A Long and Fun Day Trip

 

Blairsville, Ga  (high 78 low 55)

We had a nice cold front move in last week-end, which gave us low temps down to 43 degrees, with upper 60’s for the highs for a few days. It felt wonderful.  Cool days, sunny blue skies and no humidity.  It’s warmed up now but still very, very nice and much better than Tampa.

Al has been doing better, but is still having some sporadic itching and hives.  We can’t figure out the problem, but at least it is more bearable .

My laptop suddenly slowed down and was nearly unusable, but after I messed with it a few days, I decided to take it to a professional for some tweaking. It’s back to normal now, so maybe I can get caught up on blogging and blog reading.

Since I’m so far behind on my blogging, I’ll just tell you what we did yesterday, and try to get caught up later.

We have always loved Cades Cove, which is a beautiful valley or cove in the Tennessee section of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park.   It was first settled by the Cherokee Indians but in 1818 the first European settlers arrived there.  Life was hard back then, judging by the many young people buried in the cemeteries.

We made a day trip to Cades Cove on Wednesday with our main goal to see a bear.  With the exception of last year, we’ve always seen a lot of wildlife when we visited.

Cades Cove loop is an 11 mile one way scenic road around the cove.  There are beautiful meadows, streams, old homesteads, churches and cemeteries.  The 11 mile loop can be driven walked, or biked.

It’s a 143 mile drive from Blairsville, through mountains. It takes quite a while to get there, so our time is pretty limited.  Our goal was to see wildlife so we didn’t have the time to spend looking through the old homesteads, churches or cemeteries.

We left home when it was just as the sun was rising. We were treated to a beautiful red sky over the RV park.

 

We stopped at a few scenic overlooks on the way.

 

The most direct route to Cades Cove from here it straight up hwy 129 and over “The Tail of the Dragon”, which is a famous motorcycle trail.  It’s only an 11 mile road, but it has 318 curves in those 11 miles and it’s slow going and not really any fun because you can’t take your eyes off the road for one second.

It’s 114 miles taking the Dragon and 143 driving regular mountain roads.  Neither way is a good option for a one day trip.  We opted for the longer route avoiding the Dragon. We went hwy 64, to 294, to 68, 411, 72, to 129 then to the Foothills Parkway.

As we got close to the Dragon, we started seeing more and more motorcycles, and an accident.

We got to an intersection near the Dragon.  If we took the wrong turn, we would have been on the Dragon with no way to turn around.  We stopped to ask directions and verified we were going the right direction.

We finally got to Cades Cove, and as always were amazed at the beauty.  The pictures really don’t capture how magnificent it really is.

The blooming goldenrod gave some nice color.

Two large tom turkeys were strutting their stuff and were our first wildlife sighting of the day.

 

Soon, we heard that someone spotted a bear up in a tree so we hurried over to see what we could see.  When there is a wild life sighting, everybody stops and jumps out of their cars to try to get pictures.

We got to the “traffic jam” so we knew we were in the right spot. The bear was hiding in the tree and so far up it was very hard to spot him.  Someone had to point it out to you before you could find the very large bear.   Al guessed he was 75-100 feet up in tree  on some small branches.  I didn’t know they went so high up.

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He was eating something, I believed to be acorns, but it may have been some tender new leaves.  I did see acorns when I zoomed in.

Unfortunately, there were some nice thick leafy tree branches in front of his face, so it was difficult to get a good picture.  At least we saw a bear and got some pictures! We were happy.  We stayed a long time, hoping he would move to a better location, but he never did.

This was about the best shot I could get.

 

Most pictures looked like this.   Darn bear.  :)

You can tell from this picture that he was a big bear.

He finally moved a little but still kept covered enough so that I couldn’t get his picture. 

We finally gave up and went back to our loop road. These are technically called the Smokey Mountains, but they sure look like the  Blue Ridge mountains to  me.  :)

It wasn’t long until Al spotted something.

Our first coyote!

 

It’s just an incredibly beautiful day with highs maybe 70 degrees.  NO internet, so we never knew for sure.

 

Our next wild life sighting was a small copperhead snake. We wondered if he may have been hit by a car, but maybe he was just warming up on the roadway.   I tried to scare him out of the road, but didn’t want to get out of the car to move him.  He was over to the side of the road, so hopefully he survived the day.

We got out and walked down into a lovely meadow.

The mowers left patches of goldenrod. 

 

 

 

 

A peak of fall  color.

 

 

 

We took a little time to visit a couple of old homesteads.  Doesn’t this guy remind you of Popeye?

 

How about that view?

 

 

Several times we heard that a bear had recently been spotted, but the time we got there they had moved on.  One had three cubs with her.  Hated to miss that.

Finally, we were rewarded for our patience and spotted a mama bear and one cub.  They were a pretty good distance away, but with the magic of my “stalker” zoom lens, I was able to get a few decent shots.  Unfortunately, the sun was in the wrong place.   But at least we got something.

Mama bear looks a little thin. I hope she will make it through the winter. 

 

We had been on or way out when we spotted these bears, so we ended up getting a late start for home.

After the bears, we saw this beauty.  He was very used to people.

He stopped and posed for pictures.

It was a great day, but then the fun began as we began a looong drive home over mountain roads that would surely end in the dark!  (We never drive in the dark)

We did have to stop for to see “Look Rock” on the way home.

It was a very long day and much too long for a day trip, but we had success.  We saw some bear and many other things as well.

Poison Ivy and Hives; The Battle Continues

Blairsville, GA (high 75, low 62)

I am sorry for another post about Al’s poison ivy/rash, but I want to document this for the next time and my memory isn’t that great. Unless you’ve had poison ivy problems of your own, there will be nothing interesting here to read.  Sorry.

 

Al got poison Ivy soon after we arrived here the end of July.  It came in the form of a lost beagle who got into our golf cart and either rubbed against Al or the golf cart.

We now know that he must stay away from dogs because you never know where they have been, or what other dog they have rubbed against.  Al is so highly sensitive to poison ivy that it takes very little of it and dogs seem to be the most common way he gets it. He is very careful in the woods.

After over a month dealing with this my current theory is that poison ivy starts the process and it causes Al to become hyper-sensitive then he becomes allergic to things that never bothered him before. 

The blisters from the poison ivy itched and drove him crazy, but that was the least of his problems.  The poison ivy started to clear up but he had started getting hives all over his upper body. They didn’t look like the rash from the PI.  They not only itched but made him feel really, really bad. He laid around the house and slept a lot for several weeks.  He went on Prednisone initially for the poison ivy and felt better when he was taking it, but started going down hill afterwards.

We went to a doctors office and saw a Nurse Practitioner. She prescribed another round of Prednisone, gave him a steroid shot, and some pills for the itching.  The pills knocked him out and allowed him to sleep at night but made him very sleeping during the day too, even though he only took one at night.  The hives would come and go, so we knew they were not from the poison ivy.   The NP, said the hives were from an allergy, and the best thing to do was to to keep a food diary with everything he put into his mouth, including toothpaste. We had been thinking it was more from something external, but she felt it was something ingested.  That led us down a whole different path.

We started eliminating certain things from his diet, including  fish oil, glucosamine, vitamins, chocolate, fried chicken, beer, soap, deodorant, and even his blood pressure medicine.  We eliminated these things one at a time and nothing made a difference.  He was still covered in big red hives that itched and he still felt really bad. 

I had been using a detergent for sensitive skin and allergies. We changed brands.  I did double and triple rinses on his clothes. I washed them with no detergent, but nothing helped.  Thank goodness we have a full size washer and dryer in our cabin.  It would have been impossible in the Rv washer/dryer, and expensive at the Laundromat.

A comment on my blog  suggested I look at the relation to poison ivy and cashews.   I did a Google search and found this web page.

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1374/

Here is a portion of the article I found.

But most of us have enjoyed a cashew or two or two hundred and twenty two. Cashews are a favorite for many people, including my mother. Most Americans are accustomed to the roasted, toasted and salted cashews sold in the grocery stores. Health food stores sell cashews marketed as "raw". These are a light, off-white color and taste almost sweet. The majority of these "raw" cashews are not truly "raw". These cashews are processed to remove the chemical resin urushiol, which is also the chemical that is found in poison ivy and mangos. The cashew is also related to poison sumac and to pistachios.

 

The nurse practitioner had steered in the direction of ingested items.   I had been thinking it was more of something external. When we ran out of ideas on food items, we started looking at other things again.

We tried skipping our evening golf cart ride to see if something in the air or was nearby on those narrow mountain roads that might be causing the problem.  The hives didn’t go away.  Maybe it’s the pollen in the air?  He is not sneezing or showing the usual symptoms of a pollen allergy, so we didn’t think that was it.   Maybe he is allergic to the cats? Still, no sneezing or any of the usual symptoms.  We joked that it would be a shame if we had to find him a new home.   LOL

During this process, we made sure all of his clothing was 100% cotton.   He still got hives and felt bad.   I continued washing his clothes constantly.  We kept running out of ideas, but then something else would come to mind, and we’d that eliminating that item.

Finally, we took a look at our blankets, which are the nice fuzzy fleece and as it turned out are made of 100% polyester. I don’t know why we didn’t think of the blankets earlier, but they never bothered him before.  We bought a cotton blanket, used cotton sheets and FINALLY,  he started to get better.

The  hives on his back cleared and he started feeling better, but then he started getting ugly bumps on his elbows. We decided to cover the recliner and sofa with cotton sheets so that his elbows didn’t touch anything but cotton. His elbows cleared up. He felt good again!  YAY!   This entire process took over a month!

Al is extremely sensitive to poison ivy.  I am exposed to it as much as he is and (knock on wood) I’ve never gotten it.   The nurse practitioner warned him to be extremely careful not to be around it if anyone was burning it.  She said that landed her in the hospital and warned Al to get to the hospital immediately should he be around any burning poison ivy. 

We have a burn pile here at the RV park and we’re concerned someone may accidently pull a “weed” and put it into the burn pile.   It might kill Al, so we’re going to stay away on burn days.  :)

 

During the past week or so since he’s been feeling better, we’ve done some hiking.  He was very careful not to touch any plants or anything else in the woods, but he started getting bumps on his back and not feeling well.  We thought it may have been because he used a different pillow that wasn’t wrapped with several cotton pillow cases, but he is also wondering if it was because there was obviously poison ivy in the woods and he just got near enough to be bothered by it.  The jury is still out on whether the new problem is caused by the new pillow or being in the woods.  We had been hiking in the woods during the time he felt better, so we’re hoping that wasn’t the problem. 

 

Lessons learned:

1. stay away from dogs!  Stay away from anything dogs touch. Don’t let dogs get into the golf cart. 

2. Once he gets PI, he will probably develop other allergies.  Make sure all his clothing and bedding is covered in cotton fabrics.  Cover the recliner with a cotton blanket/sheet.