Southeastern Tennessee

Fall is a perfect time for a leisurely drive along Southeast Tennessee’s backroads, especially US-411.  With the mountains to the east, rolling hills to the west, and farmland all around, it’s a beautiful place. 

For tips on where to stay, what to see, and, most importantly, food and wineries in the region, see my website, www.sweet-tea-travels.com. 

A companion piece is slated to run in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on August 17th.

New Travel Guide to the Southeastern United States

Check out www.Sweet-Tea-Travels.com  It’s my new online travel guide to the Southeastern United States.  It’s the guide book I’d like to see about the Southeast, only instead of being in print, it’s free and online.  Since it’s being written by a staff of one (that would be me), it will take awhile to cover every part of the South.  So bookmark it as a favorite and check back often!  If you have suggestions or use my travel advice, I’d like to know.  Drop me an email at Sweetteatravels (at) gmail.com

 

Rolling downhill to summer and cheap travel

My travel plans shaped up somewhat differently this spring.  Bangkok and Shanghai fell through.  The Cataloochee (NC) trip went well — my daughter learned to ski and I’ll have a story about the resort in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the fall.  Spring break wasn’t its usual peaceful reverie in Destin, but became a trip to Ohio for family reasons instead.  (If you’re ever in Ashland, Ohio, the Lyn-Way restaurant has great pies.  Try the elderberry or the buckeye pie.) 

So, looking ahead, I’m thinking the summer will be about cheap thrills — inexpensive travel — fun places to go, see, do that won’t break the bank.  It’s not just the economy, we’ve got college tuition to pay, so my travel budget will have to go towards that.

With the price of gasoline, even running up to Chattanooga to see family isn’t undertaken without calculating the cost.  So, on May 11th, look for my story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on 5 vacations a family of 4 could take for $500 or less. 

Here’s a cheap travel tip if anyone’s wealthy enough to get to Europe (not me, unfortunately), but needs to save on accomodations, food, and getting around…

Think like a college student.  Check out guidebooks like Let’s Go  or Rough Guide to find smaller hotels or hostels where you can sleep cheap.  Let’s Go is also great for finding those out-of-the-way local restaurants.  Meals are likely to be unpretentious and usually more authentic to the culture instead of frou-frou stuff for tourists.  It’s also a great way to find out about cheap transportation (by bus or train discounts) once you’re in the country.

Plans for 2008

Cataloochee Ski Resort in North Carolina (chaperoning a youth ski trip and writing about it!)

Shanghai and possibly Bangkok

Schuyler, Nebraska for the second of three workshops  (Anyone want another story on Nebraska?)

So far, so good — that takes me to early April.  We’ll see how much other travel I can fit in around the school schedule!

2007 Tally

Trips in 2007:

January:  Sedona & Phoenix, AZ (Phoenix for my “Phoenix” story)

April:  Destin, FL, & North Carolina for “Legends” story (see my website if you missed it!)

June:  Laguna Beach, FL, & Dahlonega (another story location)

July:  San Francisco, Napa Valley, and the coast to Big Sur, CA  (no story, I’m afraid — can’t deduct any of that one!)

October: Omaha, Nebraska (story to be in AJC on Feb. 17, 2008) & Schuyler, Nebraska for a children’s novel workshop  (I love the wide open spaces of the prairie!)

November & December:  more visits to Destin, my favorite beach, to see some of my favorite people (my husband’s parents)

Roswell, Georgia

Since I’m in a no-travel time of year  — (can you believe the school system frowns on pulling our kids out of class to travel with Mom and Dad?  It sure cramps my year from August to May!) — I thought I’d write a little about Roswell, Georgia.

Roswell is a suburb of Atlanta, but when I moved here 22 (!) years ago it was a sleepy Southern town, complete with a gazebo-crowned square and haunted buildings.  As it’s grown to something like 85,000 inhabitants, it’s kept the old square and even the ghosts.  Back in the 80s, the old part of town was largely vacant, but now there are antique shops, art galleries, restaurants, and boutiques to browse, mostly along Canton Street, north of the square.

The Fickle Pickle is one of my favorite lunch spots.  It’s in a renovated house, at 1085 Canton Street.  Its specialty is fried pickles, but the green tomato sandwich is great, too. 

Heaven Blue Rose art gallery features ever-changing exhibits by local artists. 

Go With the Flow offers everything you need for canoeing or kayaking on nearby Chattahoochee River.  One of these days I’m going to rent a kayak and spend a peaceful day meandering through the shallows of the river along the Chattahoochee Nature Center.

And if you’re a cyclist, bike paths and trails abound.  The mayor even leads a ride every Thursday afternoon.

The Chattahoochee, north of Highway 400, was rated a few years ago as one of the top fly-fishing rivers in the Southeast.  (That’s another thing I’ve got to try one day.)

Two useful items for travelers

1.  A folding cooler from REI.

2.  Men’s swim trunks in navy from Target.

The REI cooler folds flat to go inside a suitcase or can be used as a carry-on bag (with purse, book, snacks, and camera inside, in my case). 

At the destination it works great for keeping a lunch from the farmer’s market cool (with a couple of cold bottles of water) during the drive to the picnic spot.  But it leaks if you put lots of ice in it.  When we’re traveling and really need ice, I just set the cooler on a plastic bag or two to catch the drips. 

At home, I throw the cooler into the car whenever I’m off to shop at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or Super H here in Atlanta — all involve a 20 – 30 minute drive.  The cooler keeps those frozen dumplings frozen.

Early this summer I arrived at the beach to find I’d forgotten to pack a swim suit.  As any woman can tell you, buying a new swim suit is like undergoing a root canal.  It’s painful and expensive.  So instead of shelling out $60+ for a skimpy suit that didn’t really fit and showed every bit of middle-age flab, I bought men’s swim trunks ($9.99) and an exercise top ($5.99 on clearance).  They sufficed for swimming in the Gulf on that trip.

For our California trip, the swim trunks worked as regular shorts on hot days (baggy, with pockets — can you tell I’m not worried about fashion?), as workout clothing for the rare sprint on a hotel treadmill, and as bathing suit bottoms (now paired with a tankini top from my old swim suits) at hotel pools.  It seems that on any trip you need a pair of shorts and a bathing suit, just in case.  These men’s trunks fit the bill.

Time Travel

In an episode of “The Twilight Zone” a car is driving through the dark and somehow passes into the past.  I always feel that way when we’re driving to the beach, especially when we leave late in the day, like we did yesterday.

 We hustle to leave home and get on the road — to “beat” the traffic.  (If you live in Atlanta or any other big city, you know what a joke that idea is!  Traffic is always snarled.) 

Within minutes of pulling out of the driveway, we’re in stop-and-go, 8-lane highway traffic.  The radio’s on, the day’s events fill the car with sound.  My teenage daughter’s cellphone rings “Singing in the Rain” — her chosen ringtone — with her friends checking to see if she’s free for the evening.

After about an hour, maybe two if traffic’s heavy, the highway calms down.  From 8 lanes to 6, from 6 lanes to 4.  Grass gone to seed waves from the shoulder.  Barbeque restaurant signs flash by.  We open the thermos of coffee, continue listening to news on the radio, crunch on pretzels.

Nearing the Georgia-Alabama border, exits grow sparse.

Beyond Montgomery, the landscape starts to look like my childhood memories.  Fields float by.  Now and then a farmhouse beckons with warm, yellow-lit windows.  An old gas station, a barn, a fruit stand used to be here.  They’re only kudzu-covered bumps in the dark now.  Stars grow numerous overhead.

The darkness deepens as we turn onto 2-lane roads south of Troy, Alabama.  My teens fall asleep as we drive.  Outside the car there are no streetlights, few houses, cats on porches.  Sometimes a concrete-block church breaks the darkness, its white paint  glowing as the moon rises.

Finally we reach the Florida line, and the road turns south.  We delve further back in time.  Forests of spindly pines line the road nearly all the last hour.  Wispy fog-ghosts hover over the rain-damp streets. 

It could be 2007 or it could be 1967.  Everything looks the same.  I start to remember the beach when I was a kid — miles of white sand backed with dunes instead of condos.  Pulling blue crab and huge flounder out of the Inlet. 

Icy-cold Cokes made with real sugar instead of corn syrup.  Doughnuts for breakfast (and no one worrying about the fat or sugar!) 

Spending the mornings and late afternoons sprawled on an air raft in the Gulf.  Waiting out the mid-day heat curled up with a book in a palm tree’s shade. 

Someone else buying the groceries, cooking the meals, and doing the driving.

Sigh.

And then it’s back to 2007.  We reach the beach.  A narrow ribbon of about 3 blocks lines the Gulf with house upon house upon hotel upon restaurant upon strip center.  Lights, action, and thousands of cars with Atlanta tags. 

Oh well.  At least I can float on the Gulf’s gentle waves, close my eyes, and pretend.

Students (or anyone) traveling abroad

I’ve just finished writing an article on things parents and students need to do before the student goes abroad for an extended period of time (insurance, bills, medicines, stuff like that).  It really brought home how much technology has made the world smaller.

 When I took my first trip abroad in 1982, it was the first time anyone in my direct family had been to Europe since our ancestors came over on the boat about 150 years ago.  (Not counting my Dad’s sojourn in North Africa and the Middle East during WW II.)  I can still feel the huge grin my face wore the entire flight from Atlanta to NYC.  

My program, through The Experiment in International Living program involved:

 *a few days of orientation outside Zurich (Where for the first time I encountered nude bathing at a lake.  And where my American co-travelers laughed at my Southern accent.),

 *then 2 weeks of homestay with families in the Bern area (I was with a sweet Mom and Dad in Muensingen.  The son chose to leave home on an extended vacation while I was there, so I went with the mom to buy groceries and had a lot of time to myself.),

*then 2 weeks of travel around Switzerland with our group (you can pretty much see all of Switzerland in 2 weeks!),

*then back to the families for another 2 weeks.

This trip changed my life.  I would never have moved out of my home town.  I would never have learned another language.  I would never have gone to graduate school.  I would never have met my husband.  I would not be the person I am today without this trip.

It wasn’t so much Switzerland, or the people in my group, or my homestay family — I think any trip abroad would have opened my eyes to the wide world beyond Hixson, Tennessee.  I think the changes came because I was totally away from home for that time period and I wonder if it’s the same for students today.

For instance, in 1982 I made phone calls home no more than twice in the 6 weeks — it cost about $3 a minute and only certain phones could call overseas.  I wrote letters instead.  Actual, pen on thin blue airmail paper letters.  They took 7 to 10 days to cross the Atlantic.  

If I’d been emailing and IM’ing and phoning daily, I’d have still been tied into whatever was going on at home day in and day out.  Instead I truly was away from home.  It was just me and a few clothes in a suitcase.  I had no physical clutter and no mental clutter.  No to-do lists and few people to talk to.  I had lots of time to think.  Who was I and what did I want out of life?  Pretty soon I knew I was headed down the wrong path in my life at home — not a bad path, but also not the path that was right for me.  When I came home I broke off an engagement, started learning German, and applied to graduate school.  Never once did I waver on my new course.  I’d had time to think it out and it was right.

I think it’s important to be fully present wherever you are physically.  It’s not easy to do.  And it’s not easy if Mom and Dad don’t help you cut those ties.  “Wherever you go, there you are,” as my Switzerland-trip group leader told us.  So for anyone who’s traveling, expecially in a foreign culture, I say — Be where you are.  Don’t let technology pull you between two worlds.

San Francisco Part 3

Tips for exploring San Francisco:

Take a sweater even if the sky is blue and it’s 80 degrees.  If the fog rolls in, it only takes minutes for the temperature to drop as much as 20 degrees.

Don’t drive in the city.  Public transportation — from the old-fashioned cable cars to the sleek underground trains to the surface street buses – is inexpensive, safe, and convenient.  I’ve never met more helpful bus drivers anywhere in the world!

Restaurants will cost more than you think.  (Can you say $40 breakfast for three?)  Portion sizes will be large enough for two in most cases.  Spend your food dollars wisely.  Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores can provide reasonably-priced snacks, drinks, fruit, and breakfast rolls.  Ask at your hotel where the nearest grocery store is.

If you’re taking the Powell-Hyde streetcar line, you have no choice but to stand in the long line of tourists at the terminal at either end.  In between the car will be too full to hop on.  For the Powell-Mason line, it’s a bit less crowded.  We successfully hopped off and on a lot.

The City Pass gives you entrance to a bunch of attractions, but, best of all, it’s a 7-day transportation pass, including the $5-a-ride cable cars.  http://www.citypass.com/city/sanfrancisco.html

Hotels are expensive.   Search the guidebooks and online reviews before making your choice.  Beware of Priceline (and probably other discounters).  They call the edge of the Tenderloin district “Cathedral Hill”.  (This is the down-and-out part of SF).  It was weird to walk my kids past drug addicts and prostitutes in the early evening when we would head out to a restaurant.  (We took the bus back.)

Get in as much exercise as you can before you go to SF.  Walking is the best way to see the city, but the hills are steep.

There are no longer aye-ayes at the zoo.  For most people, all the other lemurs suffice.  But for my daughter, who once did a school report on the endangered aye-aye, it was a huge disappointment.  (According to our out-of-date guidebook, the zoo still featured the aye-ayes.)

Make sure the guidebook you take along is current.  I bought my favorite brand off the shelf at a major bookstore, and it was about 5 years out of date.  This was a problem when we went searching for that exquisite gnocci or hauled ourselves out to the otherwise not-extradordinary zoo looking for aye-ayes.  It was also a problem outside of the city when the exit names on the highways had changed!

If it’s cold and foggy in SF, it might be sunny and warm across the bay in Sausalito.

The hike around Land’s End is spectacular on a sunny day.  You get to see the Golden Gate Bridge from the ocean side, and you can understand why Europeans sailed right past this bay for 200 years!  (see San Francisco Part 1)

If you’re traveling with kids 8 and up, the Exploratorium is worth a whole day.  It’s a science museum with some 650 hands-on experiments.  Unlike most science museums I’ve been in, this one has real experiments, not computerized baby versions.  And every experiment has a complete explanation of the science behind what you’re seeing/doing.  My kids didn’t care so much for the Tactile Dome, though — my daughter got kicked in the eye (luckily she managed to catch her contact before it flipped all the way out).  We could have skipped the Dome’s extra cost.   http://www.exploratorium.edu/