I like napping with him in front of the fireplace, though my back doesn’t agree with the hardwood floor. Then again Duke apparently doesn’t approve of my snoring…

Later, we got out all of my old Legos and the ones that the younger boys have gotten over the past few years and I helped Leander build a Lego set that had a variety of build options. The one we chose was a SUV of sorts. I really enjoy Lego Technic kits, always wishing I had a vast supply of parts to build whatever I dreamed up. My OCD set in and I sent Lee to the kitchen for plastic bins to begin organizing the parts into their categories, at least so far as they fit into categories in my head. When I was his age, I used to keep the different parts segregated based on their “structural” value…basic “thick” blocks were considered little better than Duplos except when building large walls for a building or castle, while Technic pieces, thinner “boards”, and the various special shaped bits were placed into various containers for easy access during a build. Wheels, antennae, “lights”, and other more “garnishy” pieces I referred to as “detail pieces” and had their own containers for putting the finishing touches on any given model.

Fireplace, Legos, and a car to build = 1 content and oblivious-to-surroundings Brendan

VW Beetle Rally Car. Awesome

This car belongs to Matt Huuki, owner of the body shop at which Tiff's Escape is being repaired

I love E30 BMW's. This was almost my favorite car there

Rally Racing is the best!

1st Gen CRX Rally Car

Front Shot

Dashboard

Roll cage is a tight fit

Datsun

One of the competitor’s cars. Datsun 510

-Brendan

Rain on Keweenaw Bay

The black rectangle on the left is the very end of the break-wall on the south end of the canal emptying into Keweenaw Bay. There was a mixed forecast of rain and sun this day (Saturday October 2, 2010) so we saw a few scenes like this as the system moved through the area. We were not intimidated, however, and kept trolling out into the bay for a bit until we realized we were running kind of low on fuel. We ran back up the south portion of the canal til we were almost in Portage Lake and trolled a bit more and I got lucky and caught my first fish in the UP… a walleye!

28" 8.5lb Walleye, caught 10/02/10

As amazing as that catch was, sadly that was the end of fishing that day as the water began to get really choppy and the Bayliner we fish it doesn’t handle big waves very well. We high-tailed it back to the truck and decided to try again next weekend. We went over to Brent and Tina’s that evening and cooked him up with some Salmon Brent caught the previous weekend.

Teeth!

Saturday 10/09 – More trolling

Our high-tech rod-holder for trolling

The same 3 of us went out fishing again, with the weatherman promising beautiful mid-60′s and sun all day. This picture was taken about 8:30am, so it wasn’t that bright out yet. The day before, Brent and I went to Wal-mart (where else do you shop up here?) and I finally bought my own rod and tackle box (and some basic tackle). It was nice to use my own gear… I am very appreciative of the generosity of all my friends up here who have let me use theirs til now, but I feel much better going out and not having to constantly be borrowing fishing gear. (Except for the boat?! ).

We launched at a point closer to where I caught the walleye in hopes we would find more good fishing in that area of the canal/Portage Lake. It ended up being a much more active day with us getting a huge hit on my rod about an hour into our morning, but when i tightened up on the rod to set it and start reeling, the line broke! We were guessing it was a northern pike as the line didn’t have enough tension on it to just snap… we’re thinking the line caught one of the fish’s teeth and it got cut. So sad, it would have been awesome to catch a northern! I even had a 6″ steel leader on the line, so it must have gotten pretty far down the fish’s mouth too. Oh well.

Through the rest of the morning, we slowly, but surely caught fish. I got a small-mouth bass first, then a decent size large-mouth…didn’t weigh it but guessing about 5lbs and 19″ inches. Near the end of the fishing day, Brett caught another large-mouth bass, but we got no more hits after that.

Catches of the day

Once again, Brent and I filleted them when we got back to the house, and they are sitting in the freezer waiting to be cooked up Can’t wait for next spring and eventually getting our own boat

-Brendan

For Aeris

Love,

Tiff

Cades Cove

After church, Tiff and I were trying to decide what to do for the afternoon, and ended up going for a drive. We were originally just going to run Cades Cove in the truck, see the newly paved loop (FINALLY), and come home. As usual, that didn’t work out quite how we expected. First surprise of the day were the horses up near the fence!

Tiff petting a horse

Herd gathered near the road

We kept driving and enjoying the scenery, and I was happy because I could cruise along with the truck’s automatic transmission rather than having to constantly clutch up, over, and down hills with the Kia. Totally changes the experience of driving that loop. Somewhere along the loop, we saw a deer (not horribly uncommon, but still fun)…

Fuzzy deer

Me actually having fun driving Cades Cove (actually I think that's Parson's Branch)

After driving the loop, we took the “shortcut” that lets you go back to the beginning of the loop for people who are masochistic enough to want to drive that road more than once in a single day We did it this time because I wanted to finally drive Parson’s Branch Road which is one of the ways out of Cades Cove and leads to the Dragon. Thus, this was the first time I’d used this crossover, and to my surprise and pleasure, found there was a relatively deep water crossing. (Tiff, why aren’t there pictures of the cool parts? )

Unfortunately, I get to do very little (read:no) off-roading, so I always get giddy as a school-girl over the most mundane of ‘non-paved’ surfaces, especially when I’m in a 4×4. This particular crossing was about 2 feet deep and there were people picnicking nearby, so I didn’t let my irresponsible self get the better of me  and thrash through it. It was still fun to drive through, though, and as expected, the truck was just fine. After quickly(ish) going half-way around the loop again to get to the Parson’s Branch entrance, we stopped to use the restrooms and headed towards the entrance to Parson’s Branch.

Somewhere near the beginning of Parson's Branch

Parson’s Branch is a “primitive road” that is essentially a partially graded path that inhabitants of Cades Cove used to use back in the days before cars. It’s smooth enough that a family sedan might…i repeat… MIGHT get through, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The Escape handled it with ease, but with all the rain we’ve had, some of the rocks were pretty slick and the 4×4 kicked in a couple of times. It is about 10 miles long, and there is zero cell phone coverage out there, so don’t try it in your car and then try to call AAA when you get stuck. You’ll be kinda screwed. There are 18 water crossings on Parson’s Branch as well, but none of them very deep. I think at the most we went through 6 inches of water up there.

Mom and Rich, this one's for you

One of the wider water-crossings

After we got to the end of Parson’s Branch, we exited onto the Dragon, where Tennessee put up some horrifically confusing signage about which way to go to get off (there was a rock slide up there earlier this year that is blocking the Dragon from the TN side (where we needed to go)), so we tried to go north towards to rock slide to see if there was any way around it. Sadly there was not, so that meant we had to drive into North Carolina, and either go to Cherokee, NC, back up through the park to get home, or go over Cherohala Skyway to get home. Either way was about a 3 hour venture, so we decided to go for Cherohala, since that’s a fun road with great views, and took that back. AAAAAAAND that’s the end of this post. I’ll put up some pictures in a couple days that we took from that road.

In the end, we got home about 9:30pm that night, for a grand total of 7.5 hours of driving. And we covered a grand total of 160 miles. Not so good on the average speed there considering the last hour we were cruising at 60-70mph Oh well, it was a fun day.

So Saturday I decided to go for a drive. I ran from the apartment through a back-way into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park into the south end of Gatlinburg. It’s a great way to get to Gatlinburg, actually, as you can avoid all of the inevitably horrid Pigeon Forge and “spur” traffic. From there I took 321 out towards Cosby, then shot north to Newport via some back-roads, including a small section of Foothills Parkway.

Newport, TN is an interesting little town that I have never driven though before. Definitely worth more exploration someday. From there I decided that I wanted to go further east with a vague plan to loop south through North Carolina and hook back up with I-40  for a quick ride home. Well, somewhere along the way, i ran into the “end” of a road and was out of range of Verizon’s 3G so I couldn’t get anymore maps…..soooo I back-tracked and kept heading east.I ended up here…

Civil War?!

in Hot Springs, North Carolina. I was driving through town and all of a sudden about 1/4 mile from where this picture was taken, I heard and felt a boom that could not have been mistaken for anything but some kind of cannon. I obviously was very curious and kept driving into town. I came upon this Civil War Renactment “fair”. I know no details other than that, but I walked around for a minute and saw the cannons and a mock battle between cavalry and a detachment of riflemen. Sorry for the non-zoomed pictures… I took all of these  pics with the Droid.

Marching army

Cannons!!!

People in costume doing "camp" chores

If you’d like to see the route I drove, see the saved Google Map here