For those of you keeping track, I have moved on from my 3 month stay in Cleveland. My Handyman skills went pretty much as far as I could be useful at. I felt bad that I was getting room and board in exchange for on-the-job training and daily roam arounds of the Lowes and Home Depot.
Cleveland itself was good but for as sprawling as it is, I was left wanting for things to do. I am sure that if I ever stayed out past 8:30pm, I could have found all kinds of trouble to keep me entertained. I leave that to the youngsters these days.
I did take advantage of my handyman downtime whenever it came along. I am going to break this post into a few of them cause it will be too long for my ADD to finish. But over all this is the routes I am going to cover.
My first trip was over Thanksgiving week. I drove down to Georgia to catch up with friends from my days living in Florida in the 80’s. My route south took me through tinder dry Tennessee caused by a long drought. I even drove through a road side forest fire.
The fire was close enough that I could feel the heat blast through the open car window
It was slow going through the fire zone. I was probably hung up for about an hour trying to get 10 miles. The rest of the trip was smooth until I got into the Atlanta Metropolitan area. These days, I think encompasses most of Georgia. Arriving at rush hour on a Friday afternoon the weekend before Thanksgiving probably didn’t speed things up any.
I fought traffic in Atlanta for a few days before heading up into the Georgia mountains. I like Atlanta but it is just too big, crowded, and full of slow moving cars so I was glad to head back out.
My friend’s cabin is near the Tennessee border, not far from the start of the Appalachian traiI. I hadn’t realized that the Appalachian Mountains are as high as they are. They are not the Rocky Mountains by any stretch but big enough for a heart pumping hike. And I think the fall foliage colors are better than in the rockies.
From the trailhead for the 8 mile hike to the start of the Appalachian trail
Makes you kind of want to go for a really long hike, Doesn’t it? Oh but there are bears…
As our lucky timing would have it, the power went out on the mountain the day after Thanksgiving so there wasn’t much to do but clean up the mess and head out.
Reedy River going through downtown GreenvilleGiving my lack of cleaning skills, I would be just in the way for the final fall cleanup before closing up for the winter so I began the trip back up North. I had heard good things about Greenville, SC. It makes the ubiquitous lists of fastest growing US cities. Since I was in the area, I decided to check it out. I am happy to say that what I heard was true. It is a very vibrant city. It might be a bit past its undiscovered phase though. Lots of traffic and not all that cheap. I am going to look more into it though.
I pretty much drove up through the Appalachian mountains up until I popped out around Pittsburgh, It is a pretty part of the world but far from everything.
It was good to be back in Cleveland with visions of major snow storms dancing happily in my head.
