Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a delicious Thanksgiving! Some friends from the church we've been attending here invited us to their family gathering. There were about 15 cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents there + us. It was a lovely time! I was on the lookout for any new Southern traditions or holiday foods, but it was pretty similar to my past Thanksgivings.

A couple items:

• They call the baked bread-cube product "dressing," not "stuffing." Their version was homemade in a giant pan. No Stovetop here!
• This particular family enjoys a variety of Jello salads. I know some people think they are weird, but I found them to be tasty!
• There were no mashed potatoes. They had mashed sweet potatoes, but no regular potatoes. But based on what some of the cooks said, I think this was an unintentional oversight rather than a Southern tradition :)

Here's my plate after the first trip through the line.  

In terms of pre- and post-dinner activities, we chatted and watched football on TV. Then DF broke out the board games. A fun time was had by all! 

Election Day(s)?

I'm confused about how to vote here in Shelby County. For some reason, polls weren't open on November 5th like most of the rest of the country. Instead, one election was apparently held on Nov. 7 for School Board, and another one yesterday on the topic of sales tax. Upon further digging, I found out that a member of the State Assembly passed away this summer, so the 11/21 voting day was a special election called to fill her vacant seat - representing part of Memphis. Ok, I guess that kind of makes sense. But why weren't the other 2 votes held on 11/5?

Adding to my confusion, apparently we have early voting here. I am assuming this means I could have shown up at any of the early voting locations and cast my ballot. Or, was I supposed to go to one particular site for my precinct?

And the third thing, we got a letter in the mail about a week before election day saying that our normal polling place would be closed on 11/21, so we were supposed to go vote somewhere else. That seemed pretty suspicious to me, since I'd heard of similar ploys being used in the past to disenfranchise voters. A quick website check confirmed that the location had, in fact, been moved.

To no one's surprise, I forgot it was Election Day yesterday until I saw a news promo clip on TV about election results. Oops, I'm a bad member of this democracy! I would have voted to help fund Pre-K education in Memphis. Should I take consolation in the fact that the ballot measure was defeated 60% to 40%, so my one little vote wouldn't have mattered?

Public Religion

DF mentioned to me that when his office has a potluck, someone says a group prayer before they eat. Since this is an anonymous blog, I won't say exactly where he works. It's in the public sector, though - he definitely does not work at a religious institution.

I was surprised to hear this!  Pre-lunch prayers were never on the menu at his Seattle office. I really can't imagine something like this happening at a secular workplace. Isn't it awkward for the non-Christians??

Life in Memphis is so different sometimes!

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Last week, I had a work conference in San Antonio, so DF and I took the opportunity for a short post-conference vacation around Texas. It was a great time!

We visited the Alamo, where we learned about the 6 flags that have flown over Texas, and the state's brief period as an independent republic.

We strolled along the Riverwalk, a San Antonio staple. 

Then we stopped by Mission San Jose, a mission that was restored by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s...without 100% commitment to historical integrity, according to the park ranger who was leading our tour. We got kicked out mid-way through the tour, though. Apparently we should have been listening more attentively when she started to repeat the 20-minute spiel she'd already gone through when more visitors joined the tour midway when it was halfway over. Good riddance, I say!

The next day, we went up to Austin to the LBJ Library (it was ok, but I liked Clinton's better), the Zilker Botanical Gardens, and the Texas State Capitol.

We have some friends in Seattle who now live in Austin - I'll call them the Skydivers. They were kind enough to host us for the night and serve some delicious French toast for breakfast on homemade bread. Tasty!

Spelunking

And now, the conclusion of our 4-part series, "Salmonista takes a vacation and then blogs about it in extensive detail!"

Monday
After thoroughly enjoying our time in the mountains, admiring the leaves, stretching our legs on hikes, and eating lots of tasty food, it was time to begin the westward trek home. We opted for a different route home by way of Alabama, because I hadn't been to that state yet. After breakfast we wound our way down to Chattanooga, TN. Unfortunately the weather was not all that cooperative - we'd hoped to visit Lookout Mountain, but it was shrouded in a cloud of fog. Since one of the main reasons to go up there is to enjoy the views, we found other attractions in town to entertain ourselves instead.

BBQ lunch with multiple sauces...of course "Memphis Style" was the best :)

Chattanooga is on the Tennessee River. It reminded me of Little Rock with all the bridges.

Walnut Street Bridge, allegedly the longest pedestrian bridge in the world. We walked about 25 steps onto it...

Art!

I believe Lookout Mountain is hiding back there somewhere

The city provides free, festively painted electric trolley buses around downtown

Of course, our trip wouldn't be complete without seeing the Chattanooga Choo Choo!

There is a hotel now in the old train station.

And you can even sleep on the tracks in a room that used to be a rail car!

After all this exploring, we were glad for the one-hour time change as we headed southwest to our next destination, Cathedral Caverns in Woodville, AL. This state park is home to a gigantic cave - the entrance is 25 feet high and 126 feet wide! You can go on a guided tour of the cave that is about 3/4 of a mile one way. There's another 2700+ feet of cave after the tour ends, but they haven't developed that part for tours. The name comes from the rock formations inside that look like spires on a cathedral. It was hard to take good pictures underground, although the cave is pretty well-lit. Here are a few of the best shots I got.

 The visitor's center

This one is called "Frozen Waterfall" - it's a rock formation that looks like a waterfall, and also there is water flowing over it.

Cave entrance

We stopped for dinner in Huntsville at a diner where I ordered a "vegetable plate," yet 2 out of 4 dishes had bacon in them. Good thing I'm not actually a vegetarian :)  After that we had a long drive home on Hwy 20/72 through the hills of northern Alabama and Mississippi.

And that's how I spent my fall vacation. Thanks for reading! 

Cultural Experiences in East TN

This is Part III of the East Tennessee/Northern Alabama vacation update. Check out Part I and Part II.

Sunday
It was time to visit one of Gatlinburg's premiere dining destinations, the Log Cabin Pancake House. I can't tell you why this region overflows with flapjacks; it's just a way of life in the mountains. The Log Cabin was only a couple blocks away from our hotel. By the time we arrived just before 10am, the line was intimidatingly long. They make everyone stand in front of the restaurant and wait in line for the next available table, rather than having a "put in your name and get a buzzer" system. Not sure why, but I suspect it allows for faster seating that way.

We had been waiting for about 10 minutes and the line wasn't moving much at all, except for large parties. The hostess would periodically come out on the porch and say, "I need a party of 5 or more." Then that lucky group would hop to the front of the line. I was about to give up hope and try our luck at another pancake house when the party of 3 in front of us asked if we'd like to share a table with them, with the goal of getting a table more quickly. They looked normal enough, so we agreed and mere minutes later were seated in the giant dining room!

Our dining companions were a couple from Virginia traveling with one of their moms, from West Virginia. They'd been to Gatlinburg a few times before. It turned out to be a fun and pleasant breakfast! DF and I were pretty much out of conversation topics for just the 2 of us anyway, having spent the last 60+ hours straight together.

(Sorry, no pictures of breakfast.)

On the way back to the hotel, we passed Gatlinburg Presbyterian Church. Their sign had advertised Sunday service at 11:00am and we had thought about attending. As we approached the church, we heard the tell-tale sound of bagpipes. Who can ignore a bunch of pipers?? Of course, this meant we had to go to church now to find out what was going on.

It turned out to be an event called Kirkin o' the Tartan celebrating the Scottish heritage of the church members. It has its origins in the era when England captured Scotland and banned Scots from wearing their traditional colors (tartans) because they were perceived as the clothing of war. But Scots wanted to hold on to this piece of their heritage, and they would secretly bring swatches of fabric to the church to be blessed.

I didn't want to be obnoxious and snap a bunch of pictures, but other congregants had their cameras out so I took a couple, too. Several people carried in plaid/tartan flags, and the bagpipers played enthusiastically.

This was definitely a new experience!

Since DF and I are mostly German, not Scottish, we had to find another place to embrace our cultural heritage. What better place than "Okt-Ober-fest" at Ober Gatlinburg, a little German destination on top of a mountain? This is a ski area during the winter. In the fall it's a nice place to admire leaves and eat some wurst. DF did a beer tasting but I was too scared to join in because there were too many yellow jackets swarming around. One literally flew into his sample cup while he was trying to take a drink! Ack!!

We didn't spend very long there because basically every activity/attraction came with a price tag, and I was eager to get to the Outlet Malls to spend money on things rather than experiences :)

After our fill of shopping, we explored Pigeon Forge a bit. This town in the home of Dollywood, which we did not visit. Although I do enjoy a couple Dolly Parton songs, I'm not a big enough fan to want to spend like $60 per person on admission. Instead, we checked out a Christmas Village.

By then, it was dinner time, so we went to one of the popular spots in town, the Old Mill Restaurant. Yes, it is actually located in an old mill. Their portion sizes are out of control! DF and I shared one meal and were both stuffed. 

The final chapter in our journey includes Chattanooga, TN and a couple stops in Northern AL. Stay tuned!

More Fun in the Smoky Mountains

This is the second chapter in the story of our October vacation. Part I is here.

Saturday 
Morning dawned sunny and clear, and the Smoky Mountain Twitter feed said the road to Clingman's Dome was open, so we made a beeline for the top of the mountain. This dome is said to be the highest point in Tennessee at 6,643 feet, but some maps show that it's actually in North Carolina. We asked in the gift shop which state we were in, and they said they were charging NC sales tax. So if tax law determines geography, we briefly visited North Carolina!

Since we were being early birds, we actually got a space in the parking lot. (Seriously, the park got insanely crowded later in the day.) We made the steep .5 mile climb up to the tower and enjoyed spectacular views along the way.

 Mulberry trees

We briefly intersected with the Appalachian Trail!

 The observation platform, accessed by a long, circular/winding ramp

The trees that are dead were attacked by beetles.

After that trek, we stopped at a few more scenic pullouts and then had a snack overlooking a valley.

 The pointy mountains on the left are called "The Chimneys" because when the fog rises, it looks like smoke coming out of chimneys.

Some of the mountainsides looked like patchwork quilts of color!

Back in Gatlinburg, we'd had enough Southern food so did Chinese for lunch instead. Then it was time for more free samples of alcohol, this time at Davy Crockett's Whiskey/Gatlinburg Barrelhouse. DF wanted to get a bottle of one that tasted like Kahlua, but it cost $30 and we decided we could just get real Kahlua for less if we wanted it.

Another random bluegrass band!

Now that we were fully embracing our role as tourists, we had to ride the Sky Lift up to the top of the mountains for another view of the area. They sell an unlimited daily ride ticket for $4 more than the price of one ride. I don't know why you'd want to keep going up and down all day...unless you wanted to try a bunch of different mind-altering substances to see which one enhanced your experience the most or something. For the record, we just took 1 ride.

We took an afternoon reading break (well, I read while DF went to an arcade and played an HD deer hunting game) and then it was time for dinner at the Smoky Mountain Brewery. There was a long wait for dinner so we entertained ourselves by wandering around the shops. We had an strange/interesting conversation with the proprietor of a jerky store about the role of government.

Once we finally got a table for dinner, the food was delicious. Everyone should try a smoked cheddar-bacon-BBQ sauce burger, even if you have to take a Lactaid to enjoy it! Sorry, forgot to snap any photos of the food. Their beer was not my style. The pumpkin ale smelled like a pumpkin-pie-scented air freshener and tasted both spicy and bland at the same time. At least the food was good.

There are still 2 more days of vacation left to chronicle!

'Neath the Cover of October Skies

We had a great trip to East TN and surrounding areas last weekend! We did a ton of stuff, and normally I like to bring along a little notebook to record our traveling adventures, but I forgot to do that. So I will now try to recollect the majority of what happened.

Thursday afternoon
Left from Memphis heading east on I-40. Once we passed exit 15, we were in uncharted territory, having never been further east in TN before! The leaves were barely starting to change over on our side of the state, so I was a bit concerned that we'd be disappointed in our quest to find fall colors. But as the miles went on and the elevation increased, the leaf colors began to change. Yay for fall!

We stopped for dinner in Nashville. I found a place on Yelp I wanted to try (whose name I now forget), but it was right downtown and there must have been some special event going on because we couldn't find anywhere to park. And we weren't interested in paying $10 for a lot just to eat dinner. So we hit the road again and wound up at a German restaurant, where we embraced our heritage and piled on the sauerkraut.

After dinner we still had miles to go before we slept. Tennessee is a really long state to drive all the way across, plus it changes from Central to Eastern time in the middle. We finally rolled into Gatlinburg around 12:30am. Yawn!

Friday
As the sun came up, I could see we had found fall. We bundled up (it's chilly in the mountains!) for our first stop at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We'd hoped to go up to the highest observation point at Clingman's Dome, but the road was closed due to snow and ice at higher elevations. So instead we stopped at the visitor's center to pick up a map and brochures about other things to do.

First stop: Laurel Falls hiking trail. It was about 2.5 miles round trip on a moderately easy trail. Lots of great views!

After the hike, we returned to Gatlinburg for lunch and found that the town was very crowded! Having arrived so late the night before, we didn't realize how many visitors were slumbering soundly in their hotel rooms. But the place was packed by Friday afternoon! We decided to forego the car and walked to lunch instead at Bennetts, where we devoured a huge plate of hickory-smoked meats. It was very tasty :)

Gatlinburg is a walkable town. It reminded me of Seaside, OR somewhat with all the tourist attractions, mini golf, pancake houses, and family-friendly entertainment. It's just that Gatlinburg's natural attraction is the mountains, while Seaside's is the ocean. But both get kind of crazy during high season.

Gatlinburg has its own "Space Needle"! Ha ha, we didn't go up it.

After lunch, we stopped by one of the town's most popular attractions, the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery. They've taken moonshine and elevated it to an art form with 12 different varieties to sample, including maraschino cherries soaked in "white lightning." That's an intense flavor experience!

I enjoyed the bluegrass band playing in the courtyard. They also were giving out free kettle corn. The whole place was decorated for fall.

Next, it was time to embrace more nature (from the car) via the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. It had lots of lovely views of trees/leaves, and also some old historical places to stop and scout out.

One nice thing about Gatlinburg is that it's literally right next to the entrance to the National Park. You can easily go from a nature walk to the comforts of civilization, which we did by returning to town for dinner at the Mellow Mushroom (pizza place, which I now see we also have in Memphis). No, we didn't get mushroom pizza - fungus is gross! DF got his half with all meats and I got mine with all veggies. I couldn't handle more meat after the carnivorous lunchtime feast.

We played mini-golf under black lights. Here is a trippy zebra decoration.

I think after that we stopped in an arcade to play a few games. By then I was falling asleep, and I wanted to get plenty of sleep to be ready for another day full of adventures!

(stay tuned for the rest of the story of DF & Salmonista's excellent adventure)