G.A.S.P.

The next morning (3-29) I headed for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a mere 20 miles from Maryville.  I stopped at the grocery store and gas station first, however.  I decided to buy some more pasta and soup (just add hot water) because I’m not sure how isolated I’ll be on parts of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I also filled up my fuel bottle with premium (93 octane) gasoline.  It only cost 12 cents – so what’s the big fuss about with the price of gas?

I stopped in the town of Townsend for lunch even though it was a bit early because there just wouldn’t be any place to stop later.  As I was parking my bike, I met three delightful people who invited me to have lunch with them.  Rob and April and their 11 month old son, Cannon now live in Morgantown, West Virginia (where Rob is a Professor at the WVU Medical School), but were down in Tennessee to visit Cannon’s grandparents.  Not only did they buy my lunch (thanks, guys), but they also gave me some good information on the Cades Cove section of the National Park.

I left Townsend and rode 8 miles uphill to Cades Cove, then took the 11-mile loop road around the valley.  The valley is 2500 acres of forests, meadows and homesteads that have been lost in time.  The State of Tennessee acquired the valley in 1819 as frontier country.  Soon after, homesteaders who moved from eastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina began to settle there.  By 1850, the valley had a population of 685 with 137 families.  These families of Cades Cove lived their lives a little differently than those in most other parts of the country, as each family was generally a self-contained economic unit producing its own food, shelter, clothing and fuel.  Life changed for those who lived there in the 1920s when strangers came to purchase land for a national park.  Some were eager to take the money and move on, while others settled for a lifetime lease of their property.  Today, no one lives in Cades Cove, but many homes, farms and churches of those who once did are still here in the valley.  They are a lasting reminder of “mountain life” for those of us who are willing to escape year 2000 long enough to come to Tennessee and find it.

The 11-mile loop road was something else, however.  The Park brochure says, “Bicyclists will fall in love with the level-to-rolling grandeur of the Cades Cove.”  Well I did fall in love with the grandeur of Cades Cove, but I thought the road was one of the worst for bicyclists of any that I’ve been on in National Parks all over the country.  To begin with, it wasn’t “level-to-rolling.”  It was “rolling-to-hilly.”  The hills were short, but some were quite steep.  Worse, the road is “one-way,” but so narrow that cars are afraid to pass bicyclists.  They just piled up behind me until I periodically pulled off the road to let them go by.