I’m not sure I understand why I have such a hard time getting started doing these posts, but it sure does take me a lot to sit down and actually start doing them.  As I have said in the past, I do these mostly by talk typing using Dragon software. So its very quick and easy, I just have to get started.  But luckily today, I came home early and went running with Akela and so I guess I should probably take the extra time I have and tell you what’s been going on, or expound on what the videos have shown. The weather right up until January 8th was really warm in the Statesville, North Carolina area. I mean temperatures in the 60s and 70s during the day. And that started before Christmas, so we got out and did a lot of exploring and hiking and having fun during the week from Christmas to New Year’s. My company normally takes a holiday from Christmas through January 2 and so this year Christmas was on Tuesday and so there were 2 weekends and almost 2 full weeks of holiday time where I did not have to work. Boy is that something that really makes you want to not ever go back to work. And the weather was absolutely marvelous for running around and doing things at a time when it’s not so crowded in the woods. We saw some young college age couples and kids that were exploring the trails and hiking and things, but nothing like the crowds of families and everyone that you usually see in the summer. So we took the 4Runner on an exploratory mission along some backwoods dirt roads. The first of these videos can be seen here: Overland, Through the Mountains, and along The Ridge –  the Linville wilderness.   I found this road on a new map app that I got on my iPad and is a phenomenal app. It shows in vivid detail everything in the mountains that could possibly be driven on. So we found this road that I thought was in a place that no road should be, which was right along the wilderness designated national forest. And when we finally got on the road it continued to climb up the sides of the mountains in a nice easy grade until we were right on the top ridge of the mountain chain. The visibility was 360° in all directions and the scenery was awesome. The only problem was because it was an undeveloped dirt road,  in places it was a little rough and we could only get about a 3rd of the way before it started to get dark. Of course stopping every mile or 2 to sight-see didn’t help, but there was a lot to see. So we had to turn around and go home before we saw everything we wanted to see.

So a few days later and with good weather we went back up on the ridge to see what else was along that road. The map app has a lot of detail and had a number of interesting spots to stop at. So it was important to me to get back up to that area to see these other sites to see. That video can be found here at: NC Wilderness Road, scenic views and daredevils. And we were not disappointed on this 2nd trip up the mountain and along the ridge. This time we decided to stop at “The Pinnacle Rock” which is on the south easternmost end of the road and is just a really rock outcropping and nice lookout over the valley and gorge. And if you’re brave enough you can climb up on top of this rather small rock, about the size of a pool table, and brave the wind to look all around the scenery in the mountains. Neither I nor Akela were really interested in standing on top of the rock for very long in the wind. Though there were couples that were there that were eating lunch up on the rocks after we left. As we got past the halfway point there seemed to be more campsites and more trailheads for hiking around the top of the mountain and down into the gorge to the Linville River. We stopped at a few of these but we really wanted to finish following the road to find out what else was on it and where it went. Taking inventory of future spots to go back to is often my top priority as opposed to exploring one particular attraction in an area. So when we got to the “Wise Man’s View” picnic area I had anticipated making a quick stop and completing the trip on the road. However the bathroom was a unisex “1 holer” and so we had to wait in line. While standing there a couple told me about a tight rope walker who was going across the gorge and I should go take a video of it, so I wandered down the trail to see what she was talking about and by golly there was a large group of college age kids practicing their slack line skills. If you’ve never seen a slack line, it’s just a flat webbed line usually like a cargo strap might be made out of. They range from 1 inch to 3 inches, depending on your skill, and are pulled taught between trees and then carefully walked along. Hopefully without falling off. The longer the slack line is the more skill it takes, as the slack line can bounce more and wobble more as it supports your weight. I of course am a skilled expert in this and could’ve easily run across the line they had there without any trouble, if I wasn’t so afraid of heights. (Yeah right).  So as a result, I stayed and watched them for a while and video’d them and again didn’t have enough time to get to the end of the road before dark. So I will have to go back again another day to give you the complete story of all the stuff that’s along that road. My plan though is the next time to go with the trailer and spend the night.

My last video is called: What Happens If You’re in a Tunnel When the Train Comes. And you can get to that by clicking on that highlighted title. As I said above I was playing with this new mapping software that is so incredibly cool and one of the things that has on it are all the railroad tracks. And I noticed in this one section I was looking at, the railroads seem to do a kind of figure 8 and had a couple of tunnels that it went through in the loops. And so that really made me very curious about why they would go to all that trouble of making 7 or 8 tunnels instead of one big tunnel through the mountain. I guess I don’t really understand tunnel building in the 1800s. Anyways, it was up on top of the mountains by the Blue Ridge Parkway and the North Carolina Gem Museum, so we thought we would go up there and see if we could get a peek at this railroad with all the tunnels. It’s really just a nice drive for all of these little excursions.  They are only about an hour and a half from the house so I loaded up the boys in the car and we headed out to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Even Dakota can take a little hike along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  But when we got to the Parkway,  it was pretty stupid in my opinion, it was closed because of the government shutdown, as was the North Carolina gem Museum. But since they didn’t have a real barricade across the Blue Ridge Parkway we drove down it anyways to the “Table Rock Overlook Parking” area, which just by coincidence was right above the railroad tracks. Now it wasn’t like you could really see the railroad tracks. They were quite a ways down this steep cliff of a hill, and through pretty thick woods. And, while looking at the mountains from the overlook I saw a train coming up the side of a mountain not too far away and figured if we could scurry down to the railroad track we could probably get a picture of it coming through the tunnel. Now the train we were looking at was coming up the hill and going West. An important consideration to realize for later in this discussion, because it would obviously take it at least 20 to 25 minutes to get to the tunnels at this low speed it was going. And we would see it pass below us as it got the the lower section of the uphill loop.  Sounded Safe to me !  So we did climb, slide, fall down the cliff to the railroad track and walked down to the tunnel and heard the train whistle way off in the distance and figured we had lots of time before the train would come up through the tunnel. But as we were going into the tunnel a lot of rumbling and screeching came up from behind us (which is coming down the mountain). And this is all on a section of the track that is all single track, so I was quite surprised that a train coming the opposite way to what I expected suddenly was coming down through those tunnels. So with a lot of surprise I quickly jumped away from the railroad tracks with Akela and got the camera set up. Once the train was through we went in and out of the tunnel and did the video to make it look like we were in the tunnel when the train came. Kind of fun! And it took the train almost 25 minutes to go around the full loop through all the other tunnels and then pass right below us as it continued down the mountain. I later figured out that the train coming up the mountain was on a side track waiting for the one coming down the mountain to pass so it could come up. We waited approximately 45 minutes for that one to come up the mountain, but decided we should probably climb up out of there and get headed home before it got dark. I didn’t want to climb up that cliff in the dark. I also really wanted to investigate and explore the town that was right there called Little Switzerland. But it took us quite a while to get back up to the top of the mountain and the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Even unlimited energy Akela was quite tired from working our way back up the steep slope.

So that’s the detail on those 3 videos. They were all done during the Christmas break because that’s when the least amount of people are out in the forest and along those roads. And I published them faster than I really wanted to since they were somewhat related I wanted to get them out so you could see them. So, I hope you enjoyed them and feel free to leave comments on whether those are the right type of thing you want to see or whether there’s something else that is more interesting like more camping or more fishing, boating, swimming, flying, whatever. I may be slightly delayed on my next videos because I have some serious repairs to do to the Aliner camper. It has some water infiltration and I need to figure out where it’s coming from and why. I also see some serious de-formation in the framing that I want to figure out what’s going on there. So look for some Aliner repair and modification videos coming up soon and I may have to fill in the other slack time with boring videos of Akela as a puppy and growing up, what he’s been like for the last 6 months. So stay tuned I will try to keep you entertained. Thanks for stopping by folks. We’ll be back on the road before you know it.