Hot Springs, Arkansas

Yesterday and today Trish and I have been in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

We came to Hot Springs for two reasons.  The first is that we faithfully collect National Park visits as we travel.  Hot Springs National Park is our fourth National Park in five days of this trip.

Before the very idea of a National Park existed, Hot Springs was set aside in 1832 as an area to be preserved for public recreation.  The mineral content of the water and the fact that most Americans did not have hot water in their homes made Hot Springs a spa town visited by thousands of people each year.

In 1921 the recreation reservation became our nation’s smallest National Park.  This was in part to preserve “Bathhouse Row,” the line of huge bathhouses that were by that time waning in popularity.

The Buckstaff Bathhouse where Trish and I each had a total bathhouse treatment.

Today two bath houses operate as National Park concessions while the others are used as National Park visitor center or preserved for historic value.

The second reason for our visit to Hot Springs is that the city is important in Trish’s family history.

It was her father’s home town and the home of her grandparents on that side of the family as well.  When her mother went to Hot Springs to nursing school at the old St. Joseph’s Hospital there (now the site of the Arkansas School of Math and Science), that educational adventure also included meeting her future husband.

Trish as her grandparent’s gravesite in Greenwood Cemetery,  Hot  Springs

In Trish’s childhood there were many trips to visit in-laws in Hot Springs.  We found her grandparents home, ate at their favorite restaurant (McClard’s Barbeque), and visited the cemetery where they are buried.  We also visited St. Joseph’s Hospital at its historic original location.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

From about 1890 to around 1920 the mountains of Western North Carolina and East Tennessee were devastated by the logging industry.  Vast woodlands were clear cut leaving the soil loose and unprotected.  Fires consumed the scrap that was left and landslides where all too common.

The idea for a National Park did not come into being because the mountain land was beautiful.  No, the idea came because so much damage has been done it was hoped that such protection might allow the dear land to recover and heal.  Almost all of the vegetation and most of the wildlife in the Park is new growth and recovery over less than the last hundred years.

Efforts to raise money were taking place in the early years of the Great Depression.  After, with great difficulty, the people of North Carolina and Tennessee raised half of the needed money for the Park, fund raising stalled down.  Hopes were down until the Rockefeller Fund donated the other half in memory of Laura Spelman Rockefeller.  The only visible acknowledgement of this gift is on a plaque at Newfound Gap where President Franklin Roosevelt stood to dedicate the Park in 1940.

Perhaps the newest addition to the Park has been the reestablishment of the elk that had been natively present until hunted to extinction more than a hundred years ago.  In 2000-2001 elk were brought into the Park from The Land Between the Lakes in Western Kentucky and also from British Columbia.  The return has settled into such success that the elk in the Park and beyond have now passed determinate number.

A young elk having his breakfast.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is unique in many ways:  there are more species of trees in the Park than in all of Europe from Turkey to Ireland, and, there are more than thirty species of salamanders in the Park making it the salamander capital of the world.

The Park was also established with the charter provision that it always be open to the public free from any admission fee.  Knowing this, we can all take advantage over and over keeping it one of the most visited Parks in our national system.

This is why they are called the Smoky Mountains!

Cataloochee Reunion

Even today getting to remote Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park involves driving a dozen miles on a dirt road across the Cataloochee Divide from the Waynesville, NC side toward the Tennessee state line.  It is difficult to imagine the travel and access issues faced by the earliest settlers when they began to move into the valley in the early 1800’s.

Even the Cherokee people used the valley as a hunting area rather than permanently living there.

In the 1900 census there were 54 farms in the big valley occupied by 112 families with a total of 768 people.  Yes, those families were very large; more working children made survival easier.

Cataloochee’s Palmer’s Chapel Methodist Church with reunion attendees gathering.
Nearly 500 people gathered on this 81st year.

The terrible destruction of the logging era followed by the advent of the Great Depression left these families in great hardship by the time the idea for the National Park became a reality.  By the time the Park was established in 1934, except for a small number of residents with lifetime tenancy, the population of the valley had moved away, selling their land for the National Park.

This year only two people were present who were born in the Valley.  The hundreds who were gathered are still affirming their family history and love of that beautiful place.  

The event starts with a church service in Palmer’s Chapel presided over by Steve Woody, descendent of the Steven Woody family.  The church is named for my Uncle Gudger Palmer’s family, who donated the land where it stands.  After church, there is a great time of eating and visiting, then goodbye until next August.

Trish in the yard of my Uncle Gudger’s childhood home.
The Palmer house is now a National Park Visitor Center.

Jonathan and Kahran

Well, we are now underway!  Trish and I left the island yesterday and traveled to Greensboro.  Our son, Jonathan, and his fiancé, Kahran, life in Greensboro.  Before our trip is over we will be coming from the west back to New Orleans for their wedding on September 21.  I am performing the ceremony, and, since I have not done this in a long time, we needed to get together for one more meeting to work over the entire plan.

Jonathan and Kahran
We met them for dinner, along with Jonathan’s mom, Beth, and then got a chance to pretend that we all know what we are doing and that we are actually prepared for September 21!  It was an excellent time.

Today we have driven on up to my home town. Waynesville, to be ready for the Cataloochee Reunion in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Before the Park was established in 1934 some of my forebears lived there.  My Uncle, Gudger Palmer, was 100 years old the year the Park turned 75.  He died in 2012 at age 103.

Most of the native born people of Cataloochee have gone on from this world, but, each August for 81 years, their descendants and friends gather to remember the days when a significant early community lived in the remote valley and to celebrate the care and perpetuation of National Park stewardship.

We are camped in our Airstream beside Jonathan’s Creek, one of the places where I actually played and camped as a child.  Tomorrow will be a great day with a service at Palmer’s Chapel Methodist Church followed by dinner on the grounds.

You will hear more about Cataloochee when the day is over.

Getting Ready To Travel

All this week we are at home on the island working each day to get ready for a big upcoming trip.  By the middle of August it is getting hot on Ocracoke and, besides that, we are in hurricane season (though there have been no storms in the Atlantic so far this year).  It is a good time to travel and then come back later in the fall when things cool down and the weather stabilizes.

Our Little Home on the Island

On Friday we will leave on a nine week trip across the United States.  We will be going to seventeen states and visiting fifteen National Parks along the way.  We will also be working some along the way.  Work includes the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, school visits in Utah, the Cave Run Storytelling Festival, Teller in Residence at the International Storytelling Center, the National Storytelling Festival, and a residency as Event Leader at The Swag, the Great Country Inn of the Smokies.

We will also be coming by New Orleans for the wedding of our son, Jonathan and his fiancé, Karan.

For the whole trip we will be traveling in our Airstream camper trailer.

The Space Station Pulled by our Gray Car.

We call our Airstream The Space Station, because when you are in there you are in a world of your own.  The good thing is that our regular car pulls it so we always have the car with us for touring around along the way.  The camper is 23 feet long and it has all that we need.

The Blogging plan is to make a report on most days about where we are and what we are seeing there.  You may also get to meet some of the people we are with along the way.

We hope this will be fun for everyone!

Celebration Day

When Trish and I got married, both of our families got instantly larger.  She gained three sons, (without labor, delivery, adolescence or tuition) two daughters-in-law, (and another in September) and two more grandchildren.  I added two more children, (a son and a daughter) a daughter-in-law, and four and three-fourths additional grandchildren.

Last Friday we got to be with Trish’s son, Greg, and his family on a very special day.

Trish and Greg

Greg and his wife, Annette, are both career Air Force.  Much to our good fortune they are now stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

Annette is a Master Sergeant RAPCON Chief Air Controller.  Greg is an APG Section Chief supervising F-15 care and maintenance.

On Friday Trish and I got to be there for the formal ceremonies in which Greg was promoted to Master Sergeant.

Trish grew up in a military family, but I grew up with no experience like that.  This was all new to me.

Early in the day we got to go with Greg to where he works and see the F-15s up close.  I am amazed by the immense complexity of these planes and by the skill and knowledge it must take to be able to know and deal with every part of them.

That evening we went to the ceremonies.  There was a medal presentation, then an awards dinner, then a procession through crossed swords leading to the promotion presentation itself.  It was an impressive evening, especially to see the supportive relationships among all those who serve together.

So, for now, Annette no longer outranks Greg....but watch out, she is not to be sitting still for long.

Out For a Visit

Today we are on the ferry heading off the island for a four day trip to see three of our five children and four of our 6 ¾ grandchildren.  On August 9 we will leave home on a nine week trip across the country and this is our last chance to see a few family members and take care of some errands that need to be done before the long trip.

Leaving the Island on a Stormy Day.

We are staying for two nights in Cary, NC, on the edge of  Raleigh, where tonight we will see our son, Kelly, and our five-year-old grandson, Frank.  Frank’s mom, Erin, has out-of-town company this evening and we will miss her.

Erin works as the Director of Durham's Central Park, a site that is also home to the Durham Farmers' Market.  Kelly works at Duke University where he is the manager of an interdisciplinary research program that studies communications between physicians and their patients, especially when those relationships involve decision making with regards to treatment and care.

Frank is in love with space, planets, and astronauts.  He knows more about the science of the universe and space travel than we will even know.  On the last visit he was trying to explain the nature of plasma to us and we got tangled up somewhere between the neutrons and the protons…we had already lost the electrons.

Tonight we are bringing him a pillowcase that Trish made for him after locating material that has planets on it.  He will also get a little bracelet that has beads of all the planets strung on it in their proper order out from the sun.

Tomorrow we get to visit with our son, Doug, and his wife, Jill, in Raleigh.  Doug is a Clinical Psychologist who works mostly with juveniles.  Jill is the script supervisor for a TV show called “Love it or List It,” and also a free lance photographer.  You can see a lot of her stuff at orangecatart.com. 

Friday we go on down to Goldsboro, NC where our son, Greg, and his wife, Annette, are both in the Air Force and presently stationed at Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base.  Annette is a flight controller and Greg is an APG Section Chief working on F-15 jets.  He has just been promoted to Master Sergeant and Friday evening we will get to attend the formal ceremony where he officially gets his new stripes.

Then it will be back home to pack for the long trip.  That trip will take us to seventeen states.  Most of the BLOG entries during that time will be following along during that trip.  

Want to come  along?