This August I drove across the South East for a couple of weeks, stopping in Nashville to see the solar eclipse.
The emphasis during the drive up was on solitude, introspection, and adventure. I camped alone in Lake Catherine State Park (Arkansas), Mammoth Cave National Park (Kentucky), and Cosby Campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Tennessee).
The latter part of the trip was all about food and fun with friends and family. I drove through North Carolina stopping in Asheville, Southern Pines, Sanford, Cary, and Greensboro to visit and eat.
Then it was on to Nashville where I met up with more family and my boyfriend, Sean, who accompanied me to Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas) and then home to Austin…just in time to prepare for Hurricane Harvey.
I feel so grateful to be back home, safe and dry.
I had the tent camping area pretty much to myself at Lake Catherine. I enjoyed the quietness of an empty campground and was only a short walk from the busy, developed campground that had hot showers.Fall Creek Falls was just a trickle but it was still worth the hike.Absolutely wonderful drizzly sunset complete with rainbow.I stayed out past sunset to watch the Perseids meteor shower, drink wine, and dig my toes into the warm sand…until a raccoon scared me off.The only thing I didn’t like about the park was the view of the weird industrial building across the water.Hiking around Mammoth Cave National Park. It was wonderful to break up the long drive with hiking days, especially among these beautiful trees!View from the Green River Bluffs Trail. The trails were mostly empty and the air was filled with the sound of cicadas and music from a fellow hiker’s flute.I took the Violet City Lantern Tour which uses gas lanterns to light the cave. Our guides used their flashlights to point out ancient artifacts and illuminate the walls or ceiling to give an idea of just how big some of the rooms in the cave are. It is massive! Mammoth Cave is the longest cave in the world, with 365 surveyed miles and an estimated 600 miles unexplored.Cosby Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was so lush, vibrant green, and foggy. Water permeated everything. And everything was alive. It reminded me that this area is part of the Appalachian temperate rainforest, one of the most diverse in the world.The trails here were harder to follow, so I didn’t hike the usual 3-6 miles. I stayed near camp and somehow managed to find my way through this water crossing. Do you see the trail markers? It took me a minute or two to figure it out.Storm clouds loom over Revolution Mills in Greensboro, North Carolina. This was one of the many storms that I barely missed or was inside for during my trip.It was eclipse mania in Nashville. There were “eclipse tour” shirts for sale and vacationers everywhere. We carved out a spot near a small park to wait and watch, entertaining ourselves in the summer heat with music and photography. We were unlucky to have a cloud cover the totality, but I’m happy to have seen the city lights turn on and off and to have heard the confused crickets begin to chirp.One of many of the historic bath houses in Hot Springs. This one has been turned into a visitors center and museum.Some of the weird equipment inside the bathhouse-turned-museum.Sean and I stayed one rainy night at this creepy-old hotel. We joked about hearing a ghost next door and had to push a squeaking luggage cart through the service elevator. The place was empty and had carpeting that made me think of scenes from The Shining.We enjoyed the hotel’s beautifully decorated bar and the pool deck which is built into the hillside, seven stories up. We never did take a traditional bath, get a massage, or find the best spout for collecting mineral water. Next time!
A huge thanks to everyone who met me and fed me and housed me along the way – thank you for sharing this journey with me!
