Chuck and Naomi Adventures in RV Land

March 27: (Madison/Pittsburgh KOA)

We are stopped about 2 hours from State College mid-way between Pittsburg and Fallingwater.  The KOA is on a hillside, with a pond at the bottom.

We decided we needed a couple of days for R&R and work.  So, there is not too much to report for the first couple of days.  I did multiple walks around the campground with the dog, working on my birdwatching skills.  The campground is overrun with sparrows and robins, so we are seeing lots of not very interesting birds.  However, I decided to join eBird and send in my lists.  At least I am pretty confident about what I am seeing (e.g. 27 robins in 20 minutes).

We decided to spend Wednesday in Pittsburgh.  Although we were regular visitors when Jonathan was studying at CMU, we never saw the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural Science, even though they are at the edge of campus.  We made up for it this time, although we could not see everything in one afternoon. The photos are CMU as seen from in front of the museum, U. Pittsburgh as seen from the museum, and an old post office on Forbes Street, just down from UPitt and looking towards it.

We started in the bird hall, which of course was appropriate given our new interest.  It is small but interesting – however, not too useful for new birders.

We then split up, although in the end we both saw the same exhibits.  I headed to the mineralogy exhibit, which is one of my passions.  The hall has a number of nice specimens.  However, what is really different is that they use mirrored walls to get a kaleidoscope effect.  As a result, when you walk into the main part of the display, it is quite dizzying.  There are a lot of specimens, and I examined every one.

From there I went to the dinosaur exhibit, which I think is one of their specialities.  It is certainly a very interesting exhibit, including some history of the excavations, mounted fossils of some huge beasts,

 

and a curator workshop where you can see the paleontologists preparing specimens.

 

 

 

An interesting part of the museum is the architecture hall, which has full-size plaster reconstructions of some of the churches, fountains etc of Europe.  It is quite amazing to see these works, which apparently were created as teaching pieces for students in the days when travel to Europe would be too expensive for most.

Just outside the architecture hall is this interesting diorama which dates back to the 1800’s.  Among the interesting features of the work: the lions that were used in the display are from a species that is now extinct.  As well, the human figure was built over a real skull!

I also spent some time in the art gallery.  There was a lot to see and not much time, so I focused on pieces I liked, rather than trying to see everything or focus on an artist or style.

At Chuck’s advice, I spent the last few minutes at a fashion exhibit (which I might otherwise have passed up).  I would have to say that this was about using the model as a display for pieces of art, rather than about clothing.  It was all very interesting stuff, much of it made on 3D printers.  But I doubt it is actually wearable even on the runway.

We had lunch on S. Craig Street which we knew well from Jonathan’s CMU days, and ate dinner at Schenely Park, where Rumple could sit at our feet.  Sadly, the Conflict Cafe closed early so we could not eat there, but our waitress at the Schenely Park Cafe was one of the co-owners and told us how they had got the idea.  She and a friend had discussed opening an ethnic food cafe, and all the cuisines they came up with were in conflict zones.  So they decided to open a cafe that would serve food from different conflict zones and encourage their clientele to discuss the issues involved.  They were serving Iroquois food when were were there (but only until 6 p.m. sadly- we got their at 7) and they are switching to Palestinian soon.  Anyways, we probably got a better idea of the concept from our waitress than we might have had we actually eaten at the Conflict Cafe.

On Thursday we headed out to view 2 homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.   We took the “in-depth” tours, which gave us a bit more background and time.
Fallingwater is Wright’s most famous private home.  It was commissioned by the Kaufmann family, who owned a chain of department stores that only recently closed.  They had a property in the mountains south of Pittsburgh that they used for outdoor R&R for themselves and their employees.

Pittsburgh was filthy from mining and burning coal at that time (the 1930s) – so much so that businessmen brought 2 white shirts to work so that after lunch they could change out of the morning shirt, that would already be grey!

The Kaufmann’s son was interested in architecture and met Wright.  When his parents decided to build a weekend cottage on their mountain property, he convinced them to hire Wright for the design.  They had envisioned putting the cottage on a point overlooking a waterfall on their property.  This photo is taken from the point, with the house and waterfall in the background.

Wright decided instead to cantilever the house over the falls, so that the house, the rocks and the falls were an organic whole.   The entire project was supposed to cost $30K, but there were a few overruns, and it ended up being $150K.  Amazingly, the Kaufmanns continued to be friends with Wright.

The house is designed to blur the distinction between inside and outside.  Some of the walls are built right into the rocks and it must have been quite picky work to cut beams and glass to fit along the irregular contours.  As well, on the creek side most of the corners of the structure are made up of windows.

 (This was a new idea at the time.)  In one room, the windows have frames, but the frames then can be opened and the corner itself disappears.  In this picture you can see the guide showing how the window can be opened leaving the frame (where her hand is) but the frame can also be opened (below her hand) to remove the entire corner of the room.  As well, you can see the cut-out in the desk that was needed to make it possible to open the window.

The house is entirely oriented towards the creek, with almost windowless walls (for example the dining room) against the rocks on the other side.  The decks all cantilever over the creek.  The Kaufmanns did not trust Wright’s computations on how to construct the cantilevers, and hired an engineer to check the construction.  As a result, much stronger steel beams were used.  However, the engineer was not conservative enough, and significant cracks soon developed.  To save the structure, the decks had to be levered up half an inch and reinforced.

Wright used an open floor plan in the main social area of the house (again a novel idea at the time).  He used an idea that the guide called compression – the areas that he wanted people to move through quickly are very tight and dark, but look into the open and light part of the space where he expected people to linger.

Another device was to continue the same stonework, plasterwork  or woodwork inside and outside the house, so that e.g. walking from the living room to a deck, only the door frame gives a clue that you are going outside.  In the guest house he did something even more clever – a cabinet on one side of a door has handles on the left and on the other side has handles on the right, giving the illusion that the door frame is a mirror, shown here.

 

The guesthouse is connected to the main house by a corridor over the outside walkway, and is actually a separate structure up higher on the rocks.  However, it is positioned so that when approaching the house you appear to be going to a much taller single building.

Although it appears from this view that I am standing in front of a 5 storey house, the main house is only the first 3 levels.  The other 2 levels are a completely separate house.

Wright designed and built in much of the furniture in the house.  All the wood grain is horizontal on the furniture and vertical on the doors, giving an illusion of length and height respectively.  In one amusing anecdote, the Kaufmanns disputed the size of the desks that were built into some of the rooms.  Wright pointed out that if they would be any larger, they would interfere with the windows.  However, Mr. Kaufmann said that he could not write such a large cheque on such a small desk, thus winning the day.  Wright built a well into each desk so that the windows could be opened as you can see above.

Wright hated attics, basements and garages.  However, he agreed to put a basement into the house for the furnace.  The vehicles were stored in a carport, with one open side, because he pointed out that unlike horses the cars would not escape.

Chuck was quite taken by the fact that despite the cost overruns on the house, the Kaufmann’s fully furnished the servants’ quarters with the same level of trappings as the family and guest quarters.

The design might have been brilliant, but the engineering was flawed.  The roof started to leak immediately.  When the Kaufmanns called to complain, Wright reputedl suggested that they put buckets under the leaks.

The house was designed to become part of the waterfall when the rain is sufficiently heavy.  Ironically, we had changed our plans to visit the house on Tuesday because the weather forecast (which was accurate) was for heavy rain.  Our guide claimed that seeing the house in a rainfall or when the snow is melting is really the best.

From Fallingwater, we went through Ohiopyle State Park to reach Kentuck Knob, a privately owned Wright house that is quite different from Fallingwater.  Kentuck Knob was originally commissioned by the Hagans, successful dairy farmers who were friends with the Kaufmanns.  Wright built it without ever visiting the site, even though it was also supposed to be an organic whole with the hillside (Knob) on which it sits.  It was a larger version of a type of house which Wright had designed for the “average American” called the USonian style.  This house was also supposed to cost $30K and came in only slightly over budget.

Since it is a private house and still used by the owners, no photos are allowed inside the house. The house is built on a hexagonal design, with many hexagonal features and features made up from equilaterial triangles.  The house and carport take up 4 of the 6 sides of the hexagon.  This picture from above shows the 3 sides of the house  and the carport, which open onto a grand entrance.  Unlike Fallingwater, which has a private hidden tiny entrance, the entrance to Kentuck Knob opens expansively into the courtyard making up the interior of the hexagon.

The skylights are hexagons and the openings for the ceiling lights are triangles.  As well, as you can see in the photo, the chimney is an equilateral triangle.  A few features are rhombuses, made up from 2 equilateral triangles.

A wrap-around porch was designed with skylights that admitted light to the porch in the morning and directed light into the living room later in the day.  (The builders told Wright to remove the glass of the skylights to avoid the heavy weight of snow on the porch roof.)

As in Fallingwater, the house was designed to obscure the boundaries between inside and outside.  In fact, one skylight is half over the porch and half over the indoor dining area.  The living room and dining room open onto the porch.  The hexagonal kitchen is at the center of the house.

The kitchen is an interesting collaboration between the Hagans and Wright.  Apparently he was not much interested in the functionality of the kitchens – since he hated basements he generally put the heating, water, electricity etc in the kitchen, leaving little work room.  However, Mrs. Hagan loved to cook and they did not have servants.  They convinced Wright to include a basement for their wine cellar (apparently sufficiently non-plebian for his tastes) and then put the utilities down there too, along with a place to store supplies.  As dairy farmers, they were used to sterile workspaces with stainless steel counters and designed a one-piece counter and sink.  We loved it – easy to clean and virtually spillproof.

As well, at the time Westinghouse was selling a fold-away stove top.  All of the burners plug in individually and can be folded up against the wall.  Alternatively, the burner could be unplugged and used elsewhere – e.g. as a heating element at the kitchen table.  We really want this set-up for the RV, as it would more than triple our working space, but unfortunately Westinghouse was not able to sell many of the units and stopped producing them.

The house has a single corridor – modern overweight folks need to go another route.  The corridor leads to a large and beautiful bedroom.  Luckily all the furniture is built in, because it would be hard to get even a folding chair through the corridor.

Like Fallingwater, the house is built into the hill.  However, all the windows are placed so that they are at eye level when you are using the appropriate furniture (i.e. the chairs or the bed) and so you do not notice that some parts of the house are actually buried.  On the other hand, the living room, dining room and porch are at the top of the Knob  and overlook the garden.  (You have to walk to the edge of the garden to overlook the mountains.)

Mrs. Hagan also liked to draw, and a studio was added to the carport so she could paint without the odor of her oil paints reaching the house.  However, the studio has absolutely no light and was apparently only used to store the supplies and finished canvasses.

The Hagans invited Wright to their open house when they first moved in.  However, he declined their invitation.  When they realized that he was unlikely to ever visit, they made a few modifications to make the house more liveable.  Apparently he did visit the site after the house was completed, but saw only the outside.  When he saw what a wonderful job the builders had done in integrating the house into the site, he declared himself satisfied.

The Hagans sold the house to the Palumbos, a British couple who are very interested in the arts and architecture.  The Palumbos lived in the house part of the year for a while, but succumbed to frequent requests for house tours and now live nearby.  Mrs. Palumbo was working the gift shop when we arrived.

One interesting feature of the house now is the Palumbo art collection.  They have a sculpture garden (which is mostly not to my taste) and many paintings inside which I do like.  As well, they collect native American pots, fossils, Frank Lloyd Wright furniture (especially pieces with a hexagonal theme) and a few other things that made the house even more fun to visit.

When I booked the Kentuck Knob tour, I wondered if we really needed to see two Wright houses, especially on the same day.  The answer is: yes.  The houses are very different in design and feel, with the main commonality being the integration with the landscape.  Seeing them together really illustrated the genius of the man.

Incidentally, we were curious about why a house in Pennsylvania was called Kentuck Knob.  A “knob” is a rounded hill.  The story is that the original owner of the land was on his way to Kentucky but when he got to the top of the knob and saw the view he decided to settle right there.

Between Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob is Ohiopyle State Park, which is well known as a white-water rafting destination on theYoughiogheny River.  On the way to Kentuck Knob, we  stopped at Cucumber Falls which is a pretty waterfall on a side branch of the river.  On the way back, we stopped at the main rafting destination, which is below Ohiopyle Falls.

Ohiopyle Falls is only about 4 feet high, but there is a lot of water in the spring.  Apparently it is “a thing” to raft or kayak over these falls but it is very dangerous.  The current pulls the water (and your boat if you don’t know what you are doing) beneath the boulders and it is easy to get pinned.  Beneath the falls, most of us would still need a skilled rafting guide to do the trip safely, but it is much more reasonable.

As is often the case, someone came to meet the dog and we ended up having a nice chat.  Paul and Sue have had some RV adventures of their own to share and we enjoyed our time together. And, as usual, we forgot to get a photo with them.

On to State College!

March 23: (Caesar Creek State Park) We are now trying to drive 3 hours on each driving day so that we get to State College for the first week in April, but still have time to sightsee whenever we stop.

Our route took us through Lexington KY and Cincinnati, but we have decided that on the whole RVing is not a suitable way to see big cities – too much commuting.  So, we proceeded north to Caesar Creek State Park.

This is a whole new camping experience, as the water in the park has been shut off for the winter.  We have electricity and a sewer connection, but we have to rely on water we brought with us from Corbin, with no easy way to refill.  When we started the trip, we did not have water in the RV, but the campgrounds had working bathrooms, showers and water taps.  Now we have water in the RV, but if we run out, we will need to move on.  We are using paper plates and bowls.  We will not be showering for a couple of days.
Not surprisingly, the campground is very empty with only a few other campers.  It has filled slightly as the weekend arrived, mostly with campers from Dayton and Columbus, which are nearby.  The weather is great, and the bugs are not biting.

The park has a number of hiking trails, the most accessible of which is a series of loops connecting the 6 campgrounds with the lake.  We walked all of them, while looking for birds.  Most of the shoreline is a cliff down to the lake.  However, with a strong wind whipping up the water from the bottom, the lake looks brown and dingy – not really that scenic.  With few people in the park, Rumple can enjoy some off-leash time, which make the walk more pleasant for all of us.

Our friend Phil let us know that Dayton was the home of the Wright Brothers and the Air Force Museum at the Wright-Patterson airforce base, so we decided to commute into town for the day.  The men of the Paulson family have a deep connection with airplanes.  In an odd coincidence, the family home was purchased from the son of a mechanic who worked with the Wright Brothers (George Pratt) and Chuck’s father compiled a lot of notes and also built and flew a plane to Mr. Pratt’s specifications.

Dayton was the Wright family home town.  Kitty Hawk, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which we visited  in 2012 just before Hurricane Sandy, was the test site for their prototype airplanes, and therefore the site of the historic first flight.  However, all of the early developments leading to the test flights and the later developments leading to the patents and the commercialization of the planes were done in Dayton.

The museum starts in the Wright Brother bicycle shop.  We did not realize that the Wright Brothers started as printers, and later got into bicycle sales and repairs.  Most of their income came from sales of bicycles made by others.  However, they did build custom bicycles.
Our brother-in-law Richard Sachs builds custom bicycles and we were impressed at how similar the old workshop was to Richie’s modern shop.  By the time they started building bicycles, the original “penny-farthing” bicycle with the tiny back wheel and huge front wheel was being replaced by the “safety bicycle” which looks like a modern bicycle and has a gear system.

The museum also had an old general store of the era.

The remainder of the museum has several parts including full-size models of the planes, an explanation of how their wind tunnel experiments led them to rework the tables of lift that others were using, and how the series of prototypes led to more designs that were more readily controlled.  As well, the role of their mechanic, Charles Taylor, in developing a light weight engine was emphasized.  However, there was no mention of Mr. Pratt, who claimed to have developed the wind tunnel for which the Wrights took credit. (Here are 2 articles on this – the first is by Chuck’s father: http://www.456fis.org/GEORGE%20_A._SPRATT.htm  http://truthinaviationhistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/dr-george-spratt-letter-and-lost-friend.html).   The museum also went through some of the Wright family history.

Interestingly enough, the US military and several other countries turned down the opportunity to invest in the planes.

A wing of the museum was devoted to parachute design, and this was also very interesting.  I did not realize that early parachutes were designed for jumps from balloons and that the parachute was deployed by a catch on the basket.  This type of deployment from the early airplanes led to parachutes entangled in the plane (and needless to say these accidents did not end well for the parachutist).  The free-fall parachute was a very controversial idea – the parachutist jumps and is in free-fall until (s)he is sufficiently far from the airplane, at which time an auxiliary chute deploys and pulls the main chute out of a backpack.  If the auxiliary chute does not deploy, the parachutist pulls a ripcord.  Incidentally, “she” is not a post-feminist addition – while some of the early balloon parachutists were women, so was one of the early airplane pioneers, Georgina Ann “Tiny” Thompson, who started her skydiving career in 1913.

Another piece of the museum is devoted to African-American poet and author Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who was a high school friend of Orville Wright.  He wrote some amazing poems.  In fact, he has a huge body of work especially considering that he died at age 33.  I am starting to read some of his poetry.

From the Wright Brothers Museum we went to the Air Force Museum, which is in 4 huge hangars near the field which the Wrights used to develop their more practical planes.  It would take at least several days to properly see this museum.  I stuck to the first hangar, which started from the Wright brothers and ended with WWII (although I did not get that far).  Chuck worked his way through the WWI material and then headed to the last hangar to see the presidential airplanes which are on display there.

The first hangar continued the story of the Wright brothers and their competitors, through the development of the airplane industry as part of the war effort.  (Remember this is a museum of the air force, not the airplane.)  The first deployment of airplanes was for surveillance.  It was not until later in the war that the planes were used to drop bombs and for aerial warfare.

The US did not enter the war until 1917.  There was then a very rapid move to train pilots, engineers and mechanics.  Due to a shortage of fighter planes, only preliminary training was done in the US.  Pilots were sent to Canada, Britain and France to complete their training.

Like other aviation museums I have visited, this museum had a nice collection of vintage airplanes.  There were also a couple of very unique exhibits. The museum had a WWI dirigible hanging from the ceiling.  To give you and idea of the scale of the museum – it is “tucked” into a small corner. There was also  a drone — the Kettering Aerial Torpedo “Bug” which essentially is a bomb with wings (and no pilot).  As always in these exhibits, I cannot help but think that if the money and ingenuity that we expand on killing one another were instead spent on improving human life, we would be living in paradise.

Chuck headed out to the last hangar, which had presidential airplanes and modern aircraft.

Chuck here – I found a flying saucer developed by the Canadian Air Force which sadly could not fly more than 5-6 feet high due to stability problems. It looks very cool though.

I don’t remember the name of this plane in the next picture, but the 6 rear engine exhausts looked so cool that I had to get a picture! It would be awesome to see the after burners lit on this plane.

I also took a tour of the space shuttle with its cavernous cargo bay and tiny living quarters.

Finally I toured 3 of the early Air Force One planes. The first was used by FDR to fly to the Yalta conference, The office space was tiny, less than our RV dining room. The presidents office was a chair, a table, and a sofa with 2 seats. The last one was the plane used by JFK. It was a vast improvement with a fair amount of office space and an impressive communications center.

Altogether the museum was huge, we could have spent a week there and still not do it justice.

March 20 (Corbin KOA): We decided that RV camping is not the way to see the bigger cities, and so we have passed by Knoxville and continued north to Corbin, on the edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

Again, this cute KOA has shown the error of my trying to generalize about campgrounds.  The campsites are pretty tightly packed, but there is a lot of space between the various camping areas, and there is a real hiking trail to the local lake, Laurel Lake.  Right now the part of the park we are in is empty, which adds to our feeling of plenty of space.

March 21st was a beautiful day.  We spent half a day working and then took the hiking trail down to the lake.  It was a nice, although short, hike that led to a small dam and then back to the campground by road.  After that, we headed out to kayak on the lake – or more properly on the short piece of the Laurel River between the launch ramp and the trail from the campground.  (We drove to the launch ramp, as the campground trail is very steep.)

Most of the river shore consists of wooded cliffs about 40 feet high.  It is really quite scenic, although it badly (very badly) needs a clean-up.  There are a lot of birds and turtles and fish despite the garbage.  Our campground hostess tells us that in the other direction the boats go pretty fast, so we were not tempted to continue to the lake.

The town of Corbin used to be squarely on the main north-south route of the east. Its main claim to fame these days is that it is the original home of the Harland Sanders Restaurant. Mr. Sanders is better known these days as Colonel Sanders, and it was in Corbin that he developed his famous cooking method and coating.  Appropriately we followed a truck loaded with crates of live chickens on our way into town.  (It did not look like a comfortable ride for the chickens.)

Colonel Sanders settled in Corbin after quite a varied set of careers and purchased a gas station. Since Corbin was a popular stopping place for north eastern US and Canadian tourists en route to Florida, the gas station did well.  However, when the depression cut into the tourist traffic, Sanders decided to add a restaurant. He primarily made his money from the breakfast menu, but he also perfected a fast way to deep fry chicken under pressure (and hence may have started the fast food industry) as well as experimenting with coatings.

After a fire, he added a motel to the mix. Sanders was something of a marketing genius. He noticed that the women of the family tended to make decisions about where to stop and where to stay.

He added windows to the restaurant kitchen so that the customers could look in and see how clean it was.  He painted all the surfaces white so that he (and his audience) could readily inspect for cleanliness. And most innovative – he put a full-sized motel room right in the restaurant (above) and positioned the women’s restroom so that the women passed through the room to get to the toilet – thus effectively advertising the rooms and their amenities.

He seems to have done well with all this. He spoke at a number of restaurant conventions and ran unsuccessfully for state office.  He began franchising his secret fried chicken recipe in 1952.

However, in 1955, when Sanders was 65 years old, I75 was opened and became the main north-south route, bypassing the town and severely cutting into the local tourist industry. Sanders sold his business with no profit, and faced with living on Social Security and his savings, he took his Kentucky-fried chicken recipe on the road for serious efforts at franchising.  By the mid-60s the franchising business was highly successful.

Incidentally, when I went to Wikipedia to fill in the details, the story was a lot more salacious than the sanitized version presented in the Sanders Museum.  He was an interesting guy – and apparently not always a nice one!

The original restaurant has been restored serving a modern KFC menu. It has a small but interesting museum which includes the motel room that was in the original restaurant and the original kitchen (with the entire wall cut away) as well as memorabilia. Definitely worth a stop!  An international selection of other tourists apparently agreed.

After our KFC lunch, we headed out to a state park for the Mountain Life Museum, which unfortunately was closed. However, nearby is a small historic mill, and a huge outdoor display of old millstones. Of course one sees these millstones all over the US, but it was quite fascinating to learn a bit about the different designs, and how these enormous and heavy chunks of rock were moved around, even from as far as Germany, as only certain types of stone are suitable to making millstones.

The millpond and surrounding wetland and forest were swarming with birds, so we wandered around with our binoculars for a couple of hours and tried to identify birds using a birding app (and even sending a photo of two large ducks to Anne for help). We are getting better at this and saw several birds we were not previously familiar with (not counting all the “little grey birds” and “little brown birds” which we undoubtedly have seen before, even if we did not know their names).

It was another cold night. We are beginning to get more savvy and learning to check the forecast if it seems cold. We disconnected the water line, which saved us from dealing with a frozen hose in the morning. This gave me a bit more time during the morning to walk the dog again along the short trail down to the lake .

March 17 (Raccoon Mountain RV Park): We had a shorter but no less arduous drive from Macon to Chattanooga.  For starters, the RV could not fit into our selected gas station and our next try required some fancy maneuvering to park so we could get lunch.  Because of this, Chuck did all the driving.  As well, the highway took us through downtown Atlanta, with lots of merging traffic.

Raccoon Mountain is part of the Smokeys – it is certainly nice to be in mountains again after the monotony of the coastal plain.  The RV camping part of the campground is basic, but the folks in the office are friendly and the campground is part of a larger complex than includes Raccoon Mountain caverns and several hiking trails.  There are lots of birds in the bushes surrounding the campground, and we have been learning to use our binoculars and identify birds.

I had 2 work phone calls after we got in, and Chuck had a long work session the following afternoon.  We decided to go into Chattanooga for supper and a walk across the historic Walnut Street Bridge.

Chattanooga lies on the Tennessee River.  Although it was not the ancestral home of the Cherokees, there was a major Cherokee settlement here and John Ross, who was part Cherokee and identified as such was an important businessman and citizen of the city.  Ross’s Landing, a riverside docking facility, was one of the 3 main concentration camps for the Cherokee before they were forced on the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma.  Today the Tennessee Aquarium overlooks Ross’s Landing.

For a long time, the river was problematic, with treacherous whirlpools and rapids.  It was not reliably navigable until it was tamed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s.  Hence, Chattanooga became a rail center (Chattanooga Choo Choo, anyone?).  The river was traversed by ferry.  During the Civil War, a pontoon bridge was built to facilitate troop movement across the river.  After the war, this was replaced by a “permanent” bridge that cost 3/4 million dollars – a fortune for the time.  However, two years after the bridge was completed, a flood brought it down.

In 1890, a new bridge was built extending Walnut Street to the opposite shore.  While other bridges have since been built, the Walnut Street Bridge continued to be used until 1978.  For the following decade it was not used, and there were plans to tear it down.  However, around 1988 it was resurrected as a historic site, and was refurbished as a pedestrian walkway.
We noted that each plank on the wooden bridge has a small brass plate with a name – I assume this is the equivalent of buying paving stones in historic districts and encouraged local residents to contribute to the project.  In any case, on a Friday evening, despite some chill, the bridge was crowded with families, young adults (possibly prom goers), dog walkers, joggers and tourists.

However, after our walk I learned that the bridge is not popular with everyone.  It connects the downtown (largely white) with a suburb that used to be popular with African Americans.  Sadly, in the 1930s it was the scene of several lynchings.

Downtown Chattanooga is small, but pretty, especially in the evening and viewed from the bridge.  They have perfected the use of floodlights to enhance the scene.  One very attractive floodlit building is part parking garage, part climbing wall – the building with green lights to the right.  Closer to the water are the glass roofs of the Tennessee Aquarium buildings, and at the downtown end of the Walnut Street Bridge is the Hunter Museum of Modern Art, also with interesting lighting (to the left).

The following day we started our sightseeing on Lookout Mountain, a limestone table mountain which overlooks the city from an imposing height.  On the city side, the mountainside is a sheer cliff rising from the Tennessee River Valley.

 

About half-way up the mountain is a limestone cavern that was used by both the native Americans and the early settlers.  In 1905 a rail line was built into the side of the mountain and the mouth of the cavern was sealed as part of the construction,  In 1920 a local caver, Leo Lambert, decided to sink a shaft down to the cavern and re-open it as a tourist attraction.  During the drilling, a passageway about 18 inches high was discovered.  Lambert and a friend traversed this passageway for 7 hours on hands and knees until it opened to a larger passage through which they could walk.  At the end of this passage, they found a 145 foot high waterfall.  In all, this first traverse of the cavern and back took them 17 hours. Lambert then did a second visit with his wife Ruby (who must have been an enthusiastic spelunker herself, to do this many hours of crawling with only a headlamp for light) and then named the falls after her.

Lambert re-opened the original cavern as a tourist attraction and then blasted out enough of the new cavern to admit tourists.  However, the original cavern must not be very interesting, because only the Ruby Falls cavern is now open.  It is now accessed by an elevator ride deep into the mountain and a walk of almost an hour through the cave (all of it lit and most of it wide enough to walk two or three abreast and at least 65″ high.  (I can vouch for the height because although Chuck occasionally had to duck, I never did.)

The cave has dramatic colored lighting and a few interesting rock formations which are lovely but similar to other limestone caverns in central Pennsylvania (e.g. Lincoln Caverns or Penns Cave) and elsewhere.  However, Ruby Falls is truly an amazing sight – especially with the light show above.  We highly recommend this cavern.

At the end of the tour, upon exiting the elevator, you can climb a tower to get a terrific view over the Tennessee River Valley and Chattanooga.

 

 

After the cave tour, we continued up the mountain to Rock City – a natural maze of deep crevasses in the limestone.  Although the Disney-like entrance was a bit off-putting, once we started the walk we thoroughly enjoyed it.  This part of Overlook Mountain is near the edge overlooking the Tennessee Valley and Chattanooga.  The geology consists of huge limestone slabs, perhaps 30 feet tall, separated by crevasses a few feet wide.  A numbered path takes you through or over the crevasses.  Whenever you are on the top of the slabs, you have a spectacular view over the valley.

 

 

 

 

 

The walk is enhanced by lovely plantings of native flora.  As well, there is piped in music – sufficiently tasteful that I felt that it enhanced the experience.  The venue was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, so there were some Irish cultural events, and (for some reason) Scottish bagpipers.

A somewhat bizarre aspect of Rock City is due to the founder’s love of German folklore.  The venue is decorated with hundreds of garden gnomes,  (no pictures included) which is just as weird as it sounds.

 

 

As well, one tunnel is filled with scenes from German fairy tales, all painted in glowing “black light” fluorescent color.

 

 

 

At the very top of Rock City is a point from which you are supposed to be able to see 6 states – the flags are shown.  A lot of mountains are visible, so I think it is possible.  It is a lovely spot to stop and have a drink (and to watch a wedding ceremony).

The artificial waterfall at Rock City was dyed green for St. Patrick’s Day – a rather bizarre effect.

 

 

 

 

 

Our final day in Chattanooga was quite intense, as we tried to cover everything else that sounded interesting, while also getting some work done.

First on the list was a tour of the Raccoon Mountain cavern.  Although I was tempted to do a “wild cave” tour through the undeveloped part of the cavern, in the end I decided that I was not mentally prepared to “belly crawl” through the tight spots with no light but a headlamp.  The caverns offer wild cave tours up to 6 hours for the adventurous.  Instead, we both took the “Crystal Cavern” tour through the developed part of the cave.

We have been to several caves in PA, including our local Penn’s Cave.  The rock formations at Raccoon Mountain are far more spectacular than anything I have seen previously.  As well, there are 3 species of salamander (we saw two of these), crickets, spiders and bats in the caves (although we did not see the spiders or bats).  

The formations are lit up with white light, which I prefer.  The tour is relatively short, but every inch of the route is filled with stalactites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone, ponds, and other formations.

 

As

The cave was first explored (and then protected) by spelunker Leo Lambert, so everything is intact except for where drilling was done to develop the cave.

The tour of Raccoon Mountain’s “Crystal Cavern” is only 45 minutes, but since the rock formations start about 3 feet from the entrance, that is sufficient.  This is really a cave worth seeing.

 We next headed off to the “Towing and Recovery Museum” which is devoted to tow trucks.  Chattanooga auto mechanic Holmes decided that it would be more efficient to bring cars to his shop for repairs, rather than to do the work roadside.  He fitted out a Ford truck with a hoist, and created the first tow truck.  The museum is small, but is fitted out with a number of antique tow trucks and a lot of historical notes. One aspect that I enjoyed was that for each truck, the details of the restoration was included.  

In many cases, the original truck is not on display, but rather was recreated from vintage parts.  The work involved was brought to our attention a few days later in Corbin, where we saw a decaying model T sitting in a car lot.

I liked this beautifully painted truck that had the US flag on one side and the Canadian on the other.

 

 

 

For some reason this museum, like the Truck and Tractor Museum we saw near Petersburg, had many display cases of toy and model cars and trucks as well.

 

 

After that we had about 3 hours to see the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga.  The Aquarium is actually housed in 3 buildings and an IMAX theatre.  One building is devoted to educational displays (no live fish).  One building has a huge aquarium of ocean fish, along with smaller tanks that contain other displays (such as the jelly fish tanks). 

The top floor is devoted to the flora and fauna of Madagascar and one of our favorite primate families – lemurs.  It had some unique animals I have not seen before including spotted fresh water rays from Madagascar.  As well, there was a large display about sea horses and a relative called sea dragons.

The third building is devoted to freshwater fish and has a huge aquarium representing river life.  The entrance, however, is devoted to two species of penguin, which were enjoying dinner when we arrived.

All I can say, in summary, is that it can be very fascinating to watch masses of really big fish swim around.  The Tennessee Aquarium certainly delivered, and had lots of other great displays as well.

March 31 (Grange Fairgrounds, Centre Hall)

We are staying at the Grange Fairgrounds, just outside Centre Hall and 15 minutes drive from State College.

The Grange Fair is our local county fair, which is held for 9 days each August.  It has the somewhat unique feature that families actually camp at the fairgrounds for the entire period.  There are 1000 tent sites and 1500 RV sites.  The fair has been held since 1875 and I suppose that the first campers decided that it was too far to travel back home if they wanted to be there for more than a day.

In any case, the tent sites have been held by families for generations, and many local families with the Grange Fair tradition hold an annual family reunion at the fair, with members coming from across the nation.  Families have been on the waiting list for 50 years or more to get a site.  When a site became available 2 years ago, it was big news locally.  (Of course, the first family on the waiting list got it, so it was gone immediately.)  There is also a long waiting list for the RV sites, but of course that is a much shorter tradition.

During the fair, forget about getting a site.  The rest of the year, there are trade shows, horse shows, revival meetings and the occasional music festival, but the camping area is really not all that crowded.  In fact, we are the only people camping here right now.  There are a lot of RVs on the site for storage, but otherwise – just us.  It is a bit spooky after the staff leave.  But it is great for Rumple, who can run around off leash.  The staff turned on the water and set out a garbage can just for us.  However, the bathrooms, showers and laundry are closed until later in the season.

We have been running back and forth to State College to check out our house, do the laundry, collect 3 months worth of mail, see friends, get some work done, see doctors, vets, accountants, dentists, see more friends, etc.  To list it all: Chuck has been to the accountant twice, met with work colleagues twice, went to the bank, renewed his driver’s license and went to the dentist.  Naomi has been to a faculty meeting, had two student meetings,  and went to the doctor and dentist.   Rumple has been to the vet.

As usual, we forgot to take photos with most of our friends, but I am posting the ones we did take: Naomi and Becky on a hike at Shingletown Gap and Naomi, Chuck and Susie at Mario’s Restaurant.  My apologies to everyone who we forgot to immortalize on the blog!  You are nevertheless in our hearts.

We are coming back in late April for more appointments and we hope to see anyone we missed.

 

 

March 14: We spent a day at the campsite watching the cold rain fall and resting.  Macon has a lot of attractions, but after our long drive, we lacked motivation.

However, on Tuesday, we set off to see what there is to see.  We started with a lunch buffet at the Macon Mall.  I am beginning to believe in “the new south”. This was the most integrated dining experience I have ever had – both the staff and the clientele were about 50% white and about 50% African-American.  Since RV parks are probably the whitest places in American, it was really very noticeable to be in such an integrated environment.  The food was also very good.  Of course the problem with a buffet with good food is that it is hard to waddle out after the meal.

We then headed for a remarkable archeological site, the Ocmulgee National Monument.  This is a set of ancient mounds.  Although they are grass-covered piles of dirt, they are huge.  And a map of the site is very reminiscent of the Pyramids at Mexico City, with a huge temple mound at the end of a large rectangle surrounded by smaller mounds.

The site was occupied by humans going back to the Clovis culture (13000 years ago).  The mounds were built about 1000 years ago by the Mississipians.  They must have had a highly developed society to organize moving such huge amounts of earth with no draft animals, levers or wheels.  Their culture was first described to Europeans by the DeSoto expedition (1439) which was seeking gold.  Instead, they found death and brought death with them in the form of devastating epidemics.

Around 1690, a British trading post was established near the site, which by then was occupied by the modern Ocmulgee nation, also known as the Creeks.  When the trading post was abandoned (before the Revolutionary War) its location was lost to history.  Its remains were found during archeological excavations of the mound site in the 1930s.  From this period until the 1820s, the usual sad tale of wars, broken treaties, illegal land sales reduced the Creek lands until in 1836 they were expelled – many followed their own “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma.  However, they retained their connection to the mound site as a sacred site for the nation. Description of the site when it was active and intact comes from 1774, when it was visited by William Bartram, a naturalist.

By the 1830s, much of the land had become part of the city of Macon and was being used for industrial and agricultural purposes, despite the recognition that this was an archeological site.  Needless to say, this ruined some of the mounds.  In 1843, a railroad line was constructed that cut right through the site and through several mounds.  This both exposed the archeological value of the site and destroyed many artifacts, including 2 of the mounds – one of which was a burial site.  The line is still used – the photo shows a container freight car going through.

Two Civil War battles also occurred at the site.
In the 1920s, three local residents spearheaded a move to preserve the remainder of the site, and recruited Smithsonian archeologists to assist.  The site was established as Ocmulgee National Monument in 1936.  Between 1933-36, the biggest archeological excavation ever carried out in the US was done with 800 workers recruited into the various post-depression New Deal civilian work corps, under the supervision of a Smithsonian archeologist Kelly, who must have had manic energy to catalog the 100s of thousands of artifacts discovered.  The Civilian Conservation Corp continued the work and developed visitor facilities from 1937-41.  Excavations ended when the US entered WWII in 1941 and have not been resumed at the request of theCreek Nation, which still considers the site sacred.
The National Monument has a very good Visitor Center, which displays some of the artifacts and highlights the native American history.  I found the display of spear and arrow heads through history to be especially interesting.  You can also walk to and on the mounds.  One mound was found to be some type of council house – entry is permitted into the chamber.

As well, the National Monument has a number of hiking trails.  I was quite amazed to see signs warning that alligators are common, as this is well out of the coastal plain and into the rolling hills of western Georgia.  However, with temperatures in the 40’s, we did not see any gators.

All the Macon attractions close at 5:00.  It was already 4:00 when we left Ocmulgee, so we headed downtown to visit the Visitor Center and see the town.  Macon is really very attractive, with wide streets, some older buildings and boulevards.  Unfortunately, some pretty big swaths of the downtown seem to be failing with empty storefronts.  It is hard to say whether Macon is dying or becoming revitalized.

 

According to the website, Macon has 350,000 cherry trees.  I am not sure how this compares with DC, but the annual cherry blossom festival is a very big deal here.  It is coming up in 2 weeks, and already most of the downtown stores have blossoms painted on their windows and goods with blossoms (such as T-shirts and paintings) prominently displayed.

Ever since our excursion with Anne, we have been looking for binoculars.  Chuck recognized the name of a store as we were wandering downtown, and we are now the proud owners of 2 pairs of fairly good binoculars.  We were quite lucky – the store no longer carries binoculars because they are so durable that there are seldom repeat customers.  However, they had several “vintage” pairs that were gathering dust under the counter – i.e. they were about 20 years old but never out of the box.  They were happy to sell them to us for half price and we are happy to have them for our hikes.

OnWednesday we set out to see the rest of our priority Macon attractions.  We started at the Catholic church, which rivals the cathedrals of Europe.  We were very taken with the detail in the stained glass windows, which included embroidery and lace on the robes of the various saints.

 

 

 

 

 

We then went to the premier mansion in Macon, Hay House.  

This house was built in the 1830’s by a wealthy jeweler and investor, Johnson.

He and his much younger wife were very interested in both art and technology and spent 3 years in Europe, collecting art and ideas.  The house is huge (of course) and had a large room with natural light to house their artwork.  As well, the house had an advanced ventilation system, central heat, hot and cold running water, and a larder designed to keep vermin and mold at bay.  They also had beautiful wood and glass pocket doors – even in the rooms with curved walls.  However, all their wealth and technology did not save them from losing their first 4 children all before the age of 2.  The last 2 survived and split the estate – one retaining the house.  Her offspring sold the house to the Hays.  When the Hays offspring could not longer sustain the house as a museum, they gave it to the Georgia Historical Trust, which has had more success in  maintaining and marketing the house.

We continue to be amazed at what these wealthy tycoons built and the ingenuity that they brought to the projects.  The architecture of the house is quite spectacular.

After lunch Chuck and I parted ways.  Chuck here: I went to the air museum at Robbins Air Force Base, which is the second largest one in the country. They had a huge number of planes there and I could not do justice to all of them in the time I was there. The highlight for me was the SR-71 Blackbird (picture below).

 

This is the actual plane that still holds the world speed record at about 2170 mph. It is mostly titanium and has 2 large engines. They operate as a turbofan jet at low speeds and as a ramjet at high speeds. The SR-71 also flew from Los Angeles to Washington DC in 1 hour and 4 minutes, which is incredible.

(Naomi) I went to the Tubman Museum, which is an eclectic assortment of African-American collections, including an interesting contemporary art collection, an exhibit of some of the inventions and technological advances created by African-Americans (including some types of refrigeration, an enhancement to the rotary lawn mower, a method for refining sugar, etc, but notably not the Otis safety elevator),  As well there was a short film about the daring escape of a Macon slave couple.  She, the daughter of her master, was very fair and passed herself off as an ailing young man accompanied by her slave (her husband) going to a hospital in Philadelphia.  Due to the Fugitive Slave Act they eventually moved to England but returned to the US after the Civil War.

Another interesting exhibit was about the use of chain gangs after Reconstruction as forced labor and to suppress black men.  Investigative reporter John Spivak was able to gain access to the prisons and photographed the appalling conditions under which the men lived and worked.  He also photographed prisoners being “punished” (i.e. tortured).  These photos led to reforms of the system so that there was at least some oversight.

In the past year I read Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” and viewed Spivak’s chain gang photos.  It makes me realize the important role that investigative reporting has had in promoting civil rights and social justice.

After looking at the exhibits, I returned to the museum office and chatted with the attendant.  She asked if I had any questions about the exhibit.  I said that I had instead a question about a difference between northern and southern culture.  Without further prompting, she said”You mean: Yes ma’am; no ma’am.”  It turns out that she was from Long Island.  Not only did she have to adjust to the constant use of “ma’am” (which apparently is how all adult women are addressed in Georgia, but conveys exaggerated respect or very old age in the northeastern US) but she had to give up use of her first name unless it was proceeded by Miz, as in Miz Naomi.  As well, everyone she met wanted to know if she had joined a church yet.  Maybe the south is not yet quite as “new” as I thought.

Chuck and I joined up later in the afternoon (as we have only one car) and decided to visit Mercer University for a stroll and to try out our new binoculars.  The campus is very pretty.  We identified 3 types of bird we were previously unfamiliar with and feel like we have a handle on binocular use, as well as the birding app that Chuck downloaded.

We ended our visit with another trip to the buffet.  It is a good thing for our weight that we are leaving Macon tomorrow.

 

March 12: We got a lot of puzzled looks when we told people we were off to May-Con, until we learned that it rhymes with bacon (of course).

Anyways, for us it was quite a long haul – 300 miles in one day.  Chuck did most of the driving, but I did a chunk in the middle.

This is the first time I have driven the RV on the trip, and the first time I drove while towing the car.  Since I drove only on the highway, I cannot comment on what it is like to drive at lower speeds or to maneuver.  At highway speeds, it is necessary to really concentrate.  Firstly, every bump and grade in the road can be felt – especially where the road is banked for curves.  Secondly, the air pressure change when passed by a truck actually shoves the RV to the side.   Because of these two aspects, it is necessary to constantly move the steering wheel to stay in the lane.  As well, we like to stay in the rightmost lane so that the trucks are passing only on one side (and pushing us off the road, rather tha

As well, it can be difficult to determine exactly where the RV is in the lane.  To handle this, I used the 2 side mirrors, which give views of the rear wheels.  However,  to see out of these mirrors, it is necessary to continually glance to the side, which means that you are always moving your eyes or your head from center to the sides.

In short, there is a real physical effort in driving an RV and after an hour and a half, I was not only mentally, but also physically, tired.

Whenever we drive, Chuck uses an app to find a service station where we can get gas and lunch.  This time, he picked a station that we reached around 2 p.m.  When we pulled off the highway, we found that the entrance to the station was under repair, necessitating a number of tight turns.  When we negotiated that, we found ourselves 2nd in line for the only pump where the RV fit.  (A diesel RV can use the truck filling stations, which obviously are bigger.  Since we use gas, we need a pump that has enough room for us to maneuver in and out, and with a roof that is higher than the RV.)

All would have been well, but when the car finished fueling, a woman got out of the front passenger seat and retrieved a very small baby from the back.  She then proceeded to nurse, which took at least half an hour.  There were lots of parking spaces just a few feet from the car, but apparently it never occurred to them to pull up before beginning nursing.  Sigh … Then, when we did finally fuel up, it turned out that there was no way to get from the pumps to the truck parking (sigh again).  So, we continued to our campsite.

We are camping at a county park at Lake Tobesofkee (gotta love the name).  We have a nice view of the lake and full hook-up, just a couple of miles from downtown Macon.

Around the park, the woods are purple with invasive wisteria.  The trees are just beginning to bud out, but the wisteria is already heavy with masses of purple blooms.  It is very pretty – but we saw during our sabbatical in NC how the massive vines can bring down entire stands of trees with their weight.  I was a bit surprised that the park butterfly garden has an arbor covered with wisteria – at least it grows well here!

Speaking of invasive plants, another pretty invasive here is cat’s claw.  Like the wisteria, it is already in bloom. It does not seem to be quite as devastating however, as the vines are thin.

With a huge blizzard hitting the northeast, we are not in a great hurry to move from Macon – despite very cold weather here.  At least it is still above freezing.

Mar. 12: We have been on the road for just over 2 months now, and have stayed at a variety of campgrounds including RV resorts, private RV campgrounds, county and state parks.  How do these differ?

Actually, they have a lot in common.  Just about every place that says it will accommodate RVs has a flat parking spot to camp, an electrical hook-up (30 and/or 50 amp) and a water tap.  (The one exception to this was the parking lot in the Savannah Visitor Center, which is just a parking lot.)  Most also have a sewer line hook-up, picnic table and some type of fire pit.   As well, most have  a “dump station” (a centralized sewer line), bathrooms and showers, and almost all have some type of laundromat.  They all have quiet hours from 10 p.m. to about 7 a.m. and I must say that the residents adhere to this and also keep the facilities clean.   (Bathroom and shower cleanliness seem to be a major component of campground ratings.)  Many have some type of store that sells some camping supplies and junk food (although not things like milk, which would be handy).

The sewer line deserves some extra comment.  I mentioned before that RVs have 2 storage tanks: “black water” for the toilet and “grey water” for everything else.  To date we have not got to the point where the black water tank has been full.  We can say from experience that 4 “RV showers” (2 days x 2 people) or 5 days of kitchen use and hand-washing fill the grey water tank.  (An “RV shower” uses a lever to turn the water off when it is not needed – e.g. when lathering up – so that it uses quite a bit less water than a regular shower while maintaining the same water temperature.)  If there is no sewer line, then the RV must be moved to the dump station to empty the tanks.  This is the same effort that is required to pack up and leave, so it is not something we really want to do.  We have learned that if there is no sewer line and we are staying several days, we need to use disposable dishes and cook meals that do not require a lot of cleaning up, as well as  using the campground shower.

County and state parks tend to be in natural beauty spots, and to devote only a small part of the park to RV camping.  As a result, they often have bicycle or hiking trails, beaches, lake front, etc.  They are usually pretty, and often have nicer camping spots than the private campgrounds.  In Georgia we stayed at both state and county parks that also had a golf course (although I think that in both cases there was an additional fee for golfing).  They cost from $25-$35 nightly.

County and state parks have a few features that might discourage some campers, though.  Firstly, they are often far from the highway – it is a bit daunting to drive a large RV on a small road.  Secondly, they don’t have a lot of spaces, so they may be full, especially on the weekend.  Thirdly, they usually have time limits of 2 weeks (state) or less (county).  Fourthly, they are most likely to lack a sewer at the campsite (although many do have them).  Fifthly, they often do not have wifi (although they may have great cell reception).  And finally, some of them have gates that are locked when the office is closed.  A locked gate could just mean that you get a key code, and need to jump out of the car to open and close the gate, but in a couple of places it meant that you have to be at the campsite when the gate is locked (no parking outside the gate) which could be as early as 7:00 p.m.

Because there are no long-term residents in the county and state parks, most campers are touring, or local folks out for the weekend or school break.

Private RV resorts and parks almost always fill the site with camping spots and so have little room for aesthetics at the actual campsites, although some are located on small lakes or rivers or border other attractive features.  Many of them have dog-walk areas, or have (or are close to) fenced in off-leash dog parks.  They all have sewer hook-ups.  They might originally have been located at remote spots, but since they are not the actual tourist attraction, they tend to be in places that attract other tourist oriented businesses, such as motels, restaurants and RV service centers and so become part of a “strip” with strip-mall ambience.  As well, much of their business comes from long-term renters, including both campers who use their RV as a cottage and people who need to be close to job sites, which are relatively long-term but not permanent.

The main differences between a “resort” and a “campground” seems to be that resorts have leisure facilities such as tennis or basketball courts, horse shoes, fishing ponds, etc.  As well, resorts have some type of social hall, although they do not always have social activities.  Although the most expensive place we stayed was a resort, the other resort we stayed in was priced on the low end.  It was, however, still nicer than most of the campgrounds with plenty of places to walk away from the campers and well-maintained public areas.  As well, the campsites tend to be a bit more private (but not much) and usually the long-term campers are in a separate area from the short-term.  They always claim to have wifi (although it can be quite poor). We have paid between $35 – $65 for resorts.   They often have weekly, monthly or annual discounts.

The private campgrounds tend to have sites that are pretty closely packed – I have already posted photos of the RV parking lot.  However, they have full facilities and are usually clean and quiet.  So far, most of the ones we have stayed at have had some interesting attractions which vary widely – one had dog obedience training facilities, one had a menagerie, one was adjacent to a flea market, etc.  Often there is just one big area, although they still try to separate the long-term and short-term campers.   We have paid between $25 – $50.  They often have weekly, monthly or annual discounts.

A mobile home park is different – they cater to much longer term residents.  Although some offer RV spaces, my impression is that these are for longer-term contracts and would appeal mostly to people wanting a space for several months.

One thing that has surprised me is that there do not seem to be small camper-oriented businesses at the private campgrounds.  One resort we stayed at did have an ice cream stand, run by someone living on the premises.  (This was well-utilized both by the campers and by the maintenance crew.)  I would imagine there is scope for some other businesses, especially for people who want to work part-time – e.g. hairdresser, seamstress, pet-sitters, laundry drop-off, car and RV maintenance.  But perhaps there are zoning or insurance reasons for not allowing this.  I am not sure whether the ice cream shop is legally attached to the resort – perhaps it was in place of the campground store.

So far, we have been in the eastern USA, on the main routes between the north and the Florida warmth.  And of course it is winter.  Things may change as we head into the summer months (and more campgrounds are open in the north) as well as when we head out west.

p.s. Since I wrote this, we are now staying at the Raccoon Mountain Campground, which is private.  Not only does it have all the amenities of a “resort” it also has a network of hiking trails that go up the mountain.  As well, the Raccoon Mountain Caverns, limestone caverns with cave formations, are on the property.  As I said, you cannot generalize about campgroups.

 

March 8: We had time for only one more stop in Florida, and decided to spend it in Crystal River to see the manatees.

Manatees are large (1/2 ton) herbivorous aquatic mammals.  They do not have blubber, so keeping up their internal temperature during a cold snap is difficult.  The Crystal River estuary has a number of natural springs which emerge at 72F all year.  The manatees use these like a hot tub, and hang out there when their feeding grounds in the Gulf of Mexico are too cold.  They eat sea grass, which grows in the shallow waters of the coast and looks like the cellophane “grass” in Easter baskets.  It does not grow in the area of the springs, but does grow in the brackish water of the river mouth nearby.

In short, the colder the weather, the more likely you are to see manatees in the springs around Crystal River.  On the other hand, the colder you are likely to be if you are in or on the water to view them.  We had a pretty good compromise – since it was a warm winter, the place was not exactly swarming with manatees, but we saw a satisfactory number.  The manatee in the picture above is resting in a sanctuary area close to the entrance to Three Sisters Spring, one of their favorite hangouts.

The Crystal River estuary is not exactly what you think of when you think of a nature preserve for large mammals.  The map shows Kings Bay.  All of the red areas are parts of the reserve.  The many straight waterways are canals cut into the residential districts so that people can dock their boats in their backyards.  All of these are lined with nice houses, each with a dock and most with a reasonably large boat.  These predate the preserve, which was not established until 1983.  The red areas are the preserve, where humans are not allowed during manatee season.  The manatee above is in a reserve area marked off with buoys.  Boats are allowed throughout the Bay, but only at idle speed.  Apparently propellers do not kill manatees, but high speed impacts do.

The most peculiar part of the reserve is the little crescent beside the big green area.  This is a spring-fed canal which is lined with big homes and big boats.  However, no-one, including the home owners, is allowed on the water during manatee season.   I cannot imagine what political finangling went into making this happen.  However, most of the manatees we saw from our kayak were swimming into or out of this area.  Here we are at the mouth of the reserve, along with a swimming tour group in the water with a noodle for floatation and hovering over a manatee.   Swimmers are required to stay at the surface, and all the touring companies ensure this by requiring everyone to swim with a noodle.

The big green area on the map on the mainland is the marsh surrounding Three Sisters Spring, which is the most popular area among the manatees (and hence among tourists).  When it is cold, several hundred manatees congregate at the spring.  There is a boardwalk so that the manatees can be observed from above.  When the numbers are more moderate, it is also possible to take a tour to the entrance to the spring, and swim in with a guide.  (This is not a red area, but boats are excluded.  The entrance is only a few feet across, which means that when the authorities want to exclude swimmers, they can just station a ranger there.  There always seems to be a ranger on land and another in a kayak to monitor the human traffic.)

Our first evening in Crystal River we launched in the bay just north of the 3 Sisters.  It was a lovely kayak trip, but we had a long paddle against the wind to the spring.  We saw lots of big birds including brown and white pelicans but only a couple of manatees visible in the crescent.   These two trees and this house on the water appeared to be favorite brown pelican roosting sites.  The white pelicans prefer the buoys in the bay.

We noted some blue buoys that would go under water and the pop to the surface.  Often a manatee would then surface beside the buoy.  We thought these were remote-control submarines observing the manatees, but later learned that these are tags, attached by a tether to a band around the narrow part of the tail.  These tags are used for studies and to monitor manatees that have been rehabilitated to the wild.

There were several tour boats and kayaks waiting at the entrance to the spring, but we were told that a noisy group had spooked the manatees.  Since dusk was fast approaching, we paddled back (again against the wind) getting lots more views of the bird life and seeing a lot of leaping mullet (a type of fish).

The next day we set out at 8 a.m. and launched from Pete’s Pier, which is much closer to 3 Sisters. Although manatees like to be warm, they do not like to swim against the tide, which was going out.  Hence, there were very few manatees in the spring.  After paddling out to the feeding areas and seeing nothing there, we paddled back to the channelbetween the bay and the spring, and spotted quite a few manatees traversing the channel in small groups.
We got to be quite good at spotting their ghostly shapes in the water and their backs or snouts when they came up for air.  Our location in the channel had another advantage – we were well away from the tour boats taking swimmers out to swim with the manatees.  This sequence of 4 pictures are all the same manatee, which surfaced beside my kayak.

Notice that we (and the manatee) are in the canal that leads from King’s Bay to Three Sisters  Spring and is completely lined with houses.

 

 

 

 

We decided that we would also like to swim with the manatees.  A tour seemed like the best idea, as at minimum snorkels and masks are needed, and a wet suit seemed like a good idea. Given what we knew about the tides, we set on Friday for a 9:00 tour, which got us in the water by 10.

Unfortunately, it was a warm day, so the manatees were not congregating in the spring.  Instead our boat took us out to the feeding grounds.  Water clarity was poor and there was a stiff breeze, which made the water choppy.  However, our guide was very good at spotting manatees both from the boat and in the water.

There were 10 of us, which is quite a crowd for the manatees (although it was much smaller than other groups we saw).  Needless to say, there are rules for this – no diving, no putting feet down, no getting too close, no touching unless the manatee approaches you.

From the water, with poor visibility due to murk, it was hard to spot manatees.  I had two general rules – stick with the guide, and when people spotted a manatee, move to where it was headed, rather than follow the crowd (a principle I learned from Wayne Gretsky’s advice on receiving a hockey puck).  As a result of having a good guide and following these rules, I had some pretty close encounters with several manatees.

With the lighting conditions as they were, a manatee feeding or resting on the bottom looked much like a patch of white sand (which are common in the bay).  On several occasions when I was swimming over a “patch” it detached from the bottom and I found myself directly above a surfacing manatee.  Since I was pretty sure that no manatee wanted to surface with me clinging to its back, and since one is supposed to move slowly and quietly, I had a few moments of panic as I tried to sidle slowly and quietly away.   This never seemed to work.  However, I guess the manatees knew I was there, because I was never bumped.  I did stroke a few sand-papery backs.  I also spent a fair amount of time floating over manatee tails (which are the only part I could reliably identify when they were more than a few feet below me).  Fortunately, manatees do not move their massive tails very quickly.

All in all, it was an exciting experience.  The manatees did not see to mind – at least they hung around where we were swimming (and they can move away quickly when they want to).  We were in the water for just over an hour – and even with the wet suits we were freezing by the time we got out.

Our last day in Crystal River, Chuck just wanted to relax at the campsite.  Rumple woke me up early (of course) so I decided to bike out to one of the Florida birding trails close to the RV park.  It turned out to be very close – perhaps a 1/2 mile away.  The trail opened fairly quickly onto what I suppose is another spring – a very nice pond.  However, there were very few birds, just a few herons and a bald eagle.  The trail was also pretty short.  Still, it was a nice morning jaunt.

We had selected the campground because it is on one of the canals leading to the Crystal River.  In the late afternoon we launched the kayaks into the canal.  Unfortunately, the canal is quite short, and we were sufficiently far from manatee habitat that boat speeds on the river were scary for two people in a kayak.  Our excursion was short.

We were blessed with perfect weather in Crystal River, and when not kayaking, we were happy to sit outside and relax.  The campground had a little ice cream stand which Chuck enjoyed.  But in the evening, despite the perfect weather, we were driven inside.  Mosquito-borne Zika might be the most serious problem in the area, but the most annoying bugs are gnats – you may never see one, but in the evening any bare skin is a target, and the bites itch, too.

This was the first campground we were in that actually had organized social activities in the form of a potluck, card evenings and bingo.  But we were lazy and stayed in the RV instead.

 

 

 

 

March 3: Gainesville has many interesting attractions, but for us the best was meeting up with old friends from Cornell and Stanford.

We spent the most time with our friend Anne who we knew for many years at Cornell.   We always remember Anne as being outstandingly hospitable, and she continues in this mode.  On Friday night we met her for dinner in downtown Gainesville (which I had never seen despite 2 previous visits to U Florida) after which we proceeded to Bo Diddley Square for a free outside concert.  Since it was quite chilly, the crowd was a bit underwhelming, but we enjoyed the music.

On Saturday morning, we joined Anne and her church group for bird walk in Sweetwater Wetlands Park.  This area was reclaimed as a man-made wetlands to absorb nitrogen and release cleaner water to the Paynes Prairie State Park.  It has become a major bird sanctuary.  Armed with the best binoculars I have ever had the pleasure to use,(Anne’s spare pair) , Anne’s birding expertise and a small group of friendly folks, we headed off to see the most amazing collection of birds I have seen in the wild including (and I am not a birder, so this is not a full list): great blue herons, tricolored herons, lesser blue herons, green herons, great egrets, lesser egrets, white ibis, glossy ibis, cormorants, anhingas, wood  storks, bald eagle (2), ospreys, Sandhill cranes, a whooping crane (1), grackles, red-winged blackbirds, several species of swallows and of vultures.
We also saw the largest alligator of our trip, which swam under the bridge you see behind Chuck.

This large bird is a wood stork.  I love this picture because you can see the distinctive black markings on the open wings from below as well as the view of the bird wading. There is also a great egret in the background.

Whooping cranes are critically endangered with only a few hundred remaining in the wild. We were privileged to see a whooping crane up close when it chose to fly with 2 Sandhill cranes and land on the path only a few yards away.  (Our phone cameras are not good enough to get a nice photo.) Our group was mesmerized for several minutes until a small group coming from the other direction literally walked into the 3 birds and scared them off.  I can only guess that they had no idea what they were seeing.  The cranes were lovely flying, too.

On Tuesday we went birding with Anne again on the Chua Trail at Payne Prairie State Park.  This is quite the hike!  For starters, the waterway at the edge of the trail is home to hundreds of large alligators.  In the early morning, they are all basking on the banks – mostly on the other side, but a few under the ledge on the same side as the trail. It is hard to believe that this habitat is rich enough to support this huge biomass of top predators. In this photo there are at least 8 large gators visible.  This particular spot had at least 30 in the water or basking on the shore.

Again we saw a lot of big birds – particularly herons (great blue, lesser blue, tricolor and green), egrets, a stork, a couple of bald eagles, and of course lots of cormorants and anhingas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anne was searching for a particular breed of sand plover that is rare in the area, but we did not sight it.  We also learned a couple of new bird names, like yellow legs and glossy ibis, and Anne did see some birds rare in the area including an American pipit, a wild turkey and a peregrine falcon.

Paynes Prairie  is also home to herds of wild horses, like this small group which kindly posed right beside the trail.  There is also a herd of about 30 bison, which we could see further away.  The bison have been proliferating too quickly, so the park removed all the males.  Presumably at some point the herd will start to decline and new males will need to be brought in.

On Saturday after the hike, we went back to Gainesville for lunch with Hani and Deb, who I originally met while in grad school.  Chuck had never met them, but we had a wonderful time together.  It turns out that their son overlapped for a brief time at a company Jonathan worked for – although they had not met. As usual, I forgot to get a photo.

After lunch we went to Alice Lake on the UFL campus, where I had seen alligators on previous visits.  This lovely building is a chapel.  A wedding was taking place.

UFL students take advantage of the location to string up a hammock and read or socialize.

There was minimal gator activity on this trip, but huge numbers of big birds – principally greater egrets, great blue herons and anhingas, as well as the ibis in this picture – many of which were closer to the viewing area than at Sweetwater (although sadly I had returned the binoculars to Anne).  The lake aslo has many of these big turtles swimming close to shore. We wandered around the lake until dinner time at Anne’s, along with Cornell friends Jim and Maria.

Among Anne’s many talents is cooking for a crowd.  (If you are going to be as hospitable as she always is,  this is a good talent to have).  She had prepared 4 half-pizzas with hand-made dough and various interesting toppings.  Jim and Maria brought appetizers and a home-made lemon pie.  We had no problem in over-indulging!  We caught up, reminisced and so on until quite late. Again – I forgot to get a photo!

On Sunday afternoon we went to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens with Deb.  This is a lovely garden – particularly the plantings of many types of bamboo.  

 

 

We were not quite in season for many of the flowering plants, but there were still plenty of beautiful flowers and lovely settings.  

 

 

We kept our eyes open for gators in the many streams and ponds, but we did not see any.  However, later Anne told us that the curator lost his arm to an alligator when he reached down to pick up some garbage without noticing the gator.

In the evening we returned to campus to watch the flight of the bats from the campus bat houses.  There are about 250,000 bats in the houses.  They eat about 2.5 billion insects nightly which is about 2500 pounds of insects.  We’ve got to say that our walk around Alice Lake during the day was pleasantly insect-free.   Just before dusk, however, the air was buzzing with bugs.

We are pretty sure that we saw at most a few thousand bats, but it was still an incredible sight, with a stream of bats emerging for about 30 minutes from 2 of the 3 houses in irregular bursts, on a path that brought them swooping over around a tree and over the lake.  An enterprising red-shouldered hawk was waiting by the houses and clearly thought he was at a snack table.  He grabbed one bat as it launched from the bat house and took it to a nearby tree to eat.  He then sat in the stream of bats until he identified another victim which was also devoured in the tree.

The bats feed only when it is above 65F.  We were a few degrees short of that, so I hope that the reason we saw so few bats was the temperature.  White nose syndrome is a serious fungal disease that is decimating the North American bat populations, but it is not yet found in Florida.  Apparently there is a webcam in the bat house, so the estimated population of 250 thousand is likely accurate.

Anne convinced us that we need good binoculars (and probably a good bird book, too).  Who knows, we might become birders!

Thank you all our Gainesville friends.