Great Smokey Mountains National Park (Great Smokey Mountains National Park)

Twenty or so years ago, I was visiting my grandmother in Kentucky. On the way home, I decided to take a right turn instead of the left (that I knew was suppose to take me home) and drove until I caught my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean in Charleston, South Carolina. That trip was my initiation to a one of my greatest passions: travel. On that trip, I right through the middle of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, but didn't take time to really enjoy the park. Every since my wife and I have been together, I have been intending to take advantage of the fact that her family lives only an hour or so from the park to really spend some quality time there. 

As we were spending Christmas with my wife's family, I decided to renew my interest in the park and while I still didn't get to do the hiking I wanted to due to time constraints, an afternoon driving through the Smokies has wet my appetite. There is not much to tell of this trip, other than to share a couple of pictures. 

I had hoped to hike to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the park, but the road was closed due to snow and my time was short on this day trip. Next time though. As you can see from the pictures though, this park has a lot of contrast to offer to my normal hikes. The lushness of this deciduous forest is quite different than the alpine and desert terrains near my home in Reno, NV.

Patching together a few shots, I was able to illustrate the unique smokey feature that gives these mountains their name (originally named this by the Cherokee). Quite beautiful.

Biltmore Estate (Buncombe County, North Carolina)

While spending Christmas with my wife's family near Asheville, North Carolina, we came into some free tickets to tour the famous Biltmore Estate, the famous estate of the Vanderbilts, which was built between 1889 and 1895. We couldn't pass up the opportunity and so my wife and I, along with her two younger brother's and their wives (or soon to be in one case) decided to make a day of it.

Meeting up just outside the estate, we parked and took a shuttle through the magnificently kept grounds to the Biltmore House, which at one time was the largest private estate in the nation. The tour during the holiday season is punctuated with the magnificent decorations put up by the staff and true to the way the Vanderbilts celebrated the holiday in decades past. 

The mansion is expansive and we were able to tour large sections of it, though I'm told that in years past the tour was even more comprehensive. No complaints on my part though, it was still interesting to see the original furnishings and utilities, including an indoor swimming pool and exercise room (wooden dumbells, lol).

Finishing the tour of the house, we made our way to the estate winery. While most of the fruit is grown in California, they do have a small vinyard nearby and produced a unique cabernet sauvignon with the local grapes. As anyone that knows me is fully aware, hiking and wine are two of my great passions, and so this was right up my alley. We had the opportunity to tour the facility and taste a number of their wines - the syrah was noteworthy.

Afterwards, we made our way back to the cars and headed out. It was a terrific day though and fantastic time with family. I'm very glad we were all able to do this together.

Georgia Guidestones (Elbert County, Georgia)

Planning to spend Christmas with my wife's Family in the mountains of western North Carolina and knowing that we were going to drive there after landing in Atlanta, I couldn't help but plan a little diversion or two during our trip - the first? The Georgia Guidestones.

I first heard about this modern and mysterious landmark on one of those top 10 lists somewhere and it sparked my curiosity. These massive granite monoliths were erected on the tallest point in Elbert County in 1980 under mysterious circumstances. The group responsible remains anonymous, though they claim to be seeking an age of reason and offer these words of wisdom to that age:

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

These ten directives are inscribed in eight different languages (English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian), each on a different face of the upright guidestones. There are additional writing on the edges of the capstone in various languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphics. The entire monument is also designed in such a way to observe astronomical phenomena, to add further mystery to the site.

While these directives have drawn a fair amount of ridicule and hatred, I can't say that anything there strikes me as unreasonable, but I won't go into the politics of it here. For now, just consider this stop if you are ever in the Atlanta, GA area.