Month: July 2006

We did go up on the Cheohala Skyway last night, but the Milky Way was a no show. It wasn’t cloud cover it was the moon. Amazing the amount of light generated by the 1st Quarter Moon when there is no other ambient light present.

And we did do an out and back Gap run before breakfast. Donna normally loves riding through the twisties as much as I love driving them, but the chemo has made her a little more sensitive to jostling around. I ran through the 318 turns at about 3/4 speed and it went good as we had an uninterrupted run. On the way back I dialed the speed up a little bit and she was a real trooper about it. We got about 9 miles of free running before I caught the tail end of a 3 cruiser motorcycle group. When we finished she told me that that was quite enough Gapping for awhile. We made it back in near perfect time for breakfast.

As always the food was fantastic, but way more than we normally eat. So instead of going for a hike after breakfast we returned to our room and laid on the bed like lizards in the sun digesting. At 11AM we finally got in the Miata for a trip all the way across the Cherohala Skyway to reconnoiter lunch or dinner spots for a future MMC visit. Whenever we have gone over there in the past we have always eaten at the same ol’ place and while the food is good it is kind of pricey. Guess what? other than that place the picking are extremely thin. A Subway, a Hardee’s (where we ended up and were sorry we did), a pizza place and a little family restaurant. The most interesting thing about Telico Plains was that the natives spoke an entirely unintelligible form of English. The accent was 1/2 mountain south and 1/2 mumble. One women in the Hardee’s parking lot spoke to us and we had to say what twice in an effort to understand her and we finally just shrugged our shoulders and moved on. The nicest part about Telico Plains was leaving it.

For our evening meal we ended up in Robbinsville at a BBQ we had eaten at before. Last couple of times we had been in there we wondered how they stayed in business as the customers were nearly non-existent. This night the joint was jumping, it was jammed with motorcyclists and we had to finally wave over a waitress and demand she take our order. After dinner I wanted to go to the start of the Gap once again to get a sticker for the trunk lid to replace the one that used to be on the old trunk. Strangely enough the Crossroads of Time was closed this morning at 6:30 when we went by. When I hung a left out of the BBQ place Donna asked why. She thought we we going the long way, over the Stecoah Gap and up NC28. I said I didn’t think you wanted any more really windy roads, but she said 28 is so pretty a drive and even though it is very twisty, the curves are not as densely packed as the Gap itself. So we went that way turning a 12 mile return trip into 60 miles…cool.

Tomorrow we are going for today’s scheduled hike before the huge and delicious breakfast so we won’t have any excuse not to go for a walk in the woods.