The Great Smoky Mountains and Asheville, North Carolina

I must begin this posting with a public apology to all of you National Parks lovers out there.  I confess I slept through most of Ken Burns' National Parks series (hey, I was pulling a lot of night shifts at the time) and I don't contribute to the Sierra Club or WWF (my maternal grandparents would disown me if they were still alive).  When we'd planned this trip we had orginally thought we would blast through the Great Smoky Mountains with a sort of kill-two-birds-with-one-stone approach: we had to head south and going through the park would get us to our ultimate destination as well as provide us with a "major attraction" we could check off our to-do list.  Shameful.  Yes.  (Confession is good for the soul).  

I was happy at the prospect of visiting Gatlinburg; I had a very definite mental image of what I thought I was going to see there; something along the lines of an Eagles' song come to life. Romantic and unrealistic, yeah, probably. But since when is Gatlinburg the Disneyland of Appalachia?  I read the entire 2,000+ words of Shelby Foot's The Civil War and I'm quite certain the Union and Confederate troops did not ride plastic dinosaur shaped slides as they were fighting and dying over the abolition of slavery.  Am I the only one in the world who was not aware that you pass through a sort of Disneyland Drag on your way to the Great Smoky Mountains?  I must contact Ken Burns as soon as possible regarding his oversight...

Onto the real point: after we passed the pre-park weirdness, the beauty of the mountains began to sink in and we realized we needed to change our plans and linger for what was left of the day and absorb the experience.  Once again we were reminded that we are traveling during the end of winter and seeing nothing at its peak.  However, even though we visited during the "off season", the magnificence of the sights left us silent and contemplative.  It is a testimony to the artistry of the Grand Designer of this very cool globe we inhabit that even at this austere time of year we can be left speechless in the presence of these vistas.

After we left the park we drove down into Asheville where we felt we had been miraculously transported back to Santa Cruz.  The sensation began with dinner at the Mellow Mushroom (which we did not realize is a chain but Debbie had recommended it and we're glad she did).  Its eclectic decor immediately struck us as familiar but what really made us feel at home was when we read the menu and discovered we could order "gluten free" and "vegan" if we so chose.  The pizza itself was delicious (something called The Luau which featured motzarella, feta, basil and pineapple-yum) but my thumbs up came when I checked out the television over the bar and caught, for the first time in two weeks, my first glimpse of a soccer game (too bad it was English Premier League and not La Liga but we can't have it all).

For breakfast it was another Santa Cruz transport: a bakery that offers organic, locally sourced food and looked and tasted like we were on Pacific Avenue. Only the view of the mountains outside reoriented us to the fact that we were still in North Carolina.