Day 18: Pigeon Forge, TN to Nashville, TN

Outline: Pigeon Forge, TN -> Great Smoky Mountains Natl Park (Cades Cove) -> Nashville, TN

Slept in this morning since the days have been long and I haven't gotten enough sleep. Spent about a half hour tracking down a hotel for the evening (read a long succession of reviews of cheap Nashville hotels mentioning crime/prostitutes/strange diseases...) before finding and booking one. I also bought a ticket for the show tonight at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville (of which more later). I was told to arrive around 6; leaving the hotel at 11:30, I figured I had a few hours to kill before the 3 - 3.5 hour drive to Nashville, so I headed back into Smoky Mountains NP.

The ranger yesterday had recommended the Cades Cove loop drive to me yesterday, but warned that it takes a couple hours, so I passed on it (since the sun would have set on me). Sounded like the perfect thing to check out today. The Cades Cove road runs for 28 miles inside the park, much of the way alongside a very nice creek:

I spent much of this part of the drive sitting behind a few cars that were moving at a slow, but reasonable pace; it was a good opportunity to sit back and see the sights. After the 28 miles of windy driving, the road terminates in a picnic ground, campground, and "scenic loop road", which takes you in an 11-mile loop around a meadow, with some sights along the way (log cabins, etc). This road was scenic and nice...for about 10 minutes. After that, I got caught in a line of cars marching along at around 5-10 mph; low enough that I was hitting idle speed in 1st gear. My one great complaint about the park is that people do not understand the signs indicating "slower cars use turnoffs" and "do not stop in the middle of the road". I cut the loop short to about 6 miles using a road through the middle, but still ended up trapped in a line of cars (and one school bus) about 30-long. This small loop excursion had eaten up an hour on its own! Since I was now running short on time, Murphy's Law guaranteed that I would get stuck behind more slow-moving cars on the Cades Cove road, where I saw people taking pictures out the window for miles at a time, never once using a turnoff to let the line of cars behind them pass.

When I finally got back out to Pigeon Forge, it was already 2:30, so I had time enough just to get gas and some sandwiches at Burger King before hitting the road directly for the Opry. And then, about an hour in, I was saved by the following sign: "Now Entering Central Time Zone." I'd completely forgotten about the time zone change, and had a full extra hour to work with, making a more relaxed schedule. After an uneventful (except for more slow cars, this time parked in the left lane, getting passed by semis on the right), I checked into my hotel in Nashville and headed out to the Grand Ole Opry.

The Grand Ole Opry (or rather, the broadcast of the live show) is the longest running radio show in the US and has featured many of the biggest names in country music. In other words, the style isn't the stuff I usually listen to. Regardless, I figured it was probably the most quintessentially-Nashville thing I could do (and it's hard to make live music bad), so I decided to check it out:

The Opry show featured a variety of performers, ranging from Western (cowboy-type music), to bluegrass, to different styles of country.

(Western band "Riders in the Sky". They were on the Toy Story soundtracks!)

(Bluegrass band the Grascals)

(Female country trio Point of Grace)

(Country Music Hall of Fame member "Little" Jimmy Dickens. He's not much taller than the guitar he's playing.)

(Charlie Daniels and the eponymous Band)

Even though it's not my usual brand of music, I had a great time at the Opry show. I wouldn't call all the performers my favorites, but most of them were pretty great, and I'd definitely see it again. Also, the live performance of "Devil Went Down to Georgia" at the end was awesome.

Tomorrow: Nashville, TN to Memphis, TN

Day 17: Atlanta, GA to Pigeon Forge, TN

Outline: Atlanta, GA to Great Smoky Mountains NP to Pigeon Forge, TN

This morning started out like every other one. Up at 10, out the door just around 11 or 1130, and right onto the road planned out. First on the agenda was the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, which has a large US space museum attached to it. Who wouldn't want to see a Saturn V? From there, I continued on to Nashville.

Except that every sentence in that last paragraph was a complete lie. The morning actually started around 8, and we were out the door by 9 to grab breakfast. After that, I dropped Aliyya off to her classes and hit the road...for Jiffy Lube, to get a somewhat-overdue oil change. From there, I put in the address for the space museum into the GPS, and decided the northern route (via Chattanooga, TN) looked more interesting than the southern (through Birmingham, AL), and picked that.

That's where everything went off-plan, and wonderfully so. Upon getting into Chattanooga, I realized that I could go about 150 miles west to see spaceships, or 150 miles northeast to see scenery - specifically, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Given that I was just at the Air and Space Museum a few days ago, and my last attempt to see this particular range of mountains was foiled by weather (see the post complaining about rain a couple days ago), it wasn't a hard decision. I just kept going on I-75 N, and eventually switched off to 40-E towards Knoxville. Traffic was minimal, scenery was great, life was good.

Everything came crashing to a halt (not literally, calm down) once I got off 40 onto TN-66. First of all, all of a sudden there was a huge amount of traffic heading off the highway. To make matters worse, this traffic passed through Pigeon Forge, TN. It's very clear that the main industry in Pigeon Forge is tourism, because the main strip (66) is absolutely lousy with tourist traps of every variety. That in itself isn't bad - what's annoying is the extent to which they all try to outdo each other in garishness to try to suck you in. It was sort of reminiscent of the huge amount of commercial development around Niagara Falls, and that's not a good thing. It wasn't a good omen for the approach to the park. The next town on the way in, Gatlinburg, also had a main street with lots of tourist attractions, but at least here they've done a good job trying to make them blend in, not blow out your eyes. The traffic was still bad, though.

All the sins of the outside towns were forgiven upon getting into the park, however. As befits a national park, Great Smoky Mountains is beautiful (and on a Monday afternoon, not super crowded). The following video will give you some idea of the contrast. The first town you'll see is the super-built-up Pigeon Forge; after a short woody segment, you'll see Gatlinburg; after that, you enter the park:




At the recommendation of one of the rangers at the visitor center, the first place I went was the lookout point at Newfound Gap. This lookout point is along the ridge of the Smoky Mountains, and lies on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, which means that everyone is obligated to take a picture with one leg on either side of the border:


The views from the lookout (and the road approaching the lookout) aren't too shabby either:




The Newfound Gap lookout is also a connection point to the Appalachian Trail, an unbroken footpath that runs over 2000 miles from Maine down into the South:


I hiked about 0.1% of the total length, and then decided to move on to another lookout point recommended in a guidebook. Clingman's Dome is the highest point in the park, and the third-highest point in all of the eastern United States, so it offers a great view of the park. By the time I got there around 5:45 or 6, the temperature had already dropped to around 40-45 degrees, so I packed up a couple extra layers and took on the half-mile uphill climb to get to the lookout post at the top of Clingman's. Though it's a bit of a climb (especially with the 6,000+ ft altitude), there's no doubt that the view from up there is great:



I figured as long as I was there so late, I might as well wait for sunset and see how everything looked; there was one other photographer already there with the same idea. What I don't think anyone up there counted on was just how cold it would get. The temperature was already in the low 40s, and at the high altitude, winds were constantly gusting past us from all directions - giving a windchill that was certainly subfreezing. Worth it, though:




I stopped taking pictures when I was fumbling with the camera too much - it's hard to manipulate a shutter when you can't feel your fingers. Put down for the night in a Pigeon Forge hotel (the one nice thing about ridiculous tourist traps is that the oversupply of hotel rooms on a down day = cheap rates).

Tomorrow: Pigeon Forge, TN to Nashville, TN (forreal this time?)

Day 16: Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Outline: Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Didn't get moving till 11. What else is new?

I did, however, make excellent time, getting down to Atlanta in a bit over 3 hours (the spirit of 85 south lives on, whether a California highway or a federal interstate). The first stop was the home of my Rimtu Mama and Rena Mami.

Aside: For those of you not in the know, Mama/Mami are generic terms in Bangla for a male/female relative one generation older than yourself, related through your mother; in this case, we're talking about my mother's cousin, which in the perfectly useless English formal system, would be my first cousin once removed.

In any case, I hadn't seen Rimtu Mama and his family in years, so it was nice to catch up with them over some tea and pastries. I also got to meet the kids (another set of second cousins, hooray!), who I don't think I had seen before. Somehow I neglected to take pictures of the kids, so you all will have to content yourself with a picture of the adults:

After that I headed off to Emory to visit my cousin Aliyya. As the gracious host, the first thing she did was take me on a tour of the Emory main campus. It's laid out in sort of a strange fashion, with the Emory hospital right in the center of campus, rather than at the outside or on a separate campus entirely, as with many other schools. It's interestingly morbid, then, that Emory's unofficial mascot is a skeleton named Dooley. There's a pretty cool statue of him near the main quad:

Very dashing. After concluding the campus tour, we went out to get a pre-dinner snack since I hadn't had any real lunch (though I did have a late breakfast). We headed to a place called Flip Burger Boutique, an establishment featuring hyper-modern decor,  fancy burgers....and milkshakes made with liquid nitrogen. Since neither of us had been there before, we sampled various things on the menu. Our waiter informed us that the nutella + burnt marshmallow and krispy kreme milkshakes were the most popular, so those were the first order. The first one was excellent indeed. The second one blew my mind; I wasn't quite sure what a krispy kreme milkshake would be - but it ended up tasting just like eating a krispy kreme donut (except cold and milkshakey). Neither of us actually had the ability to finish the KK shake (too full), but it was amazing that such a thing could even be done.

 

(Aliyya admires the nutella and krispy kreme shakes)

The main courses were a pair of burgers and a side of fried okra. This being the south, I ordered the "Southern" burger - a country-fried patty with pickles, pimiento cheddar, and green tomato ketchup. The burger was quite good, and the okra was excellent (Aliyya's tuna burger received mixed reviews). 

 

(The Southern burger)

 

(The tuna burger and okra)

After not-quite-dinner, we continued with the tour of Atlanta, driving by the Georgia Aquarium, the Coke Experience, and the CNN Center before coming in to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site:

 

 

Unfortunately, the visitor center and exhibit were already closed by the time we got there, so we walked around seeing the various sights at the site, including the burial place of both Dr. King and his wife, a statue of Gandhi, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King was preacher:

 

Finally, we headed back to Emory and, after a short break, to dinner proper, at a Turkish restaurant named Cafe Istanbul. Quick review: the service was so slow as to be almost nonexistent, but the food was pretty good, and we got to see a dance-off between a belly dancer and one of the customers - at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Hotlanta indeed.

Tomorrow: Atlanta, GA to Nashville, TN (via Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL)

Day 16: Postponed

No time to write up a post tonight - just spent all evening plotting out where to go for the next two weeks, and gotta be up early tomorrow for breakfast. Ciao.

Day 15: Washington, DC to Charlotte, NC

Outline: Washington, DC to Charlotte, NC (via Blue Ridge Mountains)

Today promised to be a very long day, and so far, it's delivered. The first thing to do was to carry all my stuff over to the Metro (6 blocks away) and return to DCA to get my car. This is where the decision to bring along the rolling suitcase with a broken handle started looking like a bad idea. After getting the car, I drove up to Rockville (a DC suburb) to get brunch with my uncle and aunt and another set of second cousins:

From here, the plan was to head out west, drive down Skyline Dr in Shenandoah National Park to get a nice view of the mountains and such, and from there go straight down I-81 and I-77 to Charlotte. This changed when 2 things happened:

1. Massive traffic on 66-W leaving the DC area
2. Rain

Also, rain. And more rain. And occasionally fog. It became abundantly clear before I hit the park that there wasn't any reason to enter the park - visibility would be zero anyway - and the weather was slowing down the drive enough even on the interstates that time and safety would have been problematic on the smaller roads. Interstate 81 actually also heads down the Blue Ridge Mountains; it's less scenic than Shenandoah or the Blue Ridge Parkway (a parallel road that I wanted to take but vetoed for the same reasons as Skyline), but I can believe that it would be very pretty. It was pretty hard to appreciate any beauty with only about a car length's worth of visibility.

After a quick fuel stop in Salem, VA, it was more of the same down to Charlotte. Once I got out of the mountains things cleared up a bit - and you've never appreciated how sharply focused the world can be until you've spent 6 hours concentrating intently in the fog. Got a BBQ chicken plate and some chicken tenders at Shane's Rib Shack for dinner. They were good, but I was slightly disappointed - I was expecting a more saucy, E&J-style barbecue, whereas this was almost devoid of sauce. Maybe that's just the local style.

Tomorrow: Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Day 14: Taxation Without Representation - Washington, DC, Part II

Outline: I rode the Metro, you're not getting a Google Map.

The first order of the day Friday was to move my car. We had left it in a zoned parking area, which meant it was good until 9 and then had to go. Since we didn't know how to get guest permits, and the nearest unzoned parking was far away, I moved the car to the airport (secure+Metro-accessible for the win), and then took the train back in to the National Mall. I spent the entire day exploring just the Air and Space and Natural History Smithsonians.

I remember going to Air and Space as a kid ten or fifteen years ago and having my mind blown. It's still just as awesome now:

(The X-29 dynamically-unstable experimental aircraft)

(The Apollo-Soyuz test docking mission)

I eventually had to force myself to move on from looking at sweet airplanes, because I knew that Natural History would have some interesting exhibits as well. The one making headlines these days is their new presentation of the Hope Diamond:

I was sort of unimpressed. Yes, it's a very big diamond - but that alone doesn't necessarily jump out as amazing to me (though the scope of the entire hall of gems was impressive). On the other hand, this is undeniably awesome:

T. rexes never get old.

After Natural History, I went out to catch up with an old high school friend, Vikrum. Apparently people with real jobs have to dress nicely and stuff.

During the course of a discussion about Taco Bell, Kettleman City, and In-N-Out Burger, Vikrum insinuated that there is a burger joint in DC that does the same sort of "fresher" burger that In-N-Out does but does it better (clear heresy). In an amazing bit of serendipity, Saqib proposed heading to this place - the Five Guys Burger joint - to get dinner. Two burgers and a small order of Cajun fries were procured:

(Note the full cup of fries to the left. Note, then that the "small" order includes roughly as many fries in the bag as in the cup.)

I hate to say it...but Five Guys may actually be better. The burger isn't quite the same, as they let you put all sorts of toppings on there, and those push it over the edge. The Cajun fries were interesting but overall I'd prefer the In-N-Out animal fries.

After dinner we cabbed across town to catch a performance by Crimes of Paris, the band for which one of Saqib's friends plays drums. It was a good show in a very small venue:

But the following band, the Bloodsugars,  did an even better job of taking over the crowd, especially after the lead singer fell off the stage and faceplanted into the floor.

After the show, we went minigolfing down the street for an hour or so and retired for the night.

Tomorrow: Washington, DC to Charlotte, NC

Day 13: Philadelphia, PA to Washington, DC

Outline: Philadelphia, PA to Washington, DC (and suburbs)

I started Thursday morning off with some sightseeing of all the things that were closed by the time I showed up on Wednesday evening. Here, your obligatory shot of the Liberty Bell:

After checking out the Bell, there wasn't enough time to tour Independence Hall (tours are guided and only at particular times), so instead I went by the Federal Reserve Bank, which had a small exhibition on money and the Fed. No cameras allowed, but they did give me a sweet free bag of shredded money. On my way out I saw the following protest, which brightened my day with memories of Berkeley. Except that these protesters were lame and vanished after about ten minutes:

On my way back to the hotel, I realized that at some point I'd lost the physical key to my car (the key comes in two parts - a wireless transponder and a physical key; either half is sufficient). Even after backtracking, I couldn't find it, so presumably somewhere in Philadelphia is still a key to my car.

Leaving Philly shortly before lunchtime, I beat a quick path to DC to avoid the onset of rush hour in Baltimore or DC, and parked at a Metro station in the suburbs. With the half-day at my disposal, I took the train into the District and spent several hours admiring the works at the National Museum of American History:

(Statue of George Washington)

(Kermit the Frog, you failure. Did you really need a caption?)

After snagging a quick photo against the Washington Monument:

I walked further up to Mall, intending to visit the Vietnam War memorial. I never made it that far (ran out of time), but I did get to the WWII memorial (which surprisingly enough I didn't even know existed). It's really beautiful and rather impressed me. These photos hardly do it justice:

After that I returned to the train to get my car and head over to dinner with my relatives. Dinner was delicious and accompanied by rousing discussion about health care policy and foreign investment, but you don't care about that. You'd rather see cute-kid pics of my second cousin:

Finally, I drove back into the District, where my buddy Saqib had generously offered to put me up for the night.

Tomorrow: More Washington, DC

Day 13: Later

No blog post tonight because it's late, I'm tired, and honestly, not enough cool stuff has happened today (or rather, it'll be similar to tomorrow's cool stuff, so I might as well throw it into one post). Peace out.

Day 12: State College. PA to Philadelphia, PA

Outline: State College, PA to Philadelphia, PA

Today was a day of busted plans that didn't turn out so badly after all.

PLAN: Get out of State College at a reasonable hour.
RESULT: Take hours in the morning answering emails, writing up a blog post (for you, dear readers), and finding a hotel in Philadelphia. Busted!

PLAN: Have a nice, traffic-free, calm drive through central Pennsylvania, get into Philadelphia before rush hour.
RESULT: The drive wasn't bad, but it also definitely wasn't traffic-free. Also, I managed to hit Philly right as rush-hour began. On the upside, I passed a few Amish carts on the highway, which was interesting. Also, the traffic in Philadelphia's rush hour...I've seen (and driven through) worse traffic in Boston on a Saturday - so it wasn't all that bad. Still, busted!

PLAN: Get into Philadelphia and see some historical sites (and sights).
RESULT: Everything closes at 5pm. Who'dve thought? Busted! At least I was able to see a few things from the outside:




(The Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution. The inscription on top of the tomb reads "Beneath this stone rests a soldier of Washington's army who died to give you liberty")

Of course, many a bad day can be rescued by a good meal, and today (though not really bad, per se) was no exception. Dinner started out with a Philly cheesesteak (with peppers and mushrooms) at Campo's (the best-rated cheesesteak place within walking distance of where I was):

Verdict: It was good and tasty. I considered going back for seconds. That's perhaps its only failing - I was expecting something a bit larger. Don't get me wrong, it's not tiny, and I'll grant, I didn't each much earlier in the day, but I expected something...more....from a legendary dish. That said, I might get another one tomorrow.

In a rare occurrence, I actually had enough room for dessert, so I went down the block to the Franklin Fountain for a classic hot fudge sundae:


Verdict: It's ice cream and chocolate. You can't really go wrong. It was delicious, especially given the heat and humidity.

Tomorrow: Philadelphia, PA to Washington, DC

Day 11: Ithaca, NY to State College, PA

Outline: Ithaca, NY to State College, PA

Woke up this morning to find 41 mails in my inbox. I hate the start of the school year.

Spent most of the morning...well, OK, I spent the morning sleeping, because it was raining. By the early afternoon, the rain had stopped, and it was time to see the sights in Ithaca that I didn't get to see the last time around because it was raining too hard. There are several waterfalls around Ithaca that had previously been suggested to me as good things to check out. June generously offered to show me two of them - Buttermilk Falls and Taughannock Falls. I swear I had pictures of Buttermilk, but they've vanished from my camera, so moving right along...

When you park at Taughannock Falls, this is the view you first get:



Pretty. Turns out, though, that's not the actual falls. About 20 or 30 minutes down a trail gets you a view of the real thing, which is quite a bit more impressive:



(June clearly wasn't taking the view too seriously.)

After the falls, it was time to head out to State College, about a 3 hour drive to the south. Protip - US 15 south through the middle of Pennsylvania is a really great drive - it cuts through the mountains, so there's great scenery; it's a 4-lane divided highway, so you can actually watch some of the scenery and not spend all your time staring down oncoming traffic; and there isn't that much traffic, either.

On arriving in State College, I checked into a hotel and promptly headed out to get dinner and a tour of Penn State with my cousin Adeeb. Interesting facts: football is such a big deal at Penn State that students form a tent city named "Paternoville" outside the student section entrance gates so they can camp out from Monday to Saturday to get the seats closest to the field. There's also a famous photo-op spot with a statue of a Nittany lion (it's actually a real animal, a type of mountain lion):



I really need to remember to take a real camera out with me, and not just my phone.

Tomorrow(well, today, given that I'm posting in the morning): State College, PA to Philadelphia, PA

Day 10 update: now with pictures!

As promised two days ago, pictures for the first leg of the drive.

Baby Mohsen is getting his rap career off on the right foot, practicing his poses already:



Hana and Humza thought that it might be a much better idea if they were to drive me back home. Of course, since they can't actually reach the pedals, it would have to be a team effort:



It's important to start a long trip the right way. This one's titled "So Fresh, So Clean":

(Note the camera mount on the passenger side.)

Finally as promised, pics from the rat lab. dho shows off his setup for assembling cannulas with which to sample rat brain signals:


This one's a bit overexposed so that you can appreciate just how tiny the wires are that are inside these probes - rather thinner than a hair. You can just see the flash glinting off them if you view the large version: