I’m Back!

[Yugoboy]

Finally! Made it home! 3ish weeks of travel has resulted in literally thousands of pics, dozens of stories and a feeling that even with as much as we got done, we missed a LOT of stuff.

Pix will be forthcoming. I only just got home. We visited East Tennessee and the greater Cincinnati area. We took 2 days getting to TN. It turned out we needed it. On the second day we wanted to visit Pipestem State Park in West Virginia. We started at the New River Bridge National Park. This trip should have been about a half hour of driving.

Not if you use the Apple iPod maps app.

3-plus hours on dirt roads that more reasonably resembled wide hiking trails. I seriously feared running into either a pot farm, moonshine still or meth lab and in any case finding myself face to face with a guy with fewer teeth than shells in his shotgun. To call these roads would be a disservice to the civil engineering profession. At one point, my wife had to hold a tree that had fallen into the road back so I could pass through. She finally called it quits relying on her stupid iPhone when the next turn went from piss-poor dirt track to a mud road. Mind you, all of this was with a 23′ trailer behind the truck. There was one part that reminded me of Arlo Guthrie’s Motorcycle song – the part where he describes riding along on a mountain road… on one side was the mountain, on the other side there was nothin’ – just the cliff and the air. I would have LOVED to have gotten pictures to prove this story. As it was, when we finally caught sight of pavement, I stopped the truck long enough to get a shot of the end of the road. Again…pix later.

I figured out Tennessee’s new travel promotion slogan: Tennessee, where the wildlife is like right f***ing THERE, dude! Got pix of bear, elk, turkey, skunk, deer, turkey vulture, fox and got knows what all else. In the 3 weeks we spend camping in northern Kentucky (Big Bone Lick) we saw deer and turkey vulture. Lots of both, little of anything else but roadkill.

Anyway… it’s good to be back in civilization. New York schools start next Tuesday, and I’m at a new school (a high school, finally), so I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me in the next few days.

Pix when I can… there should be some nice ones in some future contests!

[ennuipoet]

OK, Three things:

“Big Bone Lick” Uh huh, huh huh huh huh, bone lick, uh huh huh huh

Two:
Did you listen to WKRP?

Four (Three Sir!) Three!
Looking forward to photos.

[Elsinore]

Yay, welcome back!

/Big Bone Lick State Park is the best state park evar.

[chupathingie]

That’s better than Toad Suck, Arkansas!

[Barracuda]

So where’s the photos?

[Yugoboy]

So where’s the photos?

Coming…

Literally the third day after returning I had 2 photo shoots – 1 for pay 😉

On the way to the first my starter gave up the ghost. In the process of diagnosis, I toasted the battery, and lost a 50amp fuse.

And… school started last Wednesday, and copier issues at the building have been a part of keeping me from being as ahead as I like to be.

I’ve been a bit distracted from processing the vacation pix. It’s my goal to get to them as soon as I can.

Here’s two I did a bit of HDR on to tide you over:

Gatlinburg in the morning:

Meigs Falls:

[Yugoboy]

A few more:

One of the overlooks of the Great Smoky Mountains NP

Atop Clingman’s Dome on a cloudy day:

To see elk, the road to the valley is insanely twisty and unpaved, but when you take it, it’s worth it:

[orionid]

I’m scrolling through thinking “that looks familiar, I’ve been there… oh, hey! Smokies!” Nice to see the bull elks out of velvet.

[Yugoboy]

I couldn’t him out of the woods (not that I tried, it was that I was unsuccessful in finding an elk outside of the woods) so ALL of my elk pics require some heavy-handed post-processing.

I do have a cow outside the woods, but most of those pics are of her derriere as she was nibbling from the greenery on the fringes of the woods.

[Morningbreath]

I was in Tenn this August. Great Place

Gatlinburg from the same spot you took your photo

DSCN6516 by jambayalajo, on Flickr

Klingmans Dome

DSCN6541 by jambayalajo, on Flickr

Klingmans Dome Panoramic

DSCN6570 by jambayalajo, on Flickr

Pigeon Forge at Sunset

DSCN6301 by jambayalajo, on Flickr

I had to work each day, so I could not hike, but the last time I was there I was amazed by the number of animals I saw every hike: bear, owl, etc.

[Author]

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