- Kudzu may be the vine that ate the South, but it also creates remarkable shapes as it shrouds all other plant life. There was an elephant on the drive to our house, and on our last night, I saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
- We hoped to see elk in the park, and we actually exceeded our expectations. On one of our first evenings we saw a herd with three antlered bucks. We even heard the bucks bugling, which is something between a horn and a whistle. Also when elks are around, there are many black flies that sting. As we stood with a small crowd watching the large animals, we swatted furiously.
- The story of Joyce Kilmer’s death in WWI was particularly touching when told by a woman in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest. She said she keeps Kilmer’s famous poem on her refrigerator. There are old growth (400+ years old) trees in the forest, which are nowhere near the size of redwoods, but I think I shall never again see tulip poplars as big as these.
- The windy (as in curvy) roads invoke a primitive fear in me when in the passenger seat on an outside turn. One 11 mile stretch is known as “The Dragon’s Tail” and has 318 curves. We drove it twice because it was the shortest way to get to where we were going. On the second run, we were followed by scores of motorcyclists who wanted to get around us at high speeds. I pulled over 10 times in 11 miles to let them pass.
- Florida living is poor preparation for the hills of the Great Smoky National Forest. It was an easy chore getting to 120 BPM on my Fitbit.
- Daryl at the pontoon boat rental on Fontana lake coulda stepped out of Mayberry. He told us: that his name was like the guys on the Bob Newhart show, how to work the boat, and two jokes (when Rita was out of ear shot).
- Our house rental company told us that our neighbor was a school teacher with 12 children. They said we should wave when we pass. We never saw the school teacher or the children, although there was evidence of activity in the house. It occurred to us that her children might be in their 40s, living far away, like most children in Florida.
- The rental company also used pictures of the house with AI, and it made it look much brighter than it was.
- We took the famous train ride from Bryson City into the park. We quickly changed the ride name to The Kudzu Tour, as the vine lined most of the track. After a point we were bored enough to jump off the train and walk back home, missing the last part of the journey, but getting more exercise than we got on board.
- There are over 300 ramshackle house boats on Fontana Lake that were allowed after the dam flooded communities in the valley. We didn’t see any people in them, but there was evidence of them. Apparently, you can rent them on AirBnB, but you need a boat for access.
- On the hike up the Alum Trail in Great Smoky Park, 90% of the people we saw were of Indian (Asian) descent. We asked a few why there were so many Indians, but they seemed as mystified as we were. We became suspicious that they were all working at some unpopular tech center. Chat GPT could not confirm.
- The Cades Cove Loop is a beautiful part of the Great Smoky park where you can see vast pastures and mountains. On Wednesdays the park is closed to cars, so we rode bikes. E-bikes are also allowed, and that is the most popular form of transportation. We’ve noticed that the greater the BMI of the e-bike rider, the higher the MPH.
- The Fontana Dam was built during WWII to generate power for aluminum production. Thousands of men worked on it, and it must have been quite a sight seeing all of those people crawling all over it. We talked to a young engineer while on the dam questioning whether anything of this scale is currently being created by engineers. He said data centers.