Saturday, August 04, 2007
Back at the ranch - mostly
Sam and I are home at last after several weeks of rambling about the mountains of western North Carolina. First, was a week of back country camping in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for Mame's week of vacation from school.
We crossed Lake Fontana for three nights at Eagle Creek (site 90), came back and resupplied before another night at Hazel Creek (site 86) (click here for a PDF map - beware it is a 1.4 mb file - of the park's back country sites, then zoom in on the lake on the southern border of the park to see the site numbers) .
Both camping spots were beautiful and we enjoyed being near/in the water much of the week. Some highlights included picking blackberries, meeting a field biologist who was doing research on birds in the park who let Sam release a juvenile hooded warbler he trapped, exploring the remains of an old logging town up Hazel Creek, finding a colony of bats in the ruins of the old town and a black bear sighting.
After the camping excursion we took a couple of days to clean up and visited Frank and Donna in Sylva. We even got to have lunch with Mame's cousin, Ross, who we totally missed for his tenure at Emory. He came up to visit just ahead of his big move to Los Angeles later this month.
Next Mame handed Sam and I off to Grandma Maxine in Asheville so she could return to Cary on her way back to Goldsboro to back into the clinical groove. In Brevard we went to work on painting the lakeside cabin and taking afternoons to swim in the pond. The best part was that Mame came back Thursday evening for a long weekend in the mountains. The painting continued the following week. Yesterday, Maxine gave Sam and I a lift as far as Charlotte where we caught the train home to Cary.
The comings and goings continue. This morning we dropped Mame off at the airport for the AANA annual meeting in Denver. I just got the report that she has arrived safely and was already heading up a group to go explore their first brew pub. Seriously, it really is all about "professional development".
We crossed Lake Fontana for three nights at Eagle Creek (site 90), came back and resupplied before another night at Hazel Creek (site 86) (click here for a PDF map - beware it is a 1.4 mb file - of the park's back country sites, then zoom in on the lake on the southern border of the park to see the site numbers) .
Both camping spots were beautiful and we enjoyed being near/in the water much of the week. Some highlights included picking blackberries, meeting a field biologist who was doing research on birds in the park who let Sam release a juvenile hooded warbler he trapped, exploring the remains of an old logging town up Hazel Creek, finding a colony of bats in the ruins of the old town and a black bear sighting.
After the camping excursion we took a couple of days to clean up and visited Frank and Donna in Sylva. We even got to have lunch with Mame's cousin, Ross, who we totally missed for his tenure at Emory. He came up to visit just ahead of his big move to Los Angeles later this month.
Next Mame handed Sam and I off to Grandma Maxine in Asheville so she could return to Cary on her way back to Goldsboro to back into the clinical groove. In Brevard we went to work on painting the lakeside cabin and taking afternoons to swim in the pond. The best part was that Mame came back Thursday evening for a long weekend in the mountains. The painting continued the following week. Yesterday, Maxine gave Sam and I a lift as far as Charlotte where we caught the train home to Cary.
The comings and goings continue. This morning we dropped Mame off at the airport for the AANA annual meeting in Denver. I just got the report that she has arrived safely and was already heading up a group to go explore their first brew pub. Seriously, it really is all about "professional development".
# posted by ben @ 8/04/2007 
