Well special events require special efforts to recognize those who are special. Today my YouTube Channel hit 5000 subscribers. It has been a long arduous climb. Much longer than any hike that we have taken so far to date. Though we hope to take some very long and difficult hikes in the near future while we’re in these beautiful Appalachian Mountains. I have spaced out some of my videos so I have some down time between trips. Hopefully you didn’t really notice. But we took a trip to the southeastern Great Smoky Mountains National Park and did videos on “The Tail of the Dragon”, a couple of campgrounds, Clingmans Dome, and “The Road to Nowhere”. All of these adventures were done in one weekend, but it allowed me to do 5 videos and gave me 5 weeks of down time to work on some other stuff. I have really ignored my house which still needs some serious TLC. I have also had some serious life disruptions at work, as we had a big OSHA inspection that has landed squarely on my desk to fix. That has kept me very busy at work 12 hours a day (but I love my Job, I love my job, I love my job).

But, since it’s been such a long time since I blogged here, let’s start back where we left off. We really have fallen in love with the TSali campground outside of Bryson City, North Carolina. It’s on the south side of Fontana Lake and has a lot of biking trails and hiking trails. It is also surrounded by great national forests and some pretty cool tourist attractions.  So we took a little ride along a road that I had read about as “Better than the Blue Ridge Parkway” called the Cherohala Skyway. It is named after the Cherokee National Forest in the Nantahala National Forest, though which it passes. But it’s a approximately 43 miles of windy road through some absolutely beautiful country. I had originally thought that The Cherohala road was what is known as “The Tail of the Dragon”. But one of my viewers quickly informed me that it was not the tail of the Dragon, but was just around the corner from the tail of the Dragon. So that’s the great thing about YouTube,  you learn new things every day (like how stupid I am). But we had a great time driving the road and stopping by some of the great attractions in the area. One of those was the Joyce Kilmer Research Forest. It is a magnificent forest of virgin timber with a fantastic trail through it that takes you to this incredible mature and majestic forest. When I get into a forest like this with these humongous old trees, I just tear up thinking about how we’ve missed so much because some previous generation cut down every stick of wood they could find on the land. I really feel like it’s a religious experience to see nature so balanced and successful as that. I was also sad to hear from the visitor center volunteer in Tellico Plains, TN that she was of the understanding that most of those trees are no longer very tall as a large wind storm came through a couple years ago and broke off a lot of the tops because they are spaced quite far apart, so they don’t protect each other from storms like a normal forest would. But just the same the bottoms are impressive.

We also hiked some trails along the Cherohala Skyway, one, “The Huckleberry Bald” hike had a very interesting gravesite with a long story about who the person was and why they were buried there. It was very interesting and a little bit on the humorous side. Mostly just because of the way they did things over 100 years ago around the area. But the hiking had a lot of great scenery to see and you could really see a lot of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But the really nice thing was that I was outside of the park, so I could fly my drone and let Akela off leash wherever it was kind of open and on attended by other human beings. One of the best features of Akela is that he does not chase other animals, not even squirrels. That may be some training that I’ll need to do a little farther along as he gets a little older, but right now it’s really nice to know that squirrels run through our yard and he doesn’t pay them any attention.

We ended up camping at the Indian border campground. This is another National Forest campground, but it was quite large and had electricity. It was unique in this area having such great facilities for a national forest campground. Most of the other ones I stopped at have been very primitive in that area. But I wish we could’ve stayed there for 2 weeks because there was just a ton of stuff to explore and check out. A video we made while staying at that campground (other than the campground video) was places right around there that were Free Campsites for the Cherohala Skyway.  There were a whole bunch of free campsites around the Cherohala Skyway that were extremely nice and spacious and along beautiful streams that I was told were great trout fishing sites. And that area around the Indian border campground was only about 20 miles from Tellico Plains, Tennessee. So while you’re out in real wild forest with incredible wildlife and nature, you’re not far from civilization at all. One of the things in Tellico Plains that we wanted to do was visit this bakery which is supposedly very famous in the area for incredibly fresh baked goods.  I’ve been on the hunt for a decent doughnut or danish since I left New York, and I was disappointed when we got there on Sunday and they were closed Sunday and Monday and we had to leave Tuesday morning early.  Next time, we will conquer the donut shop !

I guess I should clear up from my last blog, I had said that I was going to Key West Florida for a week. Unfortunately this obnoxious hurricane called Dorian put an end to that. I was on my way through South Carolina to camp out in Florida and I got a phone call from the Florida Department of Parks that all state parks in Florida were closed until after the hurricane had passed. And this was on the Wednesday before Labor Day. The storm at this time was stalled over the Bahamas and its predicted path was to go up the East Coast of Florida. I found it pretty ridiculous that they closed all of Florida on Labor Day weekend without any really good information about what the storm might do in the next couple days. But as a result I turned around and headed towards the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina and found that everyplace (of course) was packed. There is a reason I never go out on holiday weekends. So any chance of going to Key West is definitely not going to happen this year, 2019. However it is on my bucket list of things to do before my  mother kicks the bucket in Florida. If I had been smart I probably would’ve gone on down to Florida as I doubt that all the private campgrounds were full or closed. However, I doubt I could’ve gone all the way to Key West. And I must admit, at risk of offending some viewers, I am no fan of Florida. I believe it’s a very overcrowded state with out-of-control drivers and overly hot temperatures. And it has no mountains!  Just remember, I’m a mountain person. Although I’m not a rocky mountain person. I’m more like a forested mountain person. Like those mountains and the Appalachians, or the Adirondacks, or New Hampshire, or Vermont. They’re full of water, beautiful trees, and they are the perfect temperature in late summer and fall. They’re just not the most hospitable place to be in winter.

So luckily I did have all that video from the trip to Cherohala Skyway trip to hold me over while the hurricane danced through over the next 2 weekends. And then because somebody told me I had not gone to the real “Tail of the Dragon”, I had to go back. Which I did the next week after Labor Day week. And that little intersection of the road that is the beginning of the Tail of the Dragon is quite a sight to see. And to see all the different muscle cars and performance cars and motorcycles was pretty interesting. And again we stayed at the Tsali campground, which had only about 8 campers in it. So I essentially had the bathroom all to myself. And from the campground it was an easy drive to get to a lot of the popular sites in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Even the farthest attraction we went to, Clingman’s dome, was only an hour and 20 minutes through the mountain roads. Of course we stopped about 8 places getting there and getting back so it took us half a day. But that is the thrill and fun of traveling, in my opinion, going from point A to point B and enjoying all the things in between. I guess according to the National Park Service statistics, the Great Smoky Mountains national Park is the most popular park in the United States. I guess that makes sense based on where it is located in among all the large population centers around it. After all, Yellowstone may be the most phenomenal and beautiful national Park, but it’s a days drive or better from 90% of the United States. God bless those people who make that track to stand in the middle of a ancient volcano waiting to erupt again so they can see bubbling mud and hot water squirting out of a hole. I could suggest a similar experience I had in the hospital once.  But I’m sure I will end up there one day (at Yellowstone that is).

Well according to Google and my Internet counter I only have about 177 people that are subscribed to this blog. I’m sure it’s because I don’t give it the attention it deserves. I have a lot of work to do.  I noticed some of my Amazon links are no longer for sale or properly priced. So I will put a weekend of time into fixing this up and bring it up-to-date. I hope you have watched and enjoyed the videos that have come out so far. I have put a little more effort into them because I have the time between videos. I used to try to do 2 to 3 videos a week and I think they were rushed and looked a little hurried. I also have upgraded quite a bit of my photography equipment, which again needs to be upgraded in the webpage. I will tell you though that the puppy that has turned into this one and a half-year-old dog requires much more attention than he used to. We are both really missing Dakota because Akela would have had somebody else to play with other than me. I have a new assistant at work, a 28-year-old kid with some pretty good experience and education. He has an Australian Shepherd which he takes to doggy daycare. I guess maybe I should consider that, however in my long years of training  dogs, it’s not very good for their training and obedience. They learn to be quite a bit more independent.  I like them dependent and waiting to make me happy.  Could be I like the same thing in women that keeps me single !   Oh well, much happier with the dog anyway I bet.

So Stay tuned!  We will get his tuned up and back up to date.  I’ll let Akela do the next few videos maybe…  He’s very interested in the new drone!

Stay Safe, Stay Happy

Rick and Akela