28531 - December update

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Dag,
   Iris (Mnt Pleasant, 28531 miles)

28280 - Bushwhacking by kayak

Only 10 times a year and in total 2 weeks the Congaree river is high enough to overflow its floodplains making it only a 3.8% change to hit it at the right time.

Being from a river delta country, having lived below sea level a part of my life and having experienced the treat of flooding my whole childhood (each year the flooding of the river Rijn blocks roads and fills basements of my home town), overflown rivers are in my blood. And so I take my change on the 3.8% and otherwise there is always a creek to navigate through the park.

I walk in the visitors center and ask the friendly rancher for the possibilities to take my kayak out. The ranger pulls a map out and his hand waves over the whole paper: “We are flooded right now, the whole park is underwater, you can go where ever you want!” The ranger is clearly excited and confirms it with the words: “You are so lucky to be able to experience it flooded”. And so am I, very excited.

The flooding makes this park so unique. The floodwater deposits rich soil whose nutrients support the complex plant communities and the unusual giant trees the park is famous for. Depending on the time a region is flooded (due to elevation difference), the soil changes drastically and with it the forest above it. Yes, the flood plain is a forest and not the wide open grass fields I am used to.

My seakayak is clearly not the right length for randomly peddling through the forest and I stick to a hiking trail instead.

Its interesting navigating but it’s a wonderful place to be.

The whole forest is flooded and in places I measure 1.5 meter deep.

The water is flowing pretty steadily in the direction of the ocean and it is not always easy to keep the kayak on the trail.

With my compass I have to bushwhack away from the trail until I finally find the creek.

Which is easy to paddle and brings me right back to the Oto.

I am scratched by branches, my kayak took a good beating, but it was all well worth it.

Dag,
   Iris (Congaree NP, 28280 miles)

27934 - Fun and serious matters

Fun

To keep in style with christmas I visit the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta. Here in 1930 the Coca-Cola company invented the current Santa Claus image for their advertisements and it became the leading image from then on.

Having worked in a startup company in Silicon Valley it’s almost beyond believe to understand how much success this company has. Its the best know product in the world, making their marketing department probably the most efficient department in the world.

There is lots of talk about the famous (not patented) secret recipe and why all over the world Coca-Cola taste the same and why it is so popular. It all makes sense when you think about how this company is set up. The syrup is made in the USA and shipped to local licensed bottle factories. These factories dilute the syrup 6.5 times, fill the bottles and distribute it, making it available in every corner of the planet.

I always understood that the first recipe of Coca-Cola had cocaine as an ingredient and that’s why it became such a success. In a coca leave museum in Bolivia I also learned that up to today, the Coca-Cola company still imports about 100.000 kg of coca leaves (after the cocaine is extracted) each year, but nothing is mentioned about that in the whole museum. The real trues, why Coca-Cola is such a big success, its because we the people have incorporated it into our daily diet.

I didn’t know that and besides Inca cola (the only taste I like) I stay with my own caffeine fix, without the sugar: coffee.

Serious matters

Although the Civil War was won by the North and the slave was told to be free in 1863, segregation was still in full effect in 1955 when Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man. As leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association, minister Martin Luther King Jr, became the voice of her defend, the voice of the almost 1 year lasting bus boycott (plunging the bus company in financial ruins), and the voice in many parts of the USA and all around the world against segregation.

Influenced by the teaching of Gandhi during a trip to India, a non-violence approached for racial justice was taken. King moved back to his birthplace Atlanta to serve as co-pastor besides his father in the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and to become the president of the civil right organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The years following were filled wit boycotts, speeches and advocating (and practicing) civil disobedience to “immoral laws”. Accumulating for the March on Washington, were 250.000 people gathered to hear Kings electrifying speech: “I have a dream”.

In 1965 on what was later called; “Bloody Sunday” blacks and sympathized whites, leaded by King were marching 2 by 2 to the state capitol in Montgomery to demonstrate for black voting rights. The peaceful march was beaten down on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and broadcasted all over the world, finally convincing President Johnson to sign the Voting Right Act.

It put King even more in the spot lights but in 1968 his fight came to a sudden stop, assassinated in Memphis while he was fighting for better living conditions for the black.

Today there is a black president in the USA, but if the entire struggle is over. I doubt it and I will keep my eyes and ears open here down in the South to see how far the world still has to come.

Dag,
   Iris (Atlanta, 27934 miles)

27621 - A perfect Bluegrass xmas

My eye falls on the fiddle player, he not just plays music, he is music and I become instantly a groupie. I keep it to myself. The next morning when I wait for my breakfast, he however grabs me and with T from Cold Country playing and singing, I learn my first basic steps of swing dancing. The next moment I recall is in the evening. There is a campfire, the stars are out and people are picking on their instruments. We sit together on a car hood and talk, only disrupted now and then by requests for more fiddle or mandolin tones. The moment is perfect. But this was all back then, when we all lived the good life up North in Alaska.

Now we are down South, me chasing the sun, he moving with his bluegrass band Bearfoot to the center of the country music world. And so it happens, our paths cross again. J invites me to stay over Christmas, promises to play as much mandolin for me as I can stand and submerges me in the world of Bluegrass in Nashville, Tennessee.

When the music from Scots-Irish immigrants rolled down of the Appalachian mountains and combined with the African-American Jazz and Blues, Country music was born. With icons as Hank Williams and the Carter family, it became the music standard in the South. Bill Monroe is however the person we should talk about. Confined to the only instrument left in the family picking sessions the mandolin, he became the founding father of a sub genre called Bluegrass, after his first band, the Blue Grass Boys. And thats the genre we like.

The main distinguishes from Country music, besides its base around only acoustic string instruments, is that one or more instruments each takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment. While in Country music music all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment.

After a romantic dinner for two, J brings me to the Doyle and Debbie show. We hit downtown, and it seems that each bar has at least one life band playing. We are both not impressed with the band we choose and after a beer we head home early.

Who needs downtown if you can have bluegrass music right at home. T and A (who plays fiddle in both bands) invite us for Christmas dinner at their place. Of course it helps that they are picking all day around me, that I can see the process and help with recording a Christmas Carol, that they even have a present for me under the Christmas tree, that they cook a fabulous Christmas dinner. But there is something with these Alaskan people what just makes me feel home. I still can't put my finger down on what it is with Alaska, but I love it.

For 3 days J and me are hardly separated, more dinners, more coffee, more mandolin, more songs, more talking, more pictures, its just perfect.

Then our paths and our lives split again, J heading for some gigs in Chicago, me continuing my travel south. Separated until our travel lives will bring us together again, for some more bluegrass and perfect moments. I hope its soon.

Dag,
   Iris (Nashville, 27621 miles)

27424 - Mammoth Cave NP

I make a quick stop at Mammoth caves, with more then 600 kilometers of passageways, the largest cave system in the world. But more interesting for the visitor, the landscape above the cave is a karst topography, an eroded limestone landscape with a sandstone caprock. And that can mean only one thing inside the caves: Stalagmites, Stalactites and Columns. Oh and very touristy and busy and all that.

Dag,
   Iris (Mammoth Cave NP, 27424 miles)

27088 - It seems like a good idea

I am just not looking forward to go hiking again through the woods. And so I drive my car through the Smoky Mountain National Park. But this feels wrong. I read about the Smokies already before (Bill Bryson, A walk in the woods) and was actually looking forward to it. With 9 million visitors a year, this park is the most visited park in the USA, and also now in winter there are cars every where. This park you have to hike, to avoid people. And so on the way back, I drop by the back country office to obtain a shelter permit and drop my bike of at the top of the pass. Its seems like a very good idea: I walk up from the campground to the ridge, spend the night in a shelter, walk the ridge to the road and bike and cruise 14 miles down the road back to the Oto.

My neighbour D on the campground is in high spirit, knocking of all the mileages available in the park, and with lots and lots of wood he also has a new friend for the evening. The next morning I set off also in high spirit, the sun is out, the trail goes up and I get finally a bit of a feel for the trekking poles, I took out of the car last minute.

That night I have to share the shelter with some spring breakers on their first back country trip, and they even need me to finally get the fire going. They are fun company though and we talk until late in the night. The next morning we wake up with snow and its cold.

As its only 1 night I took barely any food and when I make an extra strong coffee and bake myself some pancakes not much is left. I am just a little bit worried about the snow, but the day will bring a trail on top of a ridge and with only 11 miles to go, I wave it away.

The trail is beautiful, the snow is still falling, but every time it clears up the views are amazing. The going is not too bad, and with my ‘happy to have now’ trekking poles, I make good time.

Not aware of the major snow storm in years I am in, I keep going. The whole day the snow keeps falling and in the afternoon the temperatures drop. I am getting cold, the going goes slower and slower and many times I fall, not aware of the ice layers underneath the snow.

And then I suddenly realize something. What seems liked a good idea might turn out to be a disaster. The snow is now almost 0.3 meter deep and there will be no way to take my bike down the road this way. For sure I have to spend another night out here in the snow. If the road won’t get plowed, which I have no clue about, I am up for a 14 mile walk down along the road and pick up my bike when ever the road is open again. But when would the road be open again? Do they plow this road? It might be blocked for the next coming weeks, months? Let’s keep it positive and first make it back to the road. If I am lucky there might be still cars driving and me and the bike can hitchhike back down.

When I make it to the road, I find my bike covered in snow. And jeh right, there is not a single car driving. This road is closed for sure. The snow is now 0.4 meter deep and I start worrying if I will be even able to walk down the road tomorrow.

Also now I have to keep thinking positive. Worries for tomorrow, lets first find a place to sleep. I drag myself around through the snow for a while and find a shelter. I can hear a pump in the back of the shelter, and it seems indeed a little bit heated inside. Tonight I don’t have to share my shelter, and with 7 private restrooms, it’s not a bad place.

Grosse, jeh I agree. But sometimes being warm is more important then anything else in the world. With no food left I go to bed on an empty stomach and sleep well after a day out in the snow. I wake up with new energy, there is no breakfast and instead I treat myself with some sugar in my coffee. Well the coffee you have to think with it. That’s gonna be a headache day for sure!

More snow has been falling and I will be plowing through 0.5 meters today. A long long long day is ahead of me for sure. When I finally dig myself out of the shelter and make it to the road I can’t believe my eyes. The road is plowed, its plowed in the direction I wane go, plowed! So I dig out the bike, clean it from snow as good as I can, and hit the road. Well road, its one big ice sheet, and my front break is frozen over and won’t work. The gear is also not functioning and I am scared and freaking cold. But it goes and slowly I make my way down, stopping every 0.5 km trying to warm up my feet and hands. The road is only down, and I have to hug my rear break to keep my speed in control. Stopping with a big backpack, frozen hands and feet is scary like hell, and I slide all over the road.

When I make it to another stop in the middle of the road I suddenly hear a car coming up. A couple minutes later the plowing truck slides to a stop besides me. “You want a ride down”, K shouts. Hell jehhhh. The bike goes in the back and me in front with the heaters on full hot, blowing at me. Suddenly life is good again and all the sorrow forgotten already. Well that coffee still won’t be a bad idea.

Back at the campground D is now accompanied by his friends J and W, and started to worry a bit about me. Instead of the fire going they have a better idea and take me out for breakfast and finally a coffee. The rest of the day I hug their big fire and we share a hotdog meal in the evening.

Jeh, the Smokies, I won’t forget them. And if you wonder how that day on the ridge emotional progressed. Here you go.

Dag,
   Iris (Smokies, 27088 miles)

26936 - Blue Ridge Parkway

From the Shenandoah NP to the Smokies NP, I take the Blue Ridge Parkway.


469 miles along the Appalachian mountain range, without any traffic light or stop sign.

Just enjoy the ride.

Dag,
   Iris (Asheville, 26936 miles)

26161 - Filling in the gaps, Jamestown

And the year is: 1607
And we are in: Jamestown
What happened: the first British Colony was established

In 1607 some 104 soldiers and explorers anchored in the James River and established a settlement in the only place not occupied by the locals, Jamestown Island. A swamp without any fresh water, mosquitoes and surrounded by the still friendly Powhatan Indians. With no skilled man in the colony the first years were marked by diseases, starvation and Capt John Smith barely keeps the group together by trading food with the Powhatans.

More colonists arrive but by 1610 only 90 out of the 300 survive the starving winter within the Indians have no extra food left to trade with the British and dogs and human bodies are eaten to be kept alive. Time to had back home.

But when they board the ships to sail home, new settlers arrive with food and fresh expectations. Jamestown gets a new try. With more mouth to feed, the settlers take what ever they won't get from the Indians with force and Indian attacks back violently. Thanks to the marriage of Pocahontas, the daughter of the Powhatan Chief, to John Rolfe things settled down a little.

Being the chief of about 20.000 people, Chief Powhatan let the settlers to their own business, there is enough land to share and never fights them again. He doesn't realize the unlimited supply of new people the British can bring in and thats exactly what happens. Woman arrive, families are established, a church is build. When John Rolfe establish the lucrative tobacco plant, Jamestown is good to go.

There is however one thing lacking, labour. And in 1619 the first African arrives in Jamestown. Slowly more and more Africans are brought in, but when the Dutch capture the fort of Elmina, Ghana, the slave trade takes off and in 1690 more then 9300 enslaved Africans where among the 53000 white population.

By this time the Powhatan were almost eliminated due to foreign diseases and several lost battles fought by Opechancanough, Chief Powhatans brother. An now nothing was in the way anymore for Jamestown to become the first successful British Colony in the New World.

What do I do: I spend hours walking through the very good state museum in Jamestown. And I have a cold, wet, very entertaining ranger tour through the actual Jamestown side.

What else:In the evening when I set up my car for a night in the harbour, the harbour manager comes back. He got in trouble to allow me the night here...with his wife... And so I follow B to his house, be treated with a dinner, a warm shower and a warm bed.

Dag,
   Iris (Jamestown, 26161 miles)

26161 - Filling in the gaps, Yorktown

And the year is: 1781
And the place: Yorktown

What happened: the Siege of Yorktown

The town of Yorktown, being around for 90 years by then, was a flourishing port with beautiful European style houses. Wealthy tobacco merchants walked around, and taverns and shops lined the streets.

In 1781 the American Revolutionary War was 7 years underway. The British had abandoned their effort to reconquer the North and focused their attention to the South. British general Cornwallis let his eye fall on the Chesapeake Bay area, moved in and established a base in Yorktown. This to the displease of American Marquis de Lafayette who had only a small army under his command. But with help of the French fleet under command of Admiral de Grasse who blocked the bay entrance blocking the escape route, and Georges Washington’s large army under command of Comte de Rochambeau, chances changed. And the way it went in 1781, camp was established, trenches were dug, and canons were pointed in the right direction.

Ten days of intense fighting followed until the British surrendered and Cornwallis cried:” Oh God, it is all over!” And so it was, the British went home and the independence of the USA was a fact.

What did I do: I walk through Yorktown, visit the museum and drive through the battlefields.

Dag,
   Iris (Yorktown, 26161 miles)