stream and began to climb even more steeply. We

just took our time and went a gentle pace since we knew it would just get harder. As challenging as this trail is known to be, it was surprising to see so many people, mainly families hiking along with us. We climbed and climbed and decided to rest on a log for a little while thinking maybe we were halfway there.

We climbed some more and crossed the creek a couple more times before climbing some more and reaching the half-way point. From here it just got steeper. The trail turned into a stone staircase that relentlessly climbed up for the next mile alongside a humble mountain stream that got smaller as we got higher. Looking up, the summit still seemed so far away, and we knew this trail wouldn’t stop until we got there.

Finally we got past the hardest part, climbed a couple switchbacks, then the trail leveled out as we headed for the chimney top. The vegetation got thinner and the trail got narrower with a steep ledge on the side. There were places where the park provided handrails because the trail was so narrow. We finally got to the chimney top.

This was a formation of treeless slate rock that formed a bald, but jagged peak… this was the end of the family friendly portion of the trail.The trail used to continue around the base of the formation but was closed for rehabilitation. Of course Joe wanted to climb to the very top, but Amber didn’t share the enthusiasm, especially after a series of dreams she had before, where we

were climbing something similar but fell off. Joe assured her that this wouldn’t happen but none the less she wouldn’t climb it.

Joe started climbing by himself. At first it was easy but it quickly got steeper and harder to find the next step or handhold.

Looking up, the top seemed so far away but he pressed on. The tree line finally topped off and he could see the mountains around him, halfway up the rocky formation.

This was where the formation got steeper and narrower and more exposed, and each step made his leg shake for fear of heights. This was the highest he was going to go today. The view of the surrounding mountains was beautiful. He could look down and see the overlook we stopped at on the way to the trailhead where we could see the top. He snapped a few pictures and we headed down.The hike down was actually harder then we thought it would be. Hiking down that steep for that long puts a lot of stress on leg muscles that we aren’t used to using.

We made it back to the car still dry.

Maybe we’ll come back here in the future and attempt to make it to the peak, after a couple more years of hiking and climbing, when our fear of heights won’t be so bad.Before we headed back to the hotel we decided there was time to hike a short trail, so we went to Laurel Falls. This trail was just a mile and a half long, to a nice waterfall and back that was paved the whole way. We figured this would be a quick and easy trail and a nice way to end our day of hiking. Almost halfway to the waterfall we heard thunder, and then felt a couple drops of rain. Those drops of rain led to more, harder drops of rain until it became a total downpour.

We didn’t have any ponchos or umbrellas with us, we didn’t even have our backpacks with us since this was supposed to be a quick and easy trail. We were too far along to turn back to the car so we pressed on and got completely soaked. At least it was warm outside. By the time we got to the waterfall, the rain had let up enough for us to take pictures. We headed back to the car, rung out our clothes and headed for the hotel where a nice warm shower was waiting for us, then to pizza hut!

We headed home the next day the scenic way but unfortunately not the way we had planned due to the road being closed. We later found out that the road was closed because of a landslide.

We stopped over in Chattanooga for some BBQ, then explored a little bit.

We happened upon a railroad museum that had a running steam locomotive. We definitely had to stop to take pictures.

We eventually got home to look forward to the start of another work week.

Hike to Buggytop

Getting ready for our upcoming hiking trip to the Smokies, and eventually our hiking trip to Utah we decided to take a little trip back to Cumberland Plateau. We were originally planning to go back to Stone Door and hike the more challenging Big Creek Gulf trail, but we got a late start so Joe let Amber pick the trail today. We have a nice map book of

Tennessee that has a list of popular hiking trails inside the front cover.

Amber, reading through the list saw a cute little trail called Buggytop, so naturally she picked that one. The map said that this trail was a four mile trip, there and back again. We weren’t quite sure what that meant, if it was two miles there and back or four miles there and back. So we mentally prepared ourselves for an eight mile day.We arrived at Buggytop right on the tail of a soaker of a storm, so the trail was nice,

wet and steamy for us. We hit the trail and noticed that there were a lot of pretty butterflies flying around. We tried to take a picture of one of them, but they wouldn’t stay put. The first mile was along the ridge top and was very sloppy and buggy. We got to a sign/register that showed us the trail map and luckily it was only a 2 mile trail.

Amber found out early on not to touch anything green because it was probably poison ivy. Her leg isn’t itching, which means that either she isn’t allergic to poison ivy or she didn’t brush against it hard enough. We usually go hiking in the winter, and we were reminded today of that reason… Poison ivy and bugs were everywhere.

Mile two was down into a box canyon and at times steep and r

ocky, and it took extra caution not to slip and fall because of the recent rain. We arrived at a bluff overlooking the box

canyon where Buggytop Cave is and we could hear the roaring of water exiting from the cave entrance below. It was time to go down into the box canyon, this was the fun part. The trail

immediately went down a broken up section of the rocky bluff and Amber accidentally found out that she could almost do a complete split, but luckily caught herself before going all the way down to the ground. The trail was definitely getting interesting. With poison ivy everywhere, climbing down the rocky bluff took creative foot and hand work to not touch any of the evil plants.

After the rocky bluff and a narrow ledge, the trail went steeply down a muddy hill with only tree roots and small embedded stones to aide us down without sliding. Amber had her second attempt at defying gravity as her foot slipped and she almost fell completely, but was able to catch

herself just inches from the ground. We arrived at Buggytop Cave and immediately felt the cool, dry air coming out. It was a

nice contrast from the hot steamy forest we had been hiking in.

Buggytop Cave has an enormous entrance with a river flowing out, and then promptly falling down some cascades onto a rocky stream bed. Since it was so humid outside, there was a great fog protruding from the entrance, making for an eerie sight. We snapped a couple pictures and headed back up. The trail going back up the bluff line was actually easier than i

t was coming down, and the poison ivy was much easier to avoid. We almost made it to the car completely unscathed, if it weren’t

for a misstep on a slippery rock by Amber which sent her hurling into a patch of Virginia creeper. Luckily it wasn’t poison ivy.All in all it was a good trail with some moderately difficult portions which Joe thinks made it even more of an interesting hike. As we arrived to the car, our shoes, ankles and legs were nice and muddy. Until the next hike.

Vacation Trip to Utah 2009! (a year later and we’re finally getting this posted)

After another grueling beginning of a school year and sweeps ratings periods at the station, its time to head out away on vacation, far away in Utah...four states away from work, from being able to get called in if something crazy happens. Away from the screaming kids and demanding bosses.
We found a great deal through Continental Airlines that made it possible for us to take this trip. But of course the catch is to leave really early in the morning from a city four hours away in Atlanta. Luckily Joe was able to get off early the day before, so we could take our time to get there and stop for a nice bite of BBQ in Chattanooga on the way over. We stayed at Joe's Aunt Hazel, who was also nice enough to get up at 5:00 am to give us a ride to the transit station. Luckily there was a train station close to her house that took us straight to the airport. We had timed it perfectly so we would make our flight without having to rush, but we found out at the last minute that we had to check our bag and pay a hefty twenty dollars to do so. We ended up having to run to our terminal to catch our flight. That was awful!
Our trip there was uneventful. Amber's mom and sister met us in the airport, and it was cold there compared to Atlanta. We spent the day in Salt Lake, mainly at This is the Place park pioneer village. We learned many things including how a spindle works, how the pioneers made yummy apple cider, and how a family of ten people can live in a one room cabin. It's amazing how spoiled we have become. Joe was able to go the General Conference Priesthood session that night, which was a good experience for him since he had never been to General Conference at the Conference Center before. We ended up getting home late that night, where Brianna (Amber's sweet little cousin) had fallen asleep waiting for us to get there.
For the majority of the week Joe had big plans to explore the wondrous state of Utah. Of course we should all know by now that Joe likes to think big...it drives his boss crazy sometimes. We only had a week but Joe has a nice map of Utah that he just can't put down. The more he studied the map, the more places we wanted to go. In between our explorations of the state, we spent time with family, and even included family with us as we explored. It's so hard on trips like these to see everybody and spend enough time with everybody so that they feel like they've had their fair share of time with Amber and Joe, since we only get out to Utah once a year.
We wanted to go and see Amber's friend Melissa down in Cedar City, so that gave Joe a chance to plan a nice little scenic drive to Cedar City and catch a plethora of natural Utah gems. We were able to talk Amber's sister into coming with us and letting us use her car. It was a fun drive. It is amazing how vast the state of Utah is. The terrain just changes so much as you travel through the state. There are the brown and tan rugged mountains of central east Utah and the coal mining towns. Then south of I-70 the landscape dramatically changes to more of a rolling hills prairie. A couple hours later it turns into a Colorado style pine and spruce forest as you go over Boulder Mountain with views of different style mountains in the distance. A couple hours later, another dramatic change as the pine and spruce forests give way to a desert of stone as we come into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument area. The drive through this was by far the most interesting of the day as the road wound around through stone canyons, straddled the tops of narrow ledges, and hugged the sides of stone walls with a sheer cliff as the shoulder of the road. You don't want to make any driving mistakes there. One wrong turn and its good-bye. Luckily there was a nice concrete barrier to serve as a guardrail on those parts of the road. We hit Bryce Canyon National Park before heading over to Cedar City.
After Bryce, we thought we were taking a shorter way but ended up winding around through a volcanic forest and past Cedar Breaks national monument. Wow, there sure are a lot of national monuments in Utah. Needless to say, we got to Cedar City a couple hours late. But with the scenery so spectacular, it didn't feel like we had been driving ten hours. It didn't feel near as long as the four hour drive back home on I-15 in the middle of the night. The rest of the week was spent with different family members driving around closer to Helper.
While Joe was looking through that map, he discovered a really interesting looking area called the San Rafael Swell. We had planned a day for Amber’s dad and grandma to take us through the swell in her dad’s 4x4 truck. We drove to the northern most overlook over the swell called the wedge overlook, nicknamed “little grand canyon”. It was pretty impressive. Most people don’t even know this place exists. We attempted to drive into the swell but got stopped by flat tire. While Amber’s dad, with a little help from Joe, troubleshooted the tire situation, we took some of the time to take some interesting pictures of each other…Joe even talked Amber into laying down on a rock for a cute picture. With the spare tire as a primary tire, we had gone as far as we could go today into the swell. We found out at the service station in Price what the culprit of the flat tire was, a wedge-shaped rock, a perfect triangle that just happened to be in the perfect position for us to run over it.
We managed to get back over to the swell the next day, but this time with Amber’s brother in his VW Jetta with super thin tires. The 25 mile trek through the northern portion of the swell on the gravel desert road was scenic, but at the speed we had to restrict our driving to in that vehicle made the trip seem extra long and bumpy. We’ll definitely have to come back here again in the future with a four wheel drive vehicle.
Lately Joe has had quite the fascination with ghost towns and Utah has plenty of them especially east Utah with the mountains being as rich in coal as they are. Joe has started collecting pictures of these ghost towns and took this trip as an extra opportunity to expand his ghost town portfolio. Amber’s mom was able to drive us around for a day to explore several of the ghost towns near Helper, Price and Scofield. We explored up the consumers area starting with the former town of Coal City. Since this is on private land, there are actually a few ruins to prove that there was once a town there. Many of the old mining camps on public property usually fall victim to environmental “reclaiming” acts which demolish coal camp ruins and basically erase all signs of history.
After exploring Coal City and taking lots of pictures we went to National just up the street and saw a couple of ruins which were unfortunately hard to get to because of the thick growth of sage brush. Joe and Amber’s mom braved the brush to explore the ruins and came back with a couple of scratches and sticky seeds all over them. Amber was glad that she didn’t follow them to the ruins. We couldn’t find any ruins of Sweet or Consumers, although there is a modern operating coal mine where the ancient coal mine used to be.
From here on out we were adventuring, following the dirt roads over the mountains to wherever they took us. It was a little nerve racking at times since the road was so narrow with a steep cliff at the shoulder at times. The most interesting part of the road took us down a steep set of switchbacks down to the other side of the mountain. We explored Clear Creek which is actually still somewhat habited. It was interesting to see how some of the newer houses where built onto the foundations of houses from the early 1900’s. We hit Scofield, took a few pictures and headed home to Helper.
Amber's birthday was Saturday so we all got together on Friday and had a family cook-out at Amber's grandparent’s house. As usual, the week flew by way to fast and vacation was over before we knew it. We stopped by a couple ghosts town on the way out of Helper and also managed to go and see Bridal Veil Falls before stopping at Amber’s cousin’s house in Salt Lake where we were staying the night since we had to be at the airport so early the next morning.
We flew back to Atlanta Sunday, and had the four hour drive home to look forward to. It was nice to be home again.
To see more pictures from our trip, visit our facebook pages at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=579500130#!/album.php?aid=335920&id=579500130&ref=pb
and
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=579500130#!/album.php?aid=112696&id=761653509&ref=pb

Hiking Trip to Stone Door

Over the past few months we’ve been going on little hikes whenever a dry weekend presented itself. We’ve been going on short hiking trips to Sipsey, Monte Sano and Land Trust trails. Our goal, to build up strength and endurance to be able to take on the more interesting hiking destinations around. Granted, Sipsey is a pretty interesting place, but we haven’t been able to take on the more interesting trails just yet.
Today (actually, last Saturday now) we decided to push ourselves to the next level, and take on a chunk of South Cumberland Recreation Area: Stone Door/Greeter Falls area. Joe knew about this place because it was his first experience with long distance hiking as a boy scout at age 12. Those were fond, yet painful memories since he had no idea what he was getting himself into, a 70 mile hike in one week.
The first leg of our trip took us down the Laurel Trail, 3 miles to the next trailhead. Joe remembered that this trail seemed to last forever, and that hasn’t changed after 18 years. The next leg of our hike took us to Greeter Falls. This trail was only a mile, but much more interesting. We had to cross a swingy, bouncy bridge over an impressive waterfall, Boardtree Falls. The trail then took us along a dynamic route along the base of a bluff line under multiple stone overhangs and through some fun boulder gardens.
Greeter Falls was definitely the highlight of today’s hike. It is split up into two waterfalls, the upper falls and lower falls. The upper falls was impressive, but it was only a primer to what we were about to see at the lower falls. Getting to the lower falls was an adventure in itself. We had to climb down a 100+ foot sheer cliff by way of spiral staircase. Wow, we have never seen a spiral staircase on a hiking trail before. After the spiral staircase, a set of wooden steps down, leading to a grand staircase down to the plunge pool. After all of the rain we’ve had lately, the waterfall was quite impressive. The site, along with the breeze and the roaring, thundering sound was breathtaking. We’re glad we came here.
The Greeter Falls hike was a spur off of our loop. We hiked back to our loop and continued along the Big Creek Rim Trail 3.2 miles to Great Stone Door. Those 3 miles were by far the longest 3 miles of the day. Joe somehow seems to recall this trail being shorter, but we were not sure what he was thinking eighteen years ago. Wow, has it really been that long? By the time we got to Stone Door, our feet were about to fall off and we could’ve drank an ocean. Of course when we got to Stone Door, we had to hike to the bottom and back since we were there. I guess we should have counted how many steps there were to the bottom and back. It felt like a hundred, especially after hiking those 3.2 miles. We just took it easy on the last mile back to the car.
When we started hiking today, we thought we would be hiking for five, maybe six miles, but we ended up hiking over 9 miles. The longest we’ve hiked before this in our marriage, probably since Joe was in Russia was three miles total. We probably will be feeling this for the rest of the week.

P.S. Joe’s feet had several blisters on them, because he was just wearing an old pair of tennis shoes, he didn’t have hiking boots. My feet were just a little sore, because I had just gotten a nice new pair of hiking boots. Our legs were a little sore the next day, but we were not sore for the whole week. We had a great time. We are looking forward to going hiking again.

The night out at a fancy restaurant!

Usually we don’t go to fancy restaurants. Living a humble lifestyle, if we ever eat out, it’s usually either at a local fast food chain or a family restaurant. Last year Joe put quite a few hours in at the station, putting together a new graphic look, saving the station thousands of dollars. Joe wasn’t about to get a raise or compensation for it, but he was given a gift card from the news leadership team for Cotton Row, a fancy restaurant downtown on the square. We have been holding on to the gift card for some time now, hoping there’s no expiration date on it. We finally decided to cash it in this past weekend and go on a date to the fancy restaurant.
Earlier in the day before we went we decided to look at the menu online and see what we all had to choose from, expecting there to be a world of variety. But instead we mainly found seafood dishes which I don’t really care for and most of them were French words and specialty dishes that took a dictionary to understand. We were getting a little bit scared; hopefully they had something we both would like. We got there in the evening and it was freezing outside. Of course we would pick the coldest night of the year to do this.
We had a candlelit table and the restaurant was interesting. They had preserved the history of the old Huntsville building and used that as part of their décor. The walls were ancient brick, and you could see the old wooden support beams in the ceiling. This building used to be a bank and the vault is still in the wall, pretty interesting.
When the waiter came by he explained the menu and had to translate a few words for us. Luckily there were some added dishes that weren’t on the menu and both sounded more appeasing than seafood at the moment.
We ended up ordering a dish of Marscapone Gnocchi, which is basically potato dumplings with some yummy sauce; to our surprise they were really good. I got duck breast with some side of vegetables and pasta mixture. And Joe got what the waiter called the crème de la crème of steak, the Kobe Beef dish.

The waiter said this was so good because the cow was on a careful diet which included white wine and classical music. We thought it was a joke and Joe had to ask if he was serious.
I’ve never heard of feeding a cow alcohol and constantly playing classical music for him. Apparently it has an effect on the tenderness of his muscles. Both dishes were really good.
I’ve never eaten duck before and I was afraid to try it. Joe said it probably tastes like chicken, but after trying it we both think it tastes much better than chicken. The vegetable pasta mixture was really good too, I wish I knew how they made it. It looks like we’ll be doing some duck hunting in the stores now.

Joe’s meat was also really good. Maybe we should go out and get us a cow and play some Mozart for it through Joe’s sound system. Dessert was also good, different, but good. I got a Banana Bavarian something and Joe got peanut butter and jelly something with ice cream, we enjoyed it.
The atmosphere took a while to get used to. Candlelit tables surrounded by rich people in suits who were very chatty, was a big difference from Arby’s and Popeye’s that we’re used to.

Before this, the most expensive restaurant we’ve gone to was Olive Garden. We were discussing how much of a different lifestyle rich people like this have, going out to fancy restaurants every other night to socialize with other rich friends over a glass of expensive wine.
The biggest shock of the night was the bill. We expected it to be high, but not this high. Our total was $121.00, just for the two of us, wow! Joe’s beef was fifty-five dollars.

They must have played that classical music through a high-dollar Bose system! That’s probably the best steak that Joe will ever have eaten.
It was a nice treat but we probably won’t do that again for a long time. Luckily Joe’s gift card paid for a hundred dollars of it, leaving only twenty-one dollars plus tip for us to pay out of pocket. All in all it was a really nice evening with each other out on the frozen town.

The Wooly Worm came to our house!

So we came home after a day full of shopping, put all the groceries away and did some cleaning up. Joe decided to go on the front porch and put the cover over the grill for the winter. Picking the cover up off the ground, he noticed that quite a few critters had made their home underneath the cover over the summer. Most of bugs were Gemini Crickets, spiders and a couple of flies. But there was one thing that he definately did not expect to see.... a wooly worm! Now we had never heard of these before until Channel 19 did a report last year about weather folklore and predicting winter. Joe had to find some pictures of wooly worms to use for the story since you can supposedly predict how harsh or mild a winter will be by the length of his orange band of color.

What he was doing on our front porch, will never know, I guess he just found some shelter underneath an unused vinyl tarp. Now the tarp is gone, we hope he will be okay. Here are a couple of pictures we took of him. Aren't I brave? One thing interesting that we found out, when they get scared, they curl up into a little fuzzy ball like rolly pollies do... he's cute!

Creepy Crawler Bug!!

So I was just sitting out on the front porch with the computer checking my e-mail. I glanced up to the walkway and saw this big bug coming towards me. Having never seen this particular kind of bug before, I wanted to catch it so I could show Joe and see if he knew what it was. I ran inside, grabbed a glass jar and came back outside and he was gone. A few seconds later he came back out from the grass onto the walkway, so I acted swiftly and trapped him in the glass jar. Meanwhile, waiting for Joe to come home I did some researching online and found out he was something called a cow killer. Joe came home, looked at the bug and confirmed what I now knew. He said that's a cow killer! The first he has ever seen in the state. Usually they're only in Florida.
While I was online,I found out....Red velvet ant or "cow killer" The females are wingless and are sometimes mistaken for a large, hairy, orange and black ant. These "ants" are actually wasp! A solitary wasp, the velvet ant does not live in colonies or have a "nest". They are found crawling through lawns, digging around soil, or even in garages where they have wandered in by accident. Velvet ants are not aggressive and will try to escape from you. The females have a very painful sting if handled. The name "Cow Killer Ant" was given to the velvet ant because of the reputation of the female's sting. It is said that the sting is so painful that it could kill a cow. This handsome insect does make a sound (especially when stepped on) but the squeaks of the cow killer ant would hardly be heard over the painful screams, if the person stepping on the wasp was barefoot.

P.S a week later I caught another one in our yard. So it seems like they're migrating to North Alabama, so be careful when you walk outside barefoot.