The Cumberland Gap

I beheld the Gap and the surrounding land and it was good, very good; until I talked to an inhabitant and learned the Gap used to be US-25.  I guess that’s not so strange considering it  started out as a game and then Indian trail.  Indians sold it to a man who hired Daniel Boone to blaze a trail through the Gap into the area that is now Kentucky.  Foot traffic became so heavy some businessmen built a toll road wide enough for two wagons to pass.  The slope from toll-road to US-road is small.

Looking into Kentucky from the Gap on the Wilderness Road

Looking into Tennessee at Tri-State Peak

The Gap is .3 miles from remains of an iron furnace.  How could anyone pass up the chance to stand at the very Gap that led to, ultimately, my state becoming settled?  I made it to the Gap. A half-mile total isn’t much even if it’s the first real walking I’ve done in a couple of months.  

Unfortunately the Tri-State Peak Trail starts at the Gap.  Heck, I’d been to Four-Corners so this is seems like a should-see location.  Peak is a key word here, along with no idea how far; this is a  bad combination.  And the steeper parts of the trail just happened to be covered with a thin layer of snow that had become soft and greasy as the day warmed.  Way too many steps later I arrived at a nice litter gazebo, sheltering the joining of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.  In spite of aching muscles I am glad I made the trip.  

A snack and a couple of stops later I returned to Scout thinking about my afternoon.  I sleep in Virginia at the Cumberland Gap Campground, I bought my beer in the town of Cumberland Gap, Tennessee.  Since there are no groceries in that town, I drove into Middlesboro, Kentucky to buy food.  No wonder I’ve been confused over which state I’ve been in.

If state confusion wasn’t enough, the people I’ve talked to are lots like the folks I talked to in New Mexico; nearly all the ones I’ve met have started out someplace else.  The Cumberland Gap shopkeeper did grow up in Kentucky so she may not count even though she lived in Florida for a dozen years. She and her family returned to the area so their kids could get a better education than they could in Florida where most of the other kids don’t even know English.  Education can be obtuse; the mother works in a half-full store called a market that only sells beer, pop and candy.

The Long Drive

What with tending to this and that, I did not leave on another jaunt until Feb. 8.  As youngson (who helped me get Scout out of the alley and onto the road) said, “there were a few snowballs”, however they all worked out and I headed off into the snowy yonder.

Originally, I was heading south until I hit 50/20 kinds of temperatures.  Well, weather being what it is, I decided 4foot drifts in Missouri was off-putting so I rapidly revised direction.  It looked like, if I stayed on schedule, I could miss all kinds of weather fronts by heading through Iowa, across Illinois and Indiana and then down Kentucky to a place called Cumberland Gap Historic Park on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. 

Schedule was fouled before I left the cities. Snowballs, snowballs, snowballs; all part of the adventure.  Enough to say I am now much wiser on how new trailer brakes work and what I need to heed in the future.  Roads were clear, wind was minor and I headed south into the depths of Iowa with Davenport as my evening goal.  I gave up about 100 miles short and spent a short night in a roadside rest stop.  It was more like a holding pen for trucks however the rumble of engines could be mellowed into very loud cat purring.  Since a sign said no overnight stays of any kind, I slept in the back seat of the car.  My winter-weight down sleeping bag kept me toasty warm and I slept until cramping legs and a crabby bladder roused me.

Although it was only 4am, I was awake and the road was empty.  Second night’s stop was Indianapolis so I hit the road.  Davenport breezed by however I did note that both motels and gas seemed to be very reasonable.  Illinois swept by and I reached Indianapolis by early afternoon.  Last I checked, a weather front was to sweep up from Missouri and hit the area with rain and snow about suppertime.  It made sense to keep going.  If I could drive pass the front, so much the better.  On I went; clipped a corner of Ohio near Cincinnati and turned south into Kentucky. 

The cloud cover darkened a bit and I saw a flake or two of snow as I approached Lexington just before rush hour.  Hah, I had been smart to keep going.  Now I was on the southern edge of the front and the rest of my drive would be a piece of cake.  Not!  First, I had crossed a time zone and it was rush hour.  Second, the front was sweeping through Kentucky, not Indiana.  Local traffic reports mentioned several accidents and I saw many more that did not involve tow trucks.  While I continued to move south, at 2 miles an hour, I put in a call to the girl-child.  Look up the weather for southern Kentucky I asked.  Back came reports of continued snow and maybe rain, while the radio told me county after county was shutting down.  Snowplows went by spreading salt and scraping not much off the roadway.  Cars turned off the freeway and speed picked up.  More cars left and then the semis were gone.  Eventually me and an occasional vehicle were all that was moving south while a steady stream of semis continued to roll north.

My exit came and I crept down a snow-covered ramp onto a snowier US highway.  The highway ducks under the interstate and then goes by a fair-sized town.  Two stoplights and two hills later I called it quits.  There was ice under an inch or so of fresh snow and I had no traction.  A well-lit grocery-gas-strip mall was a short slid away. An ample employee parking area provided me with parking and I curled into my sleeping bag for another night.  This time I tried the front seat and immediately fell asleep even though it was only 9ish.  A few hours later strange protrusions woke me and I crawled into the back seat for the rest of the night.

Daylight and sanding trucks gave a new view to the world.  I was only an hour or two from my destination so we started on our last leg of the long drive.  Everywhere is hilly, at least here.  I saw houses perched above the road and others set well below it.  If other drivers have traction trouble as I did, and there was no plowing of off-roads, I began to understand why entire counties shut down.  Road cuts look to be through shale or some other rock that lays in clay-color bands.  All the cuts had water coming out of the rock.  On the north faces they were frozen into dozens of mini-waterfalls.  Everywhere I looked was like a christmas card; evergreens had just enough snow, the ground was covered though not oppressed with white stuff, houses were nestled in trees with trails of smoke coming out of their chimneys and there were horses behind log fences.

I turned onto the campground road of bumpy ice.  Fortunately the uneven surface gave me enough traction to make it up and down a couple of smallish hills and into the camping ground.  In here, the road looked clear, a little snow but not slippery to walk.  I confidently started down the one open loop looking for a level spot that would be close to the toilet.  There was enough snow that I couldn’t see the edges of the trailer pad at several sites so I kept going to the end of the loop and started back.  Unfortunately, the way back is slightly down and then up hill.  I tried 2 spots before I found one I could actually back into without sliding off. 

Two hours later most of the snow is gone and I could move to practically any campsite.  However, Scout is resting well and gradually warming up.  I’ve had a hot breakfast, poked my head into the spacious heated shower room, tried the toilets and filled my water jugs.  We aren’t going any place for awhile.

Cumberland Gap campsite