It was the best of times, it was the worst of times !  That’s kind of catchy, maybe I could copyright it ?!

Well as I usually do, I like to blog about every 3 videos. However, one of those videos is about the new puppy. And I think that’s going to take a blog all to its own. So if you’re looking for detail and interesting or entertaining material about the puppy. Check out the page for dogs.

So the videos I will kind of talk about in this particular blog are the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, and  the puppy and I, Visiting Places Around Grandfather Mountain. Which as I am thinking about it I could link probably 5 videos of good places to camp or hike within 25 miles of Grandfather Mountain. I guess the truth is I should do a play list off the Blue Ridge Parkway since there is so much fantastic stuff to do and see. But let’s concentrate on the goals and activities of the weekend, which were the Scottish Highland games.

Again looking through my video collection, (as of today 300 videos, amazing) I have done Scottish games 4 times. I guess the truth is I like the food. No, I don’t eat the haggis. But they do have great meat pies and sausage rolls and other traditional Scottish fare that is really good. Also you find that when you put a skirt on a guy, he tends to act much more entertaining than walking around in regular street clothes. And I guess the other great attraction, as you might’ve noticed from my videos, is they have great music. While I am a fan of that interesting squawking that sounds like a cat being strangled, they also do great drums and violins and guitar looking things. And of course the actual vocal songs are a very nice mix of folk stories and tales of good times and bad. So there’s just a lot to like about them!

But the grandfather Mountain Highland games are very special. They’re touted as the largest gathering of the clans in the world. Which being out doubting Thomas, I find very hard to believe, just due to the size of the space they take up. However I dare say they pack people in pretty tight. Most of the Highland games that I have gone to in the past were day events that might have had concerts that went until after dark. But none of them had the huge numbers of people that were camped out like at grandfather Mountain. And all clan gatherings have a lot of older folks who are working to keep the clans together and active, and the athletic folk who are competing in the games, and of course the bagpipers. But as I walked through the campgrounds and talked to people I found people of all ages. There were tons of kids from 5 to 20 just having a ball in this crazy culture of Scottish heritage. I found so many people who had come year after year after year to these games and could tell you how each year they got more and more crazy in the whole culture. I went into our rather large gathering of tents and tarps and chairs where there were six 20 something guys sitting around having a beer and busting on each other (as guys tend to do). And they related to me that they had partaken in the gathering when they were very young either as dancers, or bagpipers, or some other competitive activity. And they just could not imagine not coming to the games every year. It’s a tradition for these folks that lends itself so nicely to family, culture, community and to a small extent diversity. No, I did not see any African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, Muslims, or even probable Italians. But the style of dress from Buxom girls and guys with piercings and tattoos and crazy hairdos that made them look like the devil, while talking and laughing with prim and proper older women dressed in woolen tartans. It was a very wide range of societal variability.

So despite the fact that I was there for 4 days from very early to very late, I was never bored or feeling like I should’ve done something else that day. So if you have a chance to go, I would make the trip. I might recommend, if you like civilized camping, camping at the Julian price campground which is just up the road and a very nice campground that was half empty that weekend. And it’s really cheap. Check out my review of the Julian Price Campground here. There is also the Linville Falls campground, but it’s not much more than a field parking spot with a very outdated bathroom. No hot showers!

I will make one excuse for my video not being as good as I had hoped it would be. I originally had hoped that I could take a lot of video of the athletics and dance competitions and things like that with the puppy. Kind of using him as though he was the spectator doing the blog on the video. But on day number one as I was walking around the area with the puppy I was summarily shuffled out and given the direction that “no dogs were allowed unless they were service dogs!” Now at this point the puppy was small enough to be carried most of the time and actually usually was. And I talked to the grandfather Mountain administrator who gave me the passes to do video and permission to park and go inside any restricted area, and he had indicated that he would okay it for me to use the puppy as a prop. Unfortunately, as he explained to me later, he was not in charge of security and security was unbending in their understanding of the difference between a full grown wild German Shepherd and a cute little puppy. And since I had brought the puppy, I was very limited in what I could do for the rest of the time. So the puppy and I stayed outside of the main games or I left the puppy in the car with the engine running and air-conditioning on while one of the nice grandfather Mountain people watched my car and puppy. And it just goes to show you the stupidity of security people, there must something happen to their brains when they decide to be important. There were 25 sheep around the inside of the oval and there were 5 border collie sheepdogs hanging around near the sheep. And I saw at least 4 adult Golden retrievers or Labrador retrievers who were supposedly “certified service dogs”. I guess I should’ve brought my $25 certificate of certified service dog certificate with me so the silly little teenager who wanted to be Mr. policeman could try to argue against that. (No I’m not angry, he was just doing his job, the jerk)

Because we were there for days and we did have unlimited access to everything on grandfather Mountain, we did go up the mountain and cross the bridge and climb around and do things, We Also Stopped at “the Blowing Rock”, one of the oldest tourist attractions in the Blue Ridge Mountains. When I used to visit this area in a 70s and 80s it was just a little Podunk mountain town today it is grown to a huge bustling kind of a college town. And Boone, North Carolina which is just a few more miles up the road has really grown to a size that I prefer not even go to. It is a huge resort town/college towns/Mountain Oasis. The first time I visited it in 1979 it was for roads and a tiny little college. Hardly anybody lived in the town except for college students. Today it’s a huge conglomeration of four-lane downtown city streets and shopping centers. But we didn’t go there.

We did go to the Linville Cove, which is really just a parking spot so you can walk the trail that goes underneath the Linville viaduct. The little visitor center there discusses why the viaduct was built and the unique construction techniques used and the unique habitat that’s underneath the viaduct. From the air in the winter you can see the huge amount of boulders that occupy that side of the mountain. When they were building the Blue Ridge Parkway they considered how it would change the character of the mountain if they blasted away the boulders and leveled out a spot for the road. And of course they considered whether the boulders would be destabilized and the road might roll away I suppose. But for a tiny little hiking trail, you see as much in that 3/4 mile as you might see on 10 miles of most mountain hikes. I personally might just suggest making sure you have a hiking stick, as that Boulder area is a habitat for various snakes.

Well I guess I filled this up with enough for now. I’ll do the puppy development page next, so take a gander at that and tell me if you think that’s worth my time or whether I should just go out and do videos! Thanks for stopping by commission point

Rick, Dakota, Akela