Joan’s 7th newsletter – September 18 – October ??
When you last heard from me, I had just experienced that motel in Marshfield, MO with the fly swatter hanging on the wall. That was September 18. It is now November 8 and I am in Tucson again, staying with friends for a few weeks before heading back to California to stay with my daughter until the adventures begin again in January 2006. This newsletter will go a bit out of sequence in order to lump the national parks and similar "things" together for comparison purposes. You’ll see why when you get there. But first, let’s begin with …
Finishing Missouri
At the rest stop off of I-44 near Conway, MO, I experienced a sink thingy so unique I just have to tell you about it. All you have to do is stick your hands into a concave "hole in the wall" and wait for liquid soap to magically appear, then water, and finally hot air, all for just the right amount of time. For their next trick, will they figure out how to wipe our butts for us?
At the Rockin’ Chair restaurant in Conway, I had the most abundant cheap breakfast so far: $2.95 for eggs, hashbrowns and biscuit, $1.25 for one pancake, and 65 cents for a cup of coffee that they just kept filling. The Conway library was the first I encountered that didn’t have computers for public use, although the volunteer let me try (unsuccessfully) to connect to the Internet on the staff computer. Until a few years ago, Conway didn’t have a library. After a 16-year-old local girl was killed in a car crash, the library came about through donations in her memory. The holdings are on a mis-matched conglomeration of shelves and bookcases in an area about the size of a large living room.
So I went south to Marshfield, stopped at the Chamber of Commerce for directions to their library, and learned that some NASA folks would be in town that weekend during their harvest festival. Why? Edwin Hubble was born there in 1889. He’s the guy who proved that the universe is expanding. A one-quarter size replica of the Hubble telescope stands in front of the court house there. I’ve learned that astronomy-related stuff is all over this country. Well, the sky is always up there, and rural area folks can see it better than city dwellers.
Visiting Mitch and Diana Jayne
Remember the Dillards, a bluegrass band that began performing in the early 1960s? They also appeared on some Andy Griffith shows as the Darlin’ Boys, the usual ignorant hillybilly stereotypes but these guys could sing and play music like they were the real thing because they were. My husband and I crossed paths with them many times, and I even exchanged Christmas cards with Mitch and Diana for a while until my last one came back from Columbia, MO marked "addressee unknown." Well, that’s because they moved to Eminence, a small town in the southeastern Ozarks where Mitch had wanted to live for many years. They had to wait for someone to die first so they could buy a house. The townspeople find out when a death occurs when a black border and a funeral notice appear on the bulletin board outside the post office, where everyone goes to pick up mail. Founded before the Civil War, the current population is about 600, and it’s located near the Current River and Jack’s Fork. Lots of river activity in the summer, and tourist season extends into fall hunting season. Well, it’s the Ozarks.
Mitch met Rodney and Doug Dillard when he was teaching in a one room schoolhouse in the Ozarks, and together with mandolin player Dean Webb they formed the band. Mitch is also a writer; his books include "Old Fish Hawk," made into a movie in 1980 and an audio cassette in 1995, and his latest "Home Grown Stories and Homefried Lies," both available on Amazon.
The original foursome last performed together in November 2002 as part of a tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall, with Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger and a who’s who of other musicians, not including the ghosts of those who previously graced the stage at Carnegie Hall over the years. Everyone who performs there has to enter the stage from the same narrow wing, which thrilled Mitch no end knowing he was standing where they had all stood before going on stage. At age 77, Mitch has lost a lot of his hearing and is plagued by diminishing eyesight as well, but I’ll bet he’ll always be a writer and a storyteller. We swapped stories and news of family and musician acquaintances until two in the morning, and most of the next day as well. Mitch is not 100% retired, as he continues to write and publish newspaper and magazine articles. Diana is a freelance artist and illustrator. The group you may see billed now as The Dillards is Rodney and Doug. Dean Webb appears with the bluegrass band Missouri Boat Ride, and coincidentally that band and Mitch were both on the program a few weeks hence at a fundraiser to restore an old school in southern Missouri. For more information, see www.mayberry.com and search for Dillards, also check www.oldtimemusic.org/dillards.html .
Driving along two-lane U.S.60 through lengthening evening shadows was like being on a rollercoaster, up, down, and twisty. I would catch a glimpse of oncoming headlights and then they would disappear in a dip, appearing again at the top of a rise. I saw coon dogs and deer where the woods and fields met the road. In some places the shoulders were really wide, possibly to accommodate Amish buggies. The Amish farms stood out with their windmills, lack of electric and phone lines, laundry hanging out to dry, and absolutely no junk cars scattered around the property. The rolling hills, caves and springs of the Ozark mountains really got me wondering about the geological cause of it all, so I went to Google to satisfy my curiosity. If you don’t care about karst, just skip the next paragraph.
From http://www.umsl.edu/~joellaws/ozark_caving/springs/sprkarst.htm I learned that I was driving over karst, which is "any terrain based on a layer of soluble bedrock, usually, though not always, of carbonate rocks. In the American Midwest, karst forms on limestones (calcium carbonate) and dolomites (magnesium calcium carbonate.) … But the karst of the Missouri Ozarks is almost textbook, and is characterized by well eroded rolling hills, deep hollows, springs, caves, sinkholes, losing streams, natural bridges, and tunnels." Yup, Missouri had a lot of those. I had to look up "losing stream," and it’s just what you’d expect – a stream that simply disappears into the earth. Getting a bit more technical, "Karst is formed when rainwater picks up carbon dioxide from the air, and dead plant debris in the soil, then percolates through cracks dissolving the rock. The bedrock becomes saturated with water at some level, and dissolving continues as the water moves sideways along bedding planes (horizontal cracks between rock layers) and joints (or fractures) in the rock itself. These conduits enlarge over time, and move the water, via a combination of gravity and hydraulic pressure, further enlarging the conduits through a combination of solution and abrasion of water on the surrounding rock. Eventually, much of this water under pressure reaches the surface of the land as a spring. … In some areas of the Ozarks, more than 70% of all water goes underground via karst processes."
The rollercoaster finally leveled out east of the Mark Twain National Forest, and the landscape began to include flat fields including what looked like cottonfields. Later I learned this was the furthest north cotton grew. As I approached Sikeston, I saw a billboard for a discount CD store and just happened to end up staying at a motel right next to the outlet mall it was in. The selection there was deep in bluegrass, country and gospel unavailable in Santa Cruz or San Jose. About $40 got me a bunch of CDs – mostly bluegrass but also Johnny Cash, Jimmy Rodgers and a reggae mix – plus eight one-hour books-on-tape for a quarter each. A great find. The Sikeston library was also a great find. Even though they didn’t allow non-educational use of their computers so I couldn’t check e-mail, the staff really helped me with directions on getting into Kentucky. They knew the closest bridge over the Mississippi River was an impassable construction zone and routed me further north through Cairo (pronounced Karo like the syrup), Illinois. At this point I was near New Madrid (pronounce Madrid with emphasis on the first syllable) so apparently this was the foreign part of my trip. I resisted the advertising that urged me to visit Cape Girardeau to see what influenced Rush Limbaugh as a child there.
Take Me Back to Old Kentucky…
My first impression of Kentucky was of the rivers I crossed, the Mississippi and Ohio, being used for commerce. Lots of commercial barges and tugboats, and some riverboats for tourism. The most commercial river vessels I recall in the west are inflatable rafts. Next I thought I smelled tobacco growing in the fields. Later on I saw a lot more tobacco: growing, being harvested, drying in tobacco barns, and being black-fired in smokehouses. No wonder smoking in public places – even convenience stores (well, that was in Missouri) – is allowed; it’s all part of their economy. Sigh. I wish they’d grow tofu instead.
My second impression was of all the huge homes and yards. As I was looking for the suburban library outside Elizabethtown, I was told to look for the big building on a hill. Well, that described all the private residences in the area too. Even one of their rest stops is a former estate home listed on the National Register of Historic Places (see http://www.kentuckylake.com/activities/historic/whitehaven.htm)
I spent nearly a month in Kentucky and Tennessee, most of that time in Kentucky, and I hope to go back for more. The lush greenery of the mountains and fields of bluegrass just never seemed to end, especially while driving on the many parkways. All of Kentucky’s parkways were former tollroads, and aren’t as wide, fast, or full of commercial truck traffic as the interstates. I’ve been in desert areas of New Mexico and Arizona for over a week now, and still can’t decide which I like the better – green trees and mountains, or the cactus, sand and rocky mountains. Kentucky Heritage magazine, at http://travel.ky.gov/KentuckyHeritage/ , has a number of good descriptive articles should you want to read more about Kentucky.
National Parks, Areas, and Sites
I’m going to discuss the following federal lands, listed below in the order I experienced them, and skip the events inbetween so they can be compared more easily:
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, near Paducah, KY
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, south of Louisville, KY
Mammoth Cave National Park, central Kentucky
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, southeast Kentucky
Dayton (Ohio) Aviation Heritage National Historic Park
Natchez Trace Parkway, a National Scenic By-Way in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi
All can be searched for at www.nps.gov
Cumberland Gap
Historically, it makes sense to begin with the Cumberland Gap because it was the first passageway into Kentucky. The Cumberland Mountains (named after the Duke of Cumberland) seemed impenetrable until an early explorer found a way through at the gap in 1750. It had been a buffalo trail first, and then a passage used by Cherokee Indians. But Dr. Thomas Walker saw no reason to go beyond the gap, so no one did until 1775 when Daniel Boone blazed the way. Eventually he led thousands of pioneers into Kentucky, where he and his family also settled. The Cumberland Gap was the only route until the Ohio River, and then a few roads, took its place in the late 1790’s. The trail through the high point at the gap can be walked on today, and it was truly the first time on this trip when I really felt the presence of the people who had been there before me. Highly recommended for history buffs, including both films at the visitors center (which includes a shop selling items made by local artists and craftspeople).
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Just before my visit to the Cumberland Gap, I had a very disappointing visit around and about the Great Smoky Mountains. I have only myself to blame, because I ignored the warnings that it’s the most visited national park, and that traffic to and through it is horrendous. Therefore, I’m telling it like I experienced it and you can decide whether or not to go there.
The warning light should have lit up in my head when the Knoxville hostel owner, who runs a shuttle delivery service between Knoxville and the three towns north of the park entrance, told me he takes along two magazines and a newspaper to read while sitting in traffic there. The residents and imported help in Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg exist on the dollars tourists spend there on overpriced, overhyped tourist traps, such as Dolly Parton’s amusement park Dollywood, numerous dinner theaters (and breakfast and lunch theaters), Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, restaurants, souvenir shops, special events, and on and on. The population of Gatlinburg is 3,382 and they have 11,000 beds for tourists (kaching!). The state sales tax in Tennessee is 10%, and municipalities can – and do – tax purchases even more (kaching!). At the Gatlinburg Wendy’s (I’ve become addicted to their frosties that taste like chocolate malts), I noticed many of the usual 99 cent specials were $1.29 (kaching!). At the Gatlinburg Visitors Center, I was told that the majority of visitors never go into the park "because there’s nothing to do there."
Not so. It’s a huge park with plenty to do, including walking along part of the Appalachian Trail. But, like Yosemite, it’s too popular for its own good. Advance reservations are recommended to camp, and it was one of the few places I camped that had no showers. The vehicles driven into the park contribute pollution to the smoky haze, which is actually mist. That means dampness, moisture, humidity – this summer the humidity was as high as 90%, plus it was hot!
Still, many people love the Smokies. I took the shuttle bus from the campground into Gatlinburg (to avoid traffic and parking hassles), and the driver was a sixth generation Gatlinburger with many stories to share. I went on a 3-1/2 mile stroll along the Appalachian Trail with a couple who visit the Smokies every year. Being on the Appalachian Trail, and meeting the father and son who’d been hiking it for four days so far, was the highlight of my visit. I won’t go there again unless I can find a way to avoid the crass commercialization surrounding the park. Even exiting to the south took me through Cherokee, North Carolina, which has a Harrah’s Casino, a trading post and beer park, Santa’s Land fun park, curio shops – have you heard enough?
Mammoth Cave National Park
By contrast, Mammoth Cave National Park was an entirely different and more pleasing experience. More than 250 miles of underground passages have been surveyed so far, although tours go into only a small portion of them. Above ground, 53,000 acres offer forests, meadows, hiking and biking trails, the Green River, wildlife and views of sinkholes – this is karst territory (see previous explanation of karst in the Missouri Ozarks). I went on a late afternoon boat ride on the Green River and saw softshell turtles sunbathing, wood ducks and great blue heron. Wild turkey and deer looked for dinner by the side of the road. I had a shower! I ate breakfast in the park hotel restaurant (so-so, but hot and reasonable). I could have stayed at the hotel for $50 or in a cottage with private bath for $36. Oh, and I went on a cave tour, choosing the shortest, easiest one because the Colossal Cave tour in Arizona in February had been difficult due to my crazy eye problems. Although I didn’t get dizzy on the Mammoth Cave tour, I did have balance problems due to the uneven walking surface. Thankfully, the tour was short (one hour) and cheap ($2.50) and interesting. No spectacular stalagmites and stalactites, but we heard historical and geological facts, saw the remains of the saltpeter mines, the church service area, one small bat at rest, and total darkness. The guide turned off all the lights and now I know what pitch black means. In October, this park was neither crowded nor cold; highly recommended.
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area
I had never even heard of Land Between the Lakes (LBL) before seeing it on the Kentucky map. I went there for quiet time and a cheap stay because I had time to kill before the Bill Monroe music festival about 60 miles away. LBL camping cost me $6 a night with my Golden Age passport, and they had super-clean restrooms, showers, a brand-new washer and dryer, and a convenience store with reasonably-priced bagged ice. I stayed five nights.
LBL is a peninsula 43 miles long between two lakes that had originally been two rivers until a TVA dam widened them. It had been home, in this order, to prehistoric peoples, six different native American tribes, former revolutionary soldiers who received land grants there, and others who farmed, fished, logged, tanned animal skins, worked in the iron and charcoal industries, and made moonshine liquor. But it became increasingly more difficult to make a living in this contained area, and in the early 1960’s, the feds turned it into a multi-use national recreation and conservation area. Today visitors fish, swim, boat (it has 300 miles of shoreline), camp, hike, ride horses, see protected herds of buffalo and elk, and visit an observatory, planetarium, and an 1850s living history farm.
LBL is also close to Paducah, which offered easy computer use at the library, a quilt museum full of painstakingly stitched quilts that are marvelous works of art, a floodwall next to the Ohio River full of murals depicting the history and life of the community, a downtown historic district with helpful markers, and more that I didn’t see. In 1937, 90% of Paducah was covered with flood waters, but there’s no sign of the damage today. Perhaps there’s hope for New Orleans after all. Another historic markers explained who the original Duke of Paducah was. It was humorist Irwin S. Cobb (1876-1944), but the moniker was also used later by hillbilly comedian "Whitey" Ford (1901-1986) who appeared on the Grand Old Opry and other radio shows and live performances. His tag line was "I’m goin’ back to the wagon, boys, these shoes are killin’ me!"
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site
So where do you think Abraham Lincoln was born? No, not in Illinois, as I thought before noticing "Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Nat’l Historic Site" on a Kentucky map near Hodgenville. Look for Louisville, then a little southeast to Elizabethtown, then southeast again to Hodgenville. Abe was born three miles south of there on February 12, 1809, but not in the first building you see, a neoclassical granite and marble structure with tall Greek columns and wide steps (56 of them, one for each year of Lincoln’s life) leading up to huge double front doors. He wasn’t even born in the log cabin inside that temple-like structure, but the log cabin inside is similar to the real thing, which was 16’ by 18’. Imagine a family living in that small space. A similar log cabin (also not the real thing) can be seen 13 miles north at Knob Creek. That site is the farm where the Lincoln family lived from 1811 to 1816. It looked like an idyllic place for a kid – woods, valleys, streams, and a one-room log schoolhouse two miles away.
I wandered slowly around both sites soaking in the significance, then drove south past barns with open doors and windows to allow the tobacco inside to dry.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, is also a Kentucky native. I doubt that’s the reason Kentucky proclaimed neutrality during the War Between the States, but it didn’t work. Enough battles occurred then that there are sufficient commemorative sites and re-enactments to make History Channel and black powder gun enthusiasts happy.
Natchez Trace Parkway
A map that includes Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi will show the Natchez Trace Parkway best. The Trace, a diagonal parkway running northeast from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, probably began as a series of native American hunting trails. By 1785 Ohio River Valley farmers searching for markets had begun floating their crops and products down the rivers to Natchez or New Orleans. Because they also sold their flatboats, they had to walk or ride back home and the Trace was the most direct route. The Parkway is 444 miles of tranquil driving at 50 mph tops, and no commercial vehicles are allowed. Ten years ago I drove along part of it south of Tupelo, MS and have wanted to explore more ever since. This time I entered the Parkway about Milepost 370 in southern Tennessee, stopped for lunch and a short hike, drove briefly through Alabama, and exited at Milepost 293 to camp near Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The largest Army Corps of Engineers project in the U.S., it tamed a bunch of rivers and added a system of navigable locks to shorten a transportation route, adding recreational opportunities in the process. I camped for $8 (my Golden Age rate), strolled along the shoreline, took a shower, and could have gone boating, fishing or done my laundry.
Other stops along the Trace include many Chickasaw Indian sites, prehistoric mounds, a Confederate cemetery and battlefield, and picnic tables and restrooms. At one of the latter, I met two bicyclists from Michigan and their support van driver. The trace is a popular official bikeway.
After scrutinizing my maps, I chose to exit the Trace at Tupelo for a more direct route west. Higher gas prices have definitely influenced my route choices since Labor Day when it topped $3 a gallon.
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park
I’ve left this till last as it stands alone as my only urban national park experience, although I experienced it between Cumberland Gap and the Natchez Trace. (Just don’t even try to figure out the chronology of this newsletter.) My interest in the Wright Brothers began in Santa Cruz when the local newspaper ran a serialized story about the boys and their aeroplane experiments. Although written for children, it interested me because I’m a history nut. I also admire inventors for their creative minds, problem-solving skills and tenacity, all of which Orville and Wilbur had. Their first business was a print shop, then a bicycle shop. They adapted bicycle technology to aeronautical design because they recognized the parallels between controlling a bicycle and an aircraft. A very knowledgeable guide at the Wright Brothers Aviation Center explained this all quite well as we viewed a reconstruction of the brothers’ first successful flying machine, the 1905 Wright Flyer III. Parts of the original machine were salvaged and the reconstruction was supervised by Orville prior to the park opening in 1950.
The Wright Brothers weren’t the only inventors in Dayton. By 1890, Dayton led the nation in patents per capita. Charles Kettering designed the first cash register powered by an electric motor in 1906 (and started NCR). He and other putterers, known as the Barn Gang, invented the self-starter to replace the crank on early motor vehicles. The various buildings at this site included a reproduction of the Barn Gang’s loft workshop, the Wright Brothers bicycle shop, plus a wonderful collection of early bicycles, automobiles, battery-powered golf carts and wheel chairs, trains and trolleys – all made in Dayton – plus a print shop, early gas station, and more.
Summary
After I wrote the last few pages, I found the July 2000 issue of MotorHome magazine at a thrift shop and it contained a glowing report of Land Between the Lakes. I would recommend visiting all of the national sites I’ve described, with the hope that you more seriously consider the down side to the Great Smoky Mountains before venturing too close and getting stuck in traffic.
I see I’m on page 7 now which is over my self-imposed limit of 6 pages (because I snail-mail this to some folks). My next couple of newsletters will cover places I visited inbetween the national parks etc. and since, as follows:
Kentucky, including Keeneland Racetrack, The Farm intentional community, Museum of Appalachia, and Knoxville
The Bob Evans Farm Festival, where I saw square-dancing tractors and a sausage museum
Why I skipped Nashville, the Amarillo Art Museum, and Albuquerque
Cottonlandia Museum in Mississippi
Texas, from Texarkana to Amarillo
New Mexico and Arizona again (four more national parks and monuments; two other historic sites)
Motel comparisons and recommendations
Getting to the heart of a small town
Finishing Missouri
At the rest stop off of I-44 near Conway, MO, I experienced a sink thingy so unique I just have to tell you about it. All you have to do is stick your hands into a concave "hole in the wall" and wait for liquid soap to magically appear, then water, and finally hot air, all for just the right amount of time. For their next trick, will they figure out how to wipe our butts for us?
At the Rockin’ Chair restaurant in Conway, I had the most abundant cheap breakfast so far: $2.95 for eggs, hashbrowns and biscuit, $1.25 for one pancake, and 65 cents for a cup of coffee that they just kept filling. The Conway library was the first I encountered that didn’t have computers for public use, although the volunteer let me try (unsuccessfully) to connect to the Internet on the staff computer. Until a few years ago, Conway didn’t have a library. After a 16-year-old local girl was killed in a car crash, the library came about through donations in her memory. The holdings are on a mis-matched conglomeration of shelves and bookcases in an area about the size of a large living room.
So I went south to Marshfield, stopped at the Chamber of Commerce for directions to their library, and learned that some NASA folks would be in town that weekend during their harvest festival. Why? Edwin Hubble was born there in 1889. He’s the guy who proved that the universe is expanding. A one-quarter size replica of the Hubble telescope stands in front of the court house there. I’ve learned that astronomy-related stuff is all over this country. Well, the sky is always up there, and rural area folks can see it better than city dwellers.
Visiting Mitch and Diana Jayne
Remember the Dillards, a bluegrass band that began performing in the early 1960s? They also appeared on some Andy Griffith shows as the Darlin’ Boys, the usual ignorant hillybilly stereotypes but these guys could sing and play music like they were the real thing because they were. My husband and I crossed paths with them many times, and I even exchanged Christmas cards with Mitch and Diana for a while until my last one came back from Columbia, MO marked "addressee unknown." Well, that’s because they moved to Eminence, a small town in the southeastern Ozarks where Mitch had wanted to live for many years. They had to wait for someone to die first so they could buy a house. The townspeople find out when a death occurs when a black border and a funeral notice appear on the bulletin board outside the post office, where everyone goes to pick up mail. Founded before the Civil War, the current population is about 600, and it’s located near the Current River and Jack’s Fork. Lots of river activity in the summer, and tourist season extends into fall hunting season. Well, it’s the Ozarks.
Mitch met Rodney and Doug Dillard when he was teaching in a one room schoolhouse in the Ozarks, and together with mandolin player Dean Webb they formed the band. Mitch is also a writer; his books include "Old Fish Hawk," made into a movie in 1980 and an audio cassette in 1995, and his latest "Home Grown Stories and Homefried Lies," both available on Amazon.
The original foursome last performed together in November 2002 as part of a tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall, with Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger and a who’s who of other musicians, not including the ghosts of those who previously graced the stage at Carnegie Hall over the years. Everyone who performs there has to enter the stage from the same narrow wing, which thrilled Mitch no end knowing he was standing where they had all stood before going on stage. At age 77, Mitch has lost a lot of his hearing and is plagued by diminishing eyesight as well, but I’ll bet he’ll always be a writer and a storyteller. We swapped stories and news of family and musician acquaintances until two in the morning, and most of the next day as well. Mitch is not 100% retired, as he continues to write and publish newspaper and magazine articles. Diana is a freelance artist and illustrator. The group you may see billed now as The Dillards is Rodney and Doug. Dean Webb appears with the bluegrass band Missouri Boat Ride, and coincidentally that band and Mitch were both on the program a few weeks hence at a fundraiser to restore an old school in southern Missouri. For more information, see www.mayberry.com and search for Dillards, also check www.oldtimemusic.org/dillards.html .
Driving along two-lane U.S.60 through lengthening evening shadows was like being on a rollercoaster, up, down, and twisty. I would catch a glimpse of oncoming headlights and then they would disappear in a dip, appearing again at the top of a rise. I saw coon dogs and deer where the woods and fields met the road. In some places the shoulders were really wide, possibly to accommodate Amish buggies. The Amish farms stood out with their windmills, lack of electric and phone lines, laundry hanging out to dry, and absolutely no junk cars scattered around the property. The rolling hills, caves and springs of the Ozark mountains really got me wondering about the geological cause of it all, so I went to Google to satisfy my curiosity. If you don’t care about karst, just skip the next paragraph.
From http://www.umsl.edu/~joellaws/ozark_caving/springs/sprkarst.htm I learned that I was driving over karst, which is "any terrain based on a layer of soluble bedrock, usually, though not always, of carbonate rocks. In the American Midwest, karst forms on limestones (calcium carbonate) and dolomites (magnesium calcium carbonate.) … But the karst of the Missouri Ozarks is almost textbook, and is characterized by well eroded rolling hills, deep hollows, springs, caves, sinkholes, losing streams, natural bridges, and tunnels." Yup, Missouri had a lot of those. I had to look up "losing stream," and it’s just what you’d expect – a stream that simply disappears into the earth. Getting a bit more technical, "Karst is formed when rainwater picks up carbon dioxide from the air, and dead plant debris in the soil, then percolates through cracks dissolving the rock. The bedrock becomes saturated with water at some level, and dissolving continues as the water moves sideways along bedding planes (horizontal cracks between rock layers) and joints (or fractures) in the rock itself. These conduits enlarge over time, and move the water, via a combination of gravity and hydraulic pressure, further enlarging the conduits through a combination of solution and abrasion of water on the surrounding rock. Eventually, much of this water under pressure reaches the surface of the land as a spring. … In some areas of the Ozarks, more than 70% of all water goes underground via karst processes."
The rollercoaster finally leveled out east of the Mark Twain National Forest, and the landscape began to include flat fields including what looked like cottonfields. Later I learned this was the furthest north cotton grew. As I approached Sikeston, I saw a billboard for a discount CD store and just happened to end up staying at a motel right next to the outlet mall it was in. The selection there was deep in bluegrass, country and gospel unavailable in Santa Cruz or San Jose. About $40 got me a bunch of CDs – mostly bluegrass but also Johnny Cash, Jimmy Rodgers and a reggae mix – plus eight one-hour books-on-tape for a quarter each. A great find. The Sikeston library was also a great find. Even though they didn’t allow non-educational use of their computers so I couldn’t check e-mail, the staff really helped me with directions on getting into Kentucky. They knew the closest bridge over the Mississippi River was an impassable construction zone and routed me further north through Cairo (pronounced Karo like the syrup), Illinois. At this point I was near New Madrid (pronounce Madrid with emphasis on the first syllable) so apparently this was the foreign part of my trip. I resisted the advertising that urged me to visit Cape Girardeau to see what influenced Rush Limbaugh as a child there.
Take Me Back to Old Kentucky…
My first impression of Kentucky was of the rivers I crossed, the Mississippi and Ohio, being used for commerce. Lots of commercial barges and tugboats, and some riverboats for tourism. The most commercial river vessels I recall in the west are inflatable rafts. Next I thought I smelled tobacco growing in the fields. Later on I saw a lot more tobacco: growing, being harvested, drying in tobacco barns, and being black-fired in smokehouses. No wonder smoking in public places – even convenience stores (well, that was in Missouri) – is allowed; it’s all part of their economy. Sigh. I wish they’d grow tofu instead.
My second impression was of all the huge homes and yards. As I was looking for the suburban library outside Elizabethtown, I was told to look for the big building on a hill. Well, that described all the private residences in the area too. Even one of their rest stops is a former estate home listed on the National Register of Historic Places (see http://www.kentuckylake.com/activities/historic/whitehaven.htm)
I spent nearly a month in Kentucky and Tennessee, most of that time in Kentucky, and I hope to go back for more. The lush greenery of the mountains and fields of bluegrass just never seemed to end, especially while driving on the many parkways. All of Kentucky’s parkways were former tollroads, and aren’t as wide, fast, or full of commercial truck traffic as the interstates. I’ve been in desert areas of New Mexico and Arizona for over a week now, and still can’t decide which I like the better – green trees and mountains, or the cactus, sand and rocky mountains. Kentucky Heritage magazine, at http://travel.ky.gov/KentuckyHeritage/ , has a number of good descriptive articles should you want to read more about Kentucky.
National Parks, Areas, and Sites
I’m going to discuss the following federal lands, listed below in the order I experienced them, and skip the events inbetween so they can be compared more easily:
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, near Paducah, KY
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site, south of Louisville, KY
Mammoth Cave National Park, central Kentucky
Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina
Cumberland Gap National Historical Park, southeast Kentucky
Dayton (Ohio) Aviation Heritage National Historic Park
Natchez Trace Parkway, a National Scenic By-Way in Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi
All can be searched for at www.nps.gov
Cumberland Gap
Historically, it makes sense to begin with the Cumberland Gap because it was the first passageway into Kentucky. The Cumberland Mountains (named after the Duke of Cumberland) seemed impenetrable until an early explorer found a way through at the gap in 1750. It had been a buffalo trail first, and then a passage used by Cherokee Indians. But Dr. Thomas Walker saw no reason to go beyond the gap, so no one did until 1775 when Daniel Boone blazed the way. Eventually he led thousands of pioneers into Kentucky, where he and his family also settled. The Cumberland Gap was the only route until the Ohio River, and then a few roads, took its place in the late 1790’s. The trail through the high point at the gap can be walked on today, and it was truly the first time on this trip when I really felt the presence of the people who had been there before me. Highly recommended for history buffs, including both films at the visitors center (which includes a shop selling items made by local artists and craftspeople).
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Just before my visit to the Cumberland Gap, I had a very disappointing visit around and about the Great Smoky Mountains. I have only myself to blame, because I ignored the warnings that it’s the most visited national park, and that traffic to and through it is horrendous. Therefore, I’m telling it like I experienced it and you can decide whether or not to go there.
The warning light should have lit up in my head when the Knoxville hostel owner, who runs a shuttle delivery service between Knoxville and the three towns north of the park entrance, told me he takes along two magazines and a newspaper to read while sitting in traffic there. The residents and imported help in Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg exist on the dollars tourists spend there on overpriced, overhyped tourist traps, such as Dolly Parton’s amusement park Dollywood, numerous dinner theaters (and breakfast and lunch theaters), Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, restaurants, souvenir shops, special events, and on and on. The population of Gatlinburg is 3,382 and they have 11,000 beds for tourists (kaching!). The state sales tax in Tennessee is 10%, and municipalities can – and do – tax purchases even more (kaching!). At the Gatlinburg Wendy’s (I’ve become addicted to their frosties that taste like chocolate malts), I noticed many of the usual 99 cent specials were $1.29 (kaching!). At the Gatlinburg Visitors Center, I was told that the majority of visitors never go into the park "because there’s nothing to do there."
Not so. It’s a huge park with plenty to do, including walking along part of the Appalachian Trail. But, like Yosemite, it’s too popular for its own good. Advance reservations are recommended to camp, and it was one of the few places I camped that had no showers. The vehicles driven into the park contribute pollution to the smoky haze, which is actually mist. That means dampness, moisture, humidity – this summer the humidity was as high as 90%, plus it was hot!
Still, many people love the Smokies. I took the shuttle bus from the campground into Gatlinburg (to avoid traffic and parking hassles), and the driver was a sixth generation Gatlinburger with many stories to share. I went on a 3-1/2 mile stroll along the Appalachian Trail with a couple who visit the Smokies every year. Being on the Appalachian Trail, and meeting the father and son who’d been hiking it for four days so far, was the highlight of my visit. I won’t go there again unless I can find a way to avoid the crass commercialization surrounding the park. Even exiting to the south took me through Cherokee, North Carolina, which has a Harrah’s Casino, a trading post and beer park, Santa’s Land fun park, curio shops – have you heard enough?
Mammoth Cave National Park
By contrast, Mammoth Cave National Park was an entirely different and more pleasing experience. More than 250 miles of underground passages have been surveyed so far, although tours go into only a small portion of them. Above ground, 53,000 acres offer forests, meadows, hiking and biking trails, the Green River, wildlife and views of sinkholes – this is karst territory (see previous explanation of karst in the Missouri Ozarks). I went on a late afternoon boat ride on the Green River and saw softshell turtles sunbathing, wood ducks and great blue heron. Wild turkey and deer looked for dinner by the side of the road. I had a shower! I ate breakfast in the park hotel restaurant (so-so, but hot and reasonable). I could have stayed at the hotel for $50 or in a cottage with private bath for $36. Oh, and I went on a cave tour, choosing the shortest, easiest one because the Colossal Cave tour in Arizona in February had been difficult due to my crazy eye problems. Although I didn’t get dizzy on the Mammoth Cave tour, I did have balance problems due to the uneven walking surface. Thankfully, the tour was short (one hour) and cheap ($2.50) and interesting. No spectacular stalagmites and stalactites, but we heard historical and geological facts, saw the remains of the saltpeter mines, the church service area, one small bat at rest, and total darkness. The guide turned off all the lights and now I know what pitch black means. In October, this park was neither crowded nor cold; highly recommended.
Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area
I had never even heard of Land Between the Lakes (LBL) before seeing it on the Kentucky map. I went there for quiet time and a cheap stay because I had time to kill before the Bill Monroe music festival about 60 miles away. LBL camping cost me $6 a night with my Golden Age passport, and they had super-clean restrooms, showers, a brand-new washer and dryer, and a convenience store with reasonably-priced bagged ice. I stayed five nights.
LBL is a peninsula 43 miles long between two lakes that had originally been two rivers until a TVA dam widened them. It had been home, in this order, to prehistoric peoples, six different native American tribes, former revolutionary soldiers who received land grants there, and others who farmed, fished, logged, tanned animal skins, worked in the iron and charcoal industries, and made moonshine liquor. But it became increasingly more difficult to make a living in this contained area, and in the early 1960’s, the feds turned it into a multi-use national recreation and conservation area. Today visitors fish, swim, boat (it has 300 miles of shoreline), camp, hike, ride horses, see protected herds of buffalo and elk, and visit an observatory, planetarium, and an 1850s living history farm.
LBL is also close to Paducah, which offered easy computer use at the library, a quilt museum full of painstakingly stitched quilts that are marvelous works of art, a floodwall next to the Ohio River full of murals depicting the history and life of the community, a downtown historic district with helpful markers, and more that I didn’t see. In 1937, 90% of Paducah was covered with flood waters, but there’s no sign of the damage today. Perhaps there’s hope for New Orleans after all. Another historic markers explained who the original Duke of Paducah was. It was humorist Irwin S. Cobb (1876-1944), but the moniker was also used later by hillbilly comedian "Whitey" Ford (1901-1986) who appeared on the Grand Old Opry and other radio shows and live performances. His tag line was "I’m goin’ back to the wagon, boys, these shoes are killin’ me!"
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site
So where do you think Abraham Lincoln was born? No, not in Illinois, as I thought before noticing "Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Nat’l Historic Site" on a Kentucky map near Hodgenville. Look for Louisville, then a little southeast to Elizabethtown, then southeast again to Hodgenville. Abe was born three miles south of there on February 12, 1809, but not in the first building you see, a neoclassical granite and marble structure with tall Greek columns and wide steps (56 of them, one for each year of Lincoln’s life) leading up to huge double front doors. He wasn’t even born in the log cabin inside that temple-like structure, but the log cabin inside is similar to the real thing, which was 16’ by 18’. Imagine a family living in that small space. A similar log cabin (also not the real thing) can be seen 13 miles north at Knob Creek. That site is the farm where the Lincoln family lived from 1811 to 1816. It looked like an idyllic place for a kid – woods, valleys, streams, and a one-room log schoolhouse two miles away.
I wandered slowly around both sites soaking in the significance, then drove south past barns with open doors and windows to allow the tobacco inside to dry.
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy during the Civil War, is also a Kentucky native. I doubt that’s the reason Kentucky proclaimed neutrality during the War Between the States, but it didn’t work. Enough battles occurred then that there are sufficient commemorative sites and re-enactments to make History Channel and black powder gun enthusiasts happy.
Natchez Trace Parkway
A map that includes Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi will show the Natchez Trace Parkway best. The Trace, a diagonal parkway running northeast from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, probably began as a series of native American hunting trails. By 1785 Ohio River Valley farmers searching for markets had begun floating their crops and products down the rivers to Natchez or New Orleans. Because they also sold their flatboats, they had to walk or ride back home and the Trace was the most direct route. The Parkway is 444 miles of tranquil driving at 50 mph tops, and no commercial vehicles are allowed. Ten years ago I drove along part of it south of Tupelo, MS and have wanted to explore more ever since. This time I entered the Parkway about Milepost 370 in southern Tennessee, stopped for lunch and a short hike, drove briefly through Alabama, and exited at Milepost 293 to camp near Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. The largest Army Corps of Engineers project in the U.S., it tamed a bunch of rivers and added a system of navigable locks to shorten a transportation route, adding recreational opportunities in the process. I camped for $8 (my Golden Age rate), strolled along the shoreline, took a shower, and could have gone boating, fishing or done my laundry.
Other stops along the Trace include many Chickasaw Indian sites, prehistoric mounds, a Confederate cemetery and battlefield, and picnic tables and restrooms. At one of the latter, I met two bicyclists from Michigan and their support van driver. The trace is a popular official bikeway.
After scrutinizing my maps, I chose to exit the Trace at Tupelo for a more direct route west. Higher gas prices have definitely influenced my route choices since Labor Day when it topped $3 a gallon.
Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park
I’ve left this till last as it stands alone as my only urban national park experience, although I experienced it between Cumberland Gap and the Natchez Trace. (Just don’t even try to figure out the chronology of this newsletter.) My interest in the Wright Brothers began in Santa Cruz when the local newspaper ran a serialized story about the boys and their aeroplane experiments. Although written for children, it interested me because I’m a history nut. I also admire inventors for their creative minds, problem-solving skills and tenacity, all of which Orville and Wilbur had. Their first business was a print shop, then a bicycle shop. They adapted bicycle technology to aeronautical design because they recognized the parallels between controlling a bicycle and an aircraft. A very knowledgeable guide at the Wright Brothers Aviation Center explained this all quite well as we viewed a reconstruction of the brothers’ first successful flying machine, the 1905 Wright Flyer III. Parts of the original machine were salvaged and the reconstruction was supervised by Orville prior to the park opening in 1950.
The Wright Brothers weren’t the only inventors in Dayton. By 1890, Dayton led the nation in patents per capita. Charles Kettering designed the first cash register powered by an electric motor in 1906 (and started NCR). He and other putterers, known as the Barn Gang, invented the self-starter to replace the crank on early motor vehicles. The various buildings at this site included a reproduction of the Barn Gang’s loft workshop, the Wright Brothers bicycle shop, plus a wonderful collection of early bicycles, automobiles, battery-powered golf carts and wheel chairs, trains and trolleys – all made in Dayton – plus a print shop, early gas station, and more.
Summary
After I wrote the last few pages, I found the July 2000 issue of MotorHome magazine at a thrift shop and it contained a glowing report of Land Between the Lakes. I would recommend visiting all of the national sites I’ve described, with the hope that you more seriously consider the down side to the Great Smoky Mountains before venturing too close and getting stuck in traffic.
I see I’m on page 7 now which is over my self-imposed limit of 6 pages (because I snail-mail this to some folks). My next couple of newsletters will cover places I visited inbetween the national parks etc. and since, as follows:
Kentucky, including Keeneland Racetrack, The Farm intentional community, Museum of Appalachia, and Knoxville
The Bob Evans Farm Festival, where I saw square-dancing tractors and a sausage museum
Why I skipped Nashville, the Amarillo Art Museum, and Albuquerque
Cottonlandia Museum in Mississippi
Texas, from Texarkana to Amarillo
New Mexico and Arizona again (four more national parks and monuments; two other historic sites)
Motel comparisons and recommendations
Getting to the heart of a small town
posted by Joan McCarthy at 3:58 PM
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