June Trip Wrap-up

 We have been home for a week and have recovered from crazy traffic and tree-lined interstates roads. 

good-bye Nashville

fly over Nashville's skyline

almost home

So, as I mentioned in the first post this trip was a bucket list item: traveling to all 50 states. The other benefit from this adventure was now we have geocached in 48 states.

We found the oldest cache in Georgia, placed June 3, 2000.

And we found the oldest cache in North Carolina, Octopus Garden GC70 placed September 30, 2000 and has 1047 favorite points. We did not reach the oldest cache in South Carolina. (Read that blog post.)

5 counties with geocaches in South Carolina

12 caches total

13 counties with geocaches in North Carolina

84 caches found 

and finally, Tennessee

the 4 counties on the far left of the map were from the 2016 trip

20 counties added this trip

60 caches found and signed

These are the cache types found: traditional, virtual, earth cache, multi, unknown, web cam, letter box, whereigo, and adventure lab. Hubby's trip summary 197 geocaches (includes 30 adventure labs) and 47 additional counties; 1872 miles driven. 

It is good to be home, busy after 12 days of being away, but a good busy. It is hot with temps in the 90s and very little rain. 

TN Road Trip

 Wednesday was a day for traveling back to Nashville, by way of adding several counties and some interesting and historical sites to the day's travels.

I have commented to some other geocachers how an area has become so saturated with Adventure Labs that they have used rest areas to place them. Well, today I had to eat my words. This was a rest area that could be reached by both east bound and west bound traffic, but unlike KS where the rest areas might be in the median of the two roads, this one was off to the side of the east bound travel.

a sun dial

headstone in a family cemetery

the family plot

I knew Eisenhower got credit for the Interstate system

but now I know the "Rest of the Story..."

This was such a cool stop! We got credit for 8 geocaches at this location. I had mentioned to Hubby's cousin about the cemetery that was at this location. They had no idea. They do now.

cone flowers

Then we drove to the community of Lebanon for another set of Adventure Lab caches and found some other interesting  locations because of geocaching.

I loved how two corners of the Public Square roundabout really were street corners. Some of the buildings were original. All the buildings were occupied. The square was very busy at noon with all kinds of motor traffic and foot traffic.

Colonel Hatten in the center of the Public Square

a log cabin near the center of town

and Sam Houston's Law office on a side street

another very interesting Adventure Lab

a great way to learn some history of a community

Then we headed to another part of town and found the city offices which were once the Castle Heights Military Academy. The architectural style of the buildings, early 1900, are stunning.

the academy opened in 1902

first graduating class in 1905, with less than 10 graduates

it closed in 1987, as a military academy

all the buildings are in use, including a restaurant

location of a geocache

can you guess where?

and more cone flowers from the Town Square in Lebanon

Smoky Mountains National Park

 Tuesday's road trip took us from Sylva NC to Cookeville TN, through the Smoky Mountains on the border of the two states. It was a perfect day for driving; cooler temperatures, less humidity and blue sky with some big white clouds.

sign outside the Visitors Entrance

mostly ignored by the people entering

We pulled off for 3 stops. The first was for a virtual geocache at Grist Mill, then at this stop (photo above) - the first with a distant view and the third stop at Newfound Gap.

it is green in this part of the country

I bet it is even more beautiful in the fall when the leaves turn color

Newfound Gap

It was at this pull-off parking area we realized there were many visitors in the park. I bet the parking lot had room for 100 vehicles and nearly everyone of them was occupied. We took some photos and answered the questions for the earth cache. When we left the lot, we realized there was some road construction ahead of us.

we were maybe 20 cars behind the pilot vehicle

we waited nearly 30 minutes

our next pull off was closed because of 

construction vehicle parking

(the road construction - grinding down for a new coating

was less than 0.5 miles)

when we were allowed to move forward

the line of waiting cars in the other lane was 3 miles long

My other wish once I knew the route of our road trip, was to drive through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Falls. I wasn't certain what I expected at either community, I just wanted to see for myself. OMG! The sidewalks through Gatlinburg were wall-to-wall people before noon. Driving the two miles through the town was like driving through Keystone SD in the height of summer tourist season times 50. We could not have stopped to shop even if we had wanted to do so. There are no photos as I was so busy looking at all the people and the touristy shops.

 

Pigeon Forge is about 5 miles further down Highway 441. It also had lots of people, but they were all parked at the HUGE parking lot for Dollywood, off the highway. We mostly saw the hotels and lodging for the visitors. The sidewalks were far less crowded than the neighboring community. We didn't stop here either, other than to grab some fast food and continue on down the road. Caches to get. Places to go. People to meet.

and earlier in the day...

a couple of wildflower photos

Now it is back to Nashville for our flight home on Thursday evening. It has been a good trip, but we are both ready to leave the busy highways and many people for South Dakota.

Mexico? South of the Border?

 Here are some photos from Saturday's geocaching adventure.

sombreros?

senors?

big sombreros?

Pedro 

South of the Border is a spot off Interstate 95 just south of the North Carolina border. The nearest town is Dillion SC. There is a story to South of the Border: In 1949, Mr. Alan Schafer built a simple 18x36 foot beer stand known as South of the Border Beer Depot. As it adjoined the North Carolina counties, which were dry of alcoholic beverages, business boomed. A few years later a 10-seat grill was added and the business re-named South of the Border Drive-in.

In 1954, Mr. Schafer added 20 motel rooms and changed the name to South of the Border.

One may ask, "How did Pedro come about?" Well, Mr. Schafer went to Mexico to establish import connections and met two young men. He helped them get admitted to the US, and they went to work at the motel office as bellboys for several years. People started calling them Pedro and Pancho, and eventually just Pedro.

The 97' Pedro (pictured above) stands next to the Mexico Shop East and the Sombrero Restaurant. (We had lunch there and I did a wee bit of shopping.) Pedro has 4 miles of wiring and weighs 77 tons. He stands 18' deep in solid clay. You could drive a car through his legs. The Sombrero Restaurant is located on the same spot as the original South of the Border Drive-in. 

There are stairs to the top of this 200' Observation Tower . A post card shows an elevator at the half-way mark. We did not get close enough to see if the glass elevator. We could clearly see the stairs.

SOB is also known for its numerous billboards counting down the miles to the exit. Those of us from the midwest ar familiar with that advertising trick used by Wall Drug in South Dakota.

There are NUMEROUS animal statues along the street in SOB. In fact we did two geocache activities related to finding the chickens, alligator, cows, elephant, flamingos, etc.

According to Wikipedia, at one time during its hey-day, 700 people were employed in the gift shops, restaurants, arcades, rides, hotel, campground, etc. It was the largest employer in the county. 

Many of the businesses were not open. My niece's husband said his family went there often when he was a kid. It was a fun place to go for a family vacation.  It definitely it not what it used to be! The brochure boasts indoor/outdoor pools, amusement rides,  5 restaurants, 7 gift shops, a reptile lagoon (the largest indoor reptile exhibit in the US), arcade, a campground, truck stop, small grocery store, mini golf course, and a fireworks stand. SOB was considered the half-way point for travelers from New York to Florida, in the early days of motor travel. It has since fallen on hard times.

This was probably the highlight of geocaching in SOB. We have been on the lookout for large geocache containers on this trip, but coming upon this huge metal locker, was a great surprise.

An Adventure Lab set of caches and also a Wherigo

both related to the statue animals 

the grandkids would have loved it!

there was also another walk in the woods

to find this hanging ammo container about 15' in the tree

a rope attached allowed us to lower and raise the container

The surprise to finding this were the little black ants that crawled out of the container and onto my shirt, onto my hands and arms where they began to bite. I was still finding those little itty-bitty bugs crawling around under my shirt an hour later. No big welts, just itty-bitty bites/stings.

The other reason for sticking around that area of North Carolina was to visit my niece and her family. We ate at a Japanese Hibachi for dinner and had an entertaining chef and LOTS of food on Saturday evening.

heating the rice for 9 people

the meat selections for the 9 of us

shrimp, beef, chicken

mushrooms, broccoli, and onions

he created an onion volcano

which impressed at least one of the 3 little boys

Our geocaching map after our SC geocaching. Twelve geocaches found, about 5 different cache types.