. . . on the past week, it has been a vertical learning curve in many ways. First, there is living in my car, sleeping on my car, cooking in the back of my car . . . my car is a mess!! LOL I had thought that I packed in a logical and space-conscious manner . . . but . . . not so much!!
I have had to totally rethink my car packing based on the items I use the most being the easiest to reach. Until I started this adventure, I did not truly know which items I would be using the most, and as fate happens, most all of those items were the ones buried at the bottom of everything else.
Next, the rooftop tent sets up and breaks down in about 30 minutes . . . if you do all the steps in the proper sequence! If you do not do the steps in the proper sequence, the tent makes one feel very humble as you have to redo the steps, correct the error, and then move forward. I believe now, having opened and closed the requisite number of times, that I finally have the tent mastered!
Food has been interesting. Most breakfasts have been all water based, meaning that without water (very HOT water) breakfast would be nuts and berries! I (luckily!) enjoy oatmeal and those single serving size cups you pour hot water in and wait five minutes before consuming, are actually quite tasty. I now eat TWO every morning because one only lasted until about 10 AM and then I become ravenous!
I have been eating mostly on the run for lunch . . . I call it “Bear Food”, berries, nuts and dried fruits (I avoid the grasses and grubs found in most bear diets!) This seems to work well for me because I can quickly get back to what I was doing, i.e. sitting watching a bear!
Water is key to sustaining life, and I cannot speak enough about the importance of hydration. I have always pushed hydration when I was working, and on the road there is no difference. Besides helping stave off hunger pangs for a bit, water helps cool the body from the inside out (go back to sitting and watching bear . . . usually in the glaring sun!) and it quickly gives you pep to keep going forward (so you can follow said bear when it wanders off!) So . . . hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
Dinner is a confusing issue. I, naturally, loaded up two weeks of assorted dinners. Most of them varying brands of gourmet freeze-dried fares. Each professes to provide a tasty and healthy meal in a mere matter of minutes by adding just a small quantity of very hot water and again waiting the appropriate amount of time for the epicurean magic to happen. THEY LIE!!! LOL So far . . . and YES! . . . I have been reading the instructions . . . repeatedly . . . the freeze-dried “meat” part of each meal gets soft on the outside while remaining, for the most part, pebble hard on the inside. It is akin to eating pebbles mixed with mud! However, the rice and noodles, veggies and seasonings make most palatable and at the end of the day, when all I want to do is climb onto the top of my car and under the sleeping bag . . .it’s dinner!
Suggestion . . . there are some incredible canned soups that all you need to do is heat up and with some crackers, are just as easily enjoyable!! I am certain that as I move down the raod, I will find ways to vary my diet and hopefully leave the freeze-dried fare farther and farther behind.
Cades Coves is in the western section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. If you have never been, I highly recommend you immediately add it to your bucket list. Cades Cove is free to the public. It primarily consists of miles of gently rolling pastures, divided by stands of trees and slow moving streams. It is home to an abundance of wildlife including Black Bears, White-Tailed Deer, Coyotes, Foxes, Racoons, Feral Pig and wild Turkeys. In my four day stay in the Cove, I only missed seeing the Raccoon and Fox . . . the Bear were in abundance along with the deer. I averaged seeing eleven different Black Bear each day I was in the Cove and easily the same amount of deer.
The Cove that most people visit is an eleven mile long, single lane, paved, driving loop with two hard packed gravel crossroads that allow two-way traffic. The speed is a maximum of 20 MPH (as much as for your safety as well as for the animals that call the Park home!)
If you want to do sunrise photography, you need to be at the head of the pack at the entrance gate when they Rangers open the drive. My photos here are all taken about an hour after sunrise (I slept in!!) There are one or two really wonderful pull-off parking areas along the scenic loop that look back to the east, but the majority of photographers head into the valley on the two cross roads to get the truly stunning photos.
I would be willing to bet that a good 70% of the people I saw driving Cades Cove never once got out of their car. Families with kids hanging out of windows and sunroofs, just dying to go run in a field . . . with thousands of acres of open pasture ready for them to enjoy. I can count on one hand the number of folks I saw lay out a picnic and just enjoy the splendor around them. This I find personally kind of sad! There are so many wonderful and beautiful things to see in the Cove. It has a history that is rich in the lore of the families that helped build this country. The Cove contains what is believed to be the largest collection of houses and structures from the 1800’s that can still be found in America. To see and learn how our forefathers lived to me is fascinating and so very important. These are things our children need to be seeing so that they understand WHERE they come from. Yes . . . there are bears, and deer, and all kinds of birds and beasties to see roaming free, but we all should endeavor to explore and experience the WHOLE park to really understand why it exists and why WE need to continue to support our park systems, be they local, State or Federal. Few people that visit the cove know that when the land became a Federal Park the bear had been hunted out of the cove and there were only 30 deer left in the valley.
I am about halfway through my processing of the bear, turkey and deer photos. You can imagine how many photos I accumulated when I started each day at about 8 AM and went through the day until 7 PM without break. So . . . I will let this close for now and be back with an all animal update in a few hours!
What the Walrus said . . . 