Cradle of Forestry Ride

Thursday, July 31st friend Paul and I pulled out of our meet-up place at 7:30 a.m.  Temperature, 58 degrees F. on the last day of July.  Unbelievable.  This ride will take us back over some of the same areas that I rode on my last ride over the mountains.  We ran the back roads up to Marshall, TN where we stopped at Ingle's Food Store, a major grocery chain in these parts, to have a cup of coffee and apple fritter.  In fact, we had two fritters.

Cool heavy skies with the sun trying to peek out.  On the way we connected with I-40 for a ways and then off to a good highway through the countryside.     

There was some high fog
this morning but nothing to worry about or cause
visibility issues.





The cool morning air made the exhaust sound a little deeper, like Sweet Thang was getting just a little hoarse, but have no worries, she was ready to stretch her legs today.  We cruised along some more back roads and then caught the Blue Ridge Parkway at a point well above Asheville, NC.  The sites and scenes were delightful.

    

These are some of the road scenes along the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Lots of Kudzu in this part of the world but not as bad as GA.  Notice the water in the river is brown due to the heavy rainstorm that came through Sunday night and earl Monday morning.



We were riding along the Blue Ridge enjoying ourselves, chatting back and forth on our CB radios just taking it all in.  As we started climbing in altitude we started noticing the cloud layer was laying on top of the mountains.   And it had started to drizzle rain.  Now that's a combination you really don't like when riding a motorcycle.  The fog conditions were below FAA minimums.  That means you can barely see the ground and we didn't have any kind of homing signals to keep us on the highway.  I could barely see Paul's taillights and we were down to 25 to 30 mph, all the time praying that the two cars behind me were watching for us and not texting or trying to find their phone.

Rain clouds over the
mountains.  These pics are
from the Blue Ridge
Parkway.





 This is one of the longest
tunnels on the Parkway.
Only to find the clouds on
the other end of the tunnel
were the same rain clouds, no sunshine here.



We arrived at Cradle of Forestry, a U.S. National Forestry Service tourist spot on the original grounds that were owned by the Biltmore family of Asheville, NC.  This was the first school of forestry, a school to train people about trees, care, cutting, etc., in the USA.  The instructor was from Germany.  There were houses, a commisary, blacksmith shop, train, and lodging for the students.  It cost approx. $960 a year to attend.  The reason for the school was that people were cutting trees from the land that they did not own.  So Mr. Biltmore hired some people to watch over the land.

 

 

The house on the left is a dorm, double bunks to each room, two rooms.  The pics of the furnishings and kitchen are from the instructors home.  Girls, how would you like to dump your microwave and start back using one of these as your primary cooking tool.  Brings back memories of my Grandmother's kitchen.  The two birds are Hawks wearing their hoods and tethered to a stake.  Love those birds.

This is a one man carriage for a steam driven sawmill on the property.  They could cut the trees, haul them to the mill, saw them up and then haul the lumber easier than hauling the trees over a distance to a larger mill.    
    



This is the train used for
hauling logs and lumber.
It is small in size but has
a mighty strength for a
narrow gauge railroad.
A real workhorse.  It even had it's own steam driven crane to load the logs.

You can see the fog low to the road as we leave the Blue Ridge Parkway for our route back to the house.  By this time it was easy riding but still an occasional drizzle or two.









Lush farms providing plenty of corn, soybeans and tomatoes.  And some more rain yet to come.

  
One of our last larger towns to ride through was Canton, NC where a large papermill is located.  If you couldn't see it you could certainly smell it.  It is right in the edge of the town.




Shortly after leaving Canton we hit the interstate back to Newport, TN and then US 411 to Sevierville where Paul and I split, he to meet his wife for dinner and I to travel on to Seymour and the house.  A different day of riding.  While at the Cradle of Forestry we walked 2.5 miles of paths, a bit unusual for two old birds.  We had a free hotdog lunch, rode in fog, rain and sun and tallied 265 miles for the day.  Another good day of riding regardless of the weather interference.

So enjoy your life, be a part in the life of others and have fun, safely.