My fifteen-year old son, Conor, still thinks I did it on purpose, but I swear it was a complete and total accident.
Last Friday, his last day of spring break, Conor, his mother Ann and I elected to take the day and head off into the mountains of western North Carolina for the weekend, leaving east Tennessee and my current job search behind.
Now there are a couple of ways you can go to get there from here. One involves an interstate (I-40) – quick and not particularly scenic (though better than many interstates) – and the other is a series of serene secondary roads (US 129) – lots of great, bucolic views. So, not being in any sort of hurry, we elected to go on the backroads. Why not? It’s a mini-vacation, right?
Now those of you who know anything about US 129 are already snickering. For the uninitiated, US 129 – for the most part – is your standard-issue secondary roadway, like so many others traversing our landscape. It passes through the states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. It goes through such teeming metropoli as Macon, Athens, Gainesville and Knoxville. However, it also has one notable hallmark and it is called The Dragon (or The Dragon’s Tail or The Tail of the Dragon, if you prefer).
The Dragon is an 11-mile stretch of US 129 that has 318 switchbacks in it as it rises from southern Blount County, Tennessee along Calderwood Lake to the pinnacle at Deal’s Gap in North Carolina. You read that correctly. Three hundred eighteen. Did I mention that Ann doesn’t really like driving roads where there are precarious cliffs and unannounced drop-offs? She also gets car sick occasionally.
Well, as noted at the top, I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. In fact, I admit it, I really didn’t know (precisely) where the road would lead us, just that it was going to get us to a great and exciting destination. And that’s when it struck me.
Our little adventure was analogous to my current job search. I’m not sure where the road will lead, just that the destination is going to be exciting and great. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that getting off the beaten path as we did, and taking in some new routes, allowed us to experience things we’d never experienced previously. Need an example? How about this?
Yep. That’s a bald eagle. He was sitting high atop a tree right along the road by Calderwood Lake. None of the three of us had ever seen a bald eagle in person – not even at a zoo. So we did a U-turn (legal, of course) and headed back to the pull-off adjacent to our new-found feathered friend. What a reward, a reward we wouldn’t have received had we taken the fastest, most-traveled route to our destination. Get it?
Yes, the road was precarious. Perilous. Frightning. Scary. Driving those eleven miles is real work. An exercise in concentration and anticipation. And there’s not often an opportunity (at least not for the driver) to look around and ‘enjoy the view.’
In the larger sense, the weekend did provide more than a few great vistas, though, places we’d not been before and things we’d not experienced. In fact, here’s a “selfie” from our five-mile hike along the Deep Creek Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We did the hike after arriving at our destination – Bryson City, NC.
In addition to The Dragon, the bald eagle and Deep Creek Trail, we also experienced the Ropes Adventure at Nantahala Outdoors Center. The three of us had the entire course to ourselves on Saturday morning. What a challenge! What a hoot! What a great family memory. Here’s Conor on one of his many trips down the zip line. (Yes, that’s a GoPro mounted to his helmet!)
Here are a few additional snapshots.
The view from our cabin’s balcony…
The rushing waters of Deep Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park…
A farmstead fence at the Oconaluftee Visitors’ Center in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park…
The streams in the GSMNP were high and very active…
Indian Creek Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park…
A pair of grazing elk on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in Cherokee, NC. There are now about 150 elk in the herd that was re-introduced to the GSMNP several years ago.
I hope you enjoyed photos, but I also hope you get out and blaze a new trail for yourself. Sometimes the old path is just that – an old path – worn, beaten and predictable. A new path can provide plenty of unexpected and wonderous things to see and enjoy!
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Random Thoughts & Observations 