Faith, Folklore, and Friends

Last Monday, two weeks since the Gatlinburg wildfires, Hub and I drove through there looking at the damage. The worst damage was in the mountains above the bypass from Gatlinburg to Pigeon Forge. My friend who works at  Apple Annie's  was there when it all happened.  She had been warned that evacuation was possible, so she went to the store across from the police department to fill her gas tank.  Fire was all around them, and people congregated at the store because no shelters had been opened then.  Hurricane force winds caused power lines to break and people lost electrical power and cell service at the same time.  In addition, emergency sirens were everywhere, adding to the panic.  Thankfully, there were no fatalities in her neighborhood, and the arts and crafts community on Glades Road was not damaged.  For my quilting friends, we stopped at Susan's Quilts and they are all fine. It will be a long, hard winter for the fol...

One day last month while Hub and I were in Pigeon Forge, we found a road we hadn't been down before.  We always do this; you have to get off the main drag to see what's real about a place. That day, we found this old covered bridge. Since then, I have learned that there are eleven restored covered bridges in Alabama .  I've seen the one that was moved to the the University of West Alabama campus a few years ago. Road trip?  Sounds like a good summer project to see all these bridges. Who wants to go?

 It was a cold, cold day when we started over the mountains week before last, but the sun was bright, a sharp contrast to the three previous days of dark and rain.  Our plan was to drive to Cataloochee, a mountain community that is now an elk reserve.  Just past the Oconaluftee  Visitor  Center, we saw sixteen female elk in a meadow right beside the road. They didn't seem to fear us, but just kept calmly grazing, although there were several of us who had stopped to admire them.  Later, we drove through Cherokee and Maggie Valley on winding roads to get to Cataloochee.  It took us about an hour from Cherokee, and some of the roads were one lane with two-way traffic, which means if you meet someone, one of you has to back up until there is room to pass. Fortunately, it was a cold day in December and there was very little traffic.  I wondered if it would be worth it when we got there. ...