Great Smoky Mountains

It had been quite a long time between national parks, unless you count Los Haitises in The Dominican Republic but we ended our drought with the most visited national park in the country! Last year they saw a record 12.5 million visitors. We're still not entirely sure how that number is calculated but it seems to have to do with cars entering the park. The park does not seem to be built for that many visitors. The parking lots are not large enough, and they don't have a bus system. We were glad we were visiting in the off season.

We came in on the North Carolina side so we started with the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. The weather had been questionable and they were thinking of closing the main road through the park if it made a turn for the worse so we decided to not spend too long on the southwestern side and instead headed straight through to Tennessee.

The drive through the park was gorgeous. The road was completely clear but there was snow building up on the sides and it was gorgeous. The views from the road seemed like they would have been spectacular if we had been able to see them, but unfortunately the visibility was low and we couldn't see much.

On the Tennessee side we went to the Sugarlands Visitor Center. From there there was a short hike out to Gatlinburg that Aiden was allowed on, so we started with that. Even though the path largely followed the road it was still lovely.

 

While at the visitor centers we asked rangers for hiking recommendations for the next couple of days. On Saturday we chose to do the Grotto Falls hike. In the summer this hike is very crowded, but very few people do it in the winter. This is partially because the road that leads to the trial head is closed in the winter, adding an extra five miles to an otherwise two mile hike. It turned out to the perfect hike for us for the day, and was a great recommendation. Although it did start snowing while we were hanging out at the falls.

 

Apparently there is also a lodge further up the trail that uses pack llamas. We were incredibly curious but unfortunately it wasn't llama string season, and was a little too far to hike up the lodge.

On Sunday we were planning to go to the Alum Cave Bluffs. The weather got better and the view is supposed to be stunning from up there. Unfortunately the road through the park was temporarily closed again so we had to pick a backup plan. A ranger told us that the Laurel Falls hike was the most popular hike in the park and that it is absolutely mayhem in the summer. So we decided to take advantage of the relatively empty park and check it out.

 

In the parking lot for the trailhead we ran into a super friendly group of five older adults who live in the area. They said the short walk to Laurel Falls is completely paved and a bit of a disappointment but if you go past the falls you can go another 3 miles up to Cove Mountain. We were hoping there would be a good view from the mountain, but it was still pretty heavily treed. There was an observation tower but you couldn't climb it. We're glad we took their recommendation and went up, it was a lovely hike.

 

There are a ton of hikes in the park that we didn't get a chance to do. We can also see how the park would be amazing in the spring and summer with wild flowers and new growth or in the fall with leaves changing colors. We hope to come back and do some of their view hikes in a shoulder season. However, it honestly didn't seem spectacular enough to for either of us to want to fight our way through millions of visitors in peak season. We seem to have come at the right time. 

Expense Report: January

January was one of our cheapest month yet. Between being broken down for a week and spending a week in the Dominican Republic, we didn't drive much and we spent most of the money for our Dominican Republic trip (flights and pet sitter) in advance.

Maintenance: We only had the new fuel tank this month.

New Fuel Tank: $112.03
RV running total: $19,749.89

Fuel: As always, if you're interested, go check out our Fuel log. January was an extremely light driving month. As mentioned above, we were stuck for one week, in Atlanta for a while and out of the states for a week, so no surprise there.

Gas: $238.24

Propane: $17.01 - We only had to fill up once because we had two whole weeks where we didn't need it.

Food: $228.15 - We were fed a lot by Tom and Joanna, Rüdiger and Maggie and by Anna, which food expenses are captures in the Week in the DR section. We did do a really good job not eating out the rest of the time as well ($137 of the $229 were groceries).

RV Stickers / Postcards / Birthday and Christmas cards: $4

Week in the DR: $711 - Anna payed for everything while we were there, so we need to reimburse her. This money included sightseeing in the national park tours, whale watching and all our food and bus / taxi expenses.

Phone and Internet: $55.23 - This is mostly late December to early January usage. We spent a large part of December in Austin and the first week of the new year at Tom and Joannes, both had WiFi.

Total January travel expenses: $1365.66

Total cost of the trip so far: ~$31516 - This includes the RV and all of it's repairs, insurance and maintenance
Days Traveling: 173
Cost / person / day : 91.09

Travel Update 17

After coming back from the Dominican Republic, we spent a few more days in Atlanta with Andreas's family. The only other thing on our Atlanta to do list was a brief visit to the CDC museum. It was an interesting history of the CDC and a great exposure to the concept of public health. It was again further confirmation of what we learned in DC, museums are slightly less interesting when you already have a degree or two in their subject area. But we always enjoy seeing how different groups present the information.

We were all poised to leave on Saturday, but our faucet started leaking. We were worried something may have broken during the sub freezing temperatures Atlanta had while we were in the DR. However, when we disassembled it, it seemed like a o-ring somehow got out of place. Putting it back together made it stop leaking. The whole thing took just long enough for us to decide to wait until Sunday to head out.

On Sunday, we stopped at a disc golf and dog park along the way. The off-leash area was tiny, but we got a good walk in with Aiden, who hadn't been getting much exercise. It seemed like a nice park, but inexplicable there were no dogs allowed on any of the trails outside of the disc golf course.

 

In the evening, we found a a place in Hayesville, NC to watch the second leg of the women's basketball Civil War. We knew we were in the right place because they had an Oregon Ducks flag hanging! One of the owners even threw an O while we were trying to sneak a picture of it.

It turned out to be a very emotional game because of the tragic and sudden death of NBA great Kobe Bryant, who had been to several duck games, met with the team and even built a friendship with Oregon's star player, Sabrina. The Ducks were able to play through the heartbreak, pulling away in the fourth quarter.

We spent that night at a lovely campground in lovely, remote forest.

 

The next couple days we spent working hard on getting this blog up to date. We told ourselves that we would not go into Great Smokey Mountains until that was done. So, we spent a few days in Robinsville, NC near Lake Santeetlah, which had some free camping sites along the lake. It was absolutely gorgeous there in the mountain town.

 

On one of the days, we went to the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest on recommendation from a very friendly librarian in Robinsville. We enjoyed the short, 2 mile, figure-8 hike through the forest before returning to our work.

 

After getting all of our overdue blog posts written, we finally went on to our next national park. Right outside the park, on the Tennessee side, are the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both of these towns are incredibly touristy. The latter made us think of a family friendly Las Vegas with tons of arcade like activities, fair style rides, and hotels galore. We took a short video driving through Gatlinburg:



We stayed at the Cracker Barrel in Pigeon Forge and even ate there one night thanks to a gift card we got for Christmas from Hubert and Emily, Andreas's brother and sister-in-law.

This past week has been a lot of fun. It's good to be on the road again without holidays or international trips just around the corner. We do wish it were a little bit warmer though. Looking forward to the southwest.

Travel Update 16

We just spent a wonderful week in the Dominican Republic visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna. It was short for an international trip but we did pack a lot in.

In Atlanta we dropped the kids off with a sitter and then headed to the airport. Since we weren't sure how long that would take we ended up at the airport pretty early and just walked around. While we were wandering a stranger offered us some pizza saying that they had bought too much. Given that we could figure out how he could have a motive to hurt us and we were inside airport security we decided it was probably safe to eat. Free dinner!

We flew in to the capital, Santo Domingo, and arrived fairly late. Luckily we had Anna to come pick us up at the airport, meeting us with fresh empanadas and fruit juice! After resolving an issue with the Uber that had been towed for illegally parking in a place Anna told him not to park, we headed into the capital to a fun hostel, called "Island Life", where we spent the first night.

 

We explored the hostel a little bit in the morning and it was quite cute. There was a central courtyard where breakfast was served that even included a small pool. They also had several hostel dogs. If we had been staying in Santo Domingo it definitely would have been a fun place to spend a couple of nights.

 

 

However, we didn't have very much time in Santo Domingo so we checked out fairly early and went to go walk through the historic district before catching our bus to the north. There is a lot of history in Santo Domingo, because it was the capital of the first Spanish Colony in the New World. As a matter of fact it was founded in 1496 by Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus's brother. There were lots of beautiful old churches and we also visited the first hospital in the New World.

 

Then we hopped on an Uber over to the bus stop where we caught the but to Sabana De La Mar in the northern part of the country. The view out of the bus was gorgeous, but the bus was comfortable enough to catch a few Z's since we hadn't gotten a lot sleep the night before.

When we got up to Sabana De La Mar we got a ride on a motor cycle out to our hotel on the outskirts of town. Then we walked back through town to meet a man name Halle for dinner. Halle was our designated tour guide for our adventures the next day in Los Haitises National Park. He was also with the company that had booked us our whale watching tour, so he was able to help us figure out the plans for the next couple of days. He was really friendly and we had a lot of fun with him, both at dinner over the course of the next day. And Sabana De La Mar was a cute little town that we had fun spending some time in.

Central Park in Sabana De La Mar

Hotel where we stayed while in Sabana De La Mar

Restaurant where we met Halle for dinner. 

  

After those two excited days in the north we had a travel day in which we took the same bus back down to the capital and then another huge bus down to Anna's region of Barahona. The long bus rides stop somewhere in the middle of the route to allow people to go to the bathroom and buy some food. The route down to Barahona stopped at an absolutely massive rest area that seemed like the dominican Buc-ee's, with much less branding.

 

Except the "express" busses, all of the buses will pick you up and drop you off anywhere along their route. So when the bus passed through Bombita we hopped off. We spent the next three day in Bombita getting to see how Anna lives her life.

On Wednesday morning Anna put us back on the early bus back to Santo Domingo. We managed to make it from the bus to a taxi and get to airport all by ourselves even with our limited Spanish. We were going to try to use Uber, which wouldn't have required any Spanish, but we got talked into getting driven by a taxi who wanted to take us for less money.

The DR is not without its share of issues, most of which can still be traced back to colonial days. Although the majority of the population has darker skin, people running for government positions almost always have lighter skin and will intentionally make themselves look whiter. The DR is also better off that its island neighbor Haiti. There were several of checkpoints on the way back from Anna's village to the capital where security officers are looking for "illegal immigrants". We were told that this generally plays itself out as them asking people who "look Haitian" (darker skin) to provide identification, and this was in fact how it played out in front of us. Of course, it didn't affect us personally, but it is something to be aware of when traveling there.

Overall we did have an amazing week in the Dominican Republic! To Kathleen it felt like where Guinea could be with about 20 more years of development, and the comparison drawing was constant. It also made her want to get back in the Global Health direction so that she can live abroad again. Andreas loved his time there too but is less sure about wanting to move there.

Bombita

One of the most exciting parts of our trip to the Dominican Republic was visiting Kathleen's cousin Anna in the village where she has been living and working with an organization called COPA. We arrived in the evening to Anna's friend Diego making a wonderful dinner to share with us and the other people living in Anna's compound.

Anna's cat Chinola helping Diego with cleanup.
Photo Credit: Cousin Anna 

The next day was Monday and Anna needed to go to the school where she worked. Luckily we were able to walk around school with her and see classes in session. COPA runs two schools. One is in Bombita.  Anna lives adjacent to that school. The other is down the road in La Hoya. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to check out both schools. Anna and Kathleen had fun comparing these schools to the school where Kathleen worked in Guinea. Dominican schools have a long way to go before they provide children with the level of education expected in most first world countries, but they stacked up well compared to schools Kathleen experienced in West Africa. 

Photo Credit: Cousin Anna

In the afternoon we went into the regional capital of Barahona to shop. There are groceries stores in Barahona but we ended up going to the local open air market. Again, Kathleen and Anna had fun comparing these markets to those in Labé. Unlike Labé, where electricity and refrigeration are hard to come by, after shopping we had the pleasure of getting yummy ice cream before heading back to Anna's house. 

Tuesday was no school so we a bunch of us went to the beach. Going to the beach is a common fun day off activity for the DR. Which makes sense, there are beautiful beaches everywhere and the water is warm and inviting. We spent some of day relaxing under trees and some of the day swimming in the warm Caribbean. Anna even brought her snorkel so we did a little bit of snorkeling out in the reef.  

After heading back from the beach we went into the sugar cane fields where boys picked us fresh sugar cane to chew on. Apparently this is another fairly common past time. It makes sense given how much cane is growing in the area. It was super tasty and the surroundings were beautiful.

Photo Credit: Cousin Anna

Like all parts of this trip down to the DR, visiting Anna went by quickly but it was great to get to see how Anna is living and get a feel for the real Dominican Republic and how local people live.