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Jul. 19th, 2010 09:20 amI am hanging out in the living room of a "mountain chalet" on the side of a mountain above Gatlinburg, the only one awake in the house, listening to the rain. Rosa was awake an hour or two ago, but I made her stay in bed with me and she fell back asleep while I cuddled her. When I didn't fall back asleep too, I got up.
We arrived here about 10:30 local time last night, having left Knoxville before 8:30. Traffic through Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg itself is horrific, and the finding of this house was a nightmare in the dark.
Picture this. You've just driven through the bright lights, bustling shops and neon signs of three small towns which have really no excuse for being such frantic beehives of consumer activity but they are, all the same, and you turn off the main drag onto a mountain road into near-complete darkness and silence. Now try to find an address with directions that require you to follow three or four turns but the road signs are invisible or non-existent, there are maybe three streetlights in four square miles, and the house numbers follow no detectable sequence. I went up the mountain and back down again twice, in and out of patches of cell signal, trying to follow my uncle's directions. Finally, the third time back up, I finally spotted the landmark (the clubhouse of the subdivision) and even then I couldn't see him standing in the middle of the road waiting for me until my headlights reflected off his shoes when he moved.
But we are here. Aunt Pat said my mom wanted to go into the national park today (I should call her...) but it's been raining since six or so and I don't know if we're going to do that or not.
(Also, I can haz internetz. Chalet has wifi.)
We arrived here about 10:30 local time last night, having left Knoxville before 8:30. Traffic through Sevierville, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg itself is horrific, and the finding of this house was a nightmare in the dark.
Picture this. You've just driven through the bright lights, bustling shops and neon signs of three small towns which have really no excuse for being such frantic beehives of consumer activity but they are, all the same, and you turn off the main drag onto a mountain road into near-complete darkness and silence. Now try to find an address with directions that require you to follow three or four turns but the road signs are invisible or non-existent, there are maybe three streetlights in four square miles, and the house numbers follow no detectable sequence. I went up the mountain and back down again twice, in and out of patches of cell signal, trying to follow my uncle's directions. Finally, the third time back up, I finally spotted the landmark (the clubhouse of the subdivision) and even then I couldn't see him standing in the middle of the road waiting for me until my headlights reflected off his shoes when he moved.
But we are here. Aunt Pat said my mom wanted to go into the national park today (I should call her...) but it's been raining since six or so and I don't know if we're going to do that or not.
(Also, I can haz internetz. Chalet has wifi.)
