Rhythm and blues

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About a week before we left home, I started thinking about jet lag. As someone who suffers from insomnia, I’ve read quite a bit about sleep—and the lack of it. And I’ve tried just about every trick in the books to help me sleep better. Some of them actually help, or at least my brain thinks they do, and that’s all that matters. So as I lay awake last week recalling sleepless nights in cities around the world, I pondered what I could do to alleviate jet lag with my newfound knowledge.

Probably the most effective trick I’ve tried is establishing a regular bedtime and wake-up time. I’m so proficient at this now that I can easily drop off to sleep at 10:30 each night and wake just prior to my alarm at 6:30. What would happen if I gradually started altering that circadian rhythm, shifting back an hour every few days or so—before we leave home? After all, I’m retired. I have nothing better to do with my time, right?

The first night of my experiment, I set the alarm for 5:30, instead of 6:30. No sweat! It was almost magical getting up in the dark before the rest of our world. We made coffee and [bonus!] I got an extra hour to read in the morning while I sipped. By 9:00 that night, we were drowsy and easily drifted off to sleep by 9:30.

This worked so well that two nights later we shifted again. I set the alarm for 4:30. We got up with the alarm, and fell asleep by 8:30 that night. We kept this schedule for another couple of nights. Piece of cake!

A couple of days before our departure, we were all set to pull back another hour until I realized that our flight to Dublin didn’t take off until 7:30—what would be our new bedtime. Dinner on the plane wouldn’t be served before 8:30, and we probably wouldn’t get to sleep before 10:00. We opted not to escalate our plan any further in order to minimize how much sleep we would lose on the night we traveled.

So, how did this little experiment work at our destination? Our bedtime at home had been pulled back to 1:30am Dublin time, which wasn’t ideal, but certainly better than the 3:30am bedtime it would have been without the experiment. And getting only three hours of sleep on the plane and exhausting ourselves by walking seven miles around Dublin the day we arrived also helped. We were asleep by 9:30 our first night. I set the alarm for 7:00—which I chose to ignore at 7:00—and woke more organically at 7:50. Not bad! On our first morning, my body was telling me it was time to get up at what was 2:50 at home. 

Now, can we successfully repeat this experiment in the opposite direction when it’s time to go home? I have no idea, but I have twelve more weeks to lose sleep over that one.

Passing time: Dublin, Day 1

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trying to be Spring

So, flights from the US get into Dublin early. Ours, before 7:00. 

Good news: no lines at Passport Control and Customs. In fact, Customs was not even open for business.

Bad news: Neither was anything else. What to do to while away the hours until we can check in to our apartment at 3:00? [This from our Airbnb host after I had already booked the place: No early check-in! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!]

First order of business: Check bags at Tourist Information so we can start to explore Dublin unencumbered. Took a cab from the airport to downtown. Hmm…TI doesn’t open until 9:00. It’s not quite 8:00. Fortunately there’s a Starbucks next door—the size of a broom closet. We, and all our bags, filled the shop for an hour precluding any other customers from sitting to enjoy their cuppa. I nursed a small coffee for an hour. The kind baristas never said a word.

great spot from which to watch Dublin go by

9:10. Off on an explore! We crossed the River Liffey to Dublin’s Southside: the shops of Grafton Street, a walk through St. Stephen’s Green, and a spot of lunch at the Camden Bites & Brews. We’d been told that the Guinness served in Ireland is nothing like the tasteless stuff we get in the US. I wanted my first Irish Guinness to be special, so I turned on my pub radar. No travel guidebook, travel app, or advice from friends is as reliable. It’s not just good food and drink, but the atmosphere in which you enjoy it, that makes a gastronomical experience, and to accurately assess the atmosphere you have to pound some pavement and peek in some doors. The results are worth it. And so was the Guinness!

first Irish Guinness

It’s 2:00 now, and I’m starting to get fuzzy around the edges. I only got about three hours of sleep on our overnight flight. My feet are tired. It’s cold and windy and starting to rain. I’m not hungry. Another beer and I’ll be curling up in a corner of the pub. I’ve had all the caffeine I can safely consume. There’s nothing else I’m interested in doing at the moment. We wander around Trinity College a bit, barely seeing the stately stone buildings around us. 

Trinity College

2:15. If we show up at the apartment early, will we be left standing in the rain or will there be somewhere we can take shelter? We’ll take our chances. We retrieve our bags at TI and hail a cab. The driver recommended a coffee shop in a grocery store near the apartment.

2:20. We’re toasty and dry and reading the grocery ad.

2:25. I break down and text our host: Is it at all possible to meet us earlier than 3:00? It will take him 25 minutes to get there, he says, but he’ll meet us at 2:50.

2:47. We drag our bags down the street and plant ourselves outside the apartment building.

2:50. Our host is prompt. Happy days!

Dublin, Day 1: Eight hours. 14,777 steps. 6.9 miles. A shower and bed never felt so good!

Happy days!

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Dublin from the air

I have read nothing but Irish literature, history, and mythology for the past five months, and enjoyed every word. (Well, almost. The Gaelic, or Irish, words are mystifying. Even when reading to myself, I try to hear them in my mind. Inevitably there are either too many consonants or too many vowels sequentially to even know where to begin. In the rare event that the author tries to help by spelling a word phonetically, I am dumbfounded. How do they get a “w” sound out of “dh”? A “c” followed by an “e” or “i” has a hard “k” sound, as in the Irish word for church, cille (pronounced “kill”). Irish, apparently, is not related to any of the languages I’ve ever studied.) So you can imagine my excitement on my very first introduction to Herself.

Upon our wake-up call at 6:00 on our approach to Dublin, Marcus noted that sunlight was edging over the horizon. I flipped up the window shade and watched the curtain going up on Ireland. The buffeting winds and thunderclouds we had been promised by the captain as we tumbled off into dreamland only a few hours before were only cottony wisps revealing teasing glimpses of fairy villages in the darkness below, twinkling like the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. As Ireland rolled over to greet the sun, the darkness became a deep, emerald green. I smiled. Something tells me this is going to be an amazing trip. As the Irish say, “Happy days!”

Happy trails!

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at home on the St. Lucie River

We are home again, and it feels so good to be here. We’re looking forward to a long, beautiful Florida winter in one place, with no suitcases to pack and unpack, pack and unpack, pack and unpack.

We don’t use our elevator much, but there are a few times when it comes in extremely handy, like when you have a broken leg (Marcus 2017) or a carload of luggage, crates, tote bags, and a very heavy cooler to get up to the second and third floors (the day we got home). No sweat! We put the first load of stuff into the elevator and pushed the button. Nothing happened. After several failed attempts to get it operational–and after a long day driving–Marcus eventually had to lug everything upstairs himself. Add to to-do list: call elevator repair guy.

We spent several hours digging in to our first phase of unpacking. Lots of sweat! The AC chugged and wheezed, but only managed to push out air just slightly cooler than the ambient air. “It will catch up,” Marcus assured me. Exhausted, I showered and went to bed. I was very much looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again, but I just couldn’t get comfortable. The AC still wasn’t performing up to snuff, and I don’t sleep well in a room over 70°F. It was a fitful night. The next day, Marcus waffled over whether we should pay the premium for a weekend service call. “Do it!” I told him. “It’s either that or pay twice as much for me to stay in a hotel this weekend.” Add to to-do list: call AC repair guy.

I was looking forward to driving my Cute Little Blue Car again, to catch up on some long-delayed errands. The garage door opened easily, but wouldn’t close again. After considerable jostling with the door, the sensor, and the remotes, Marcus got it to cooperate…until the next time we tried to close it. Add to to-do list: call garage door repair guy.

Apparently our house missed us these past six weeks. I suppose, now that it’s in its teen years, it’s getting sullen and irritable when we’re away for too long. Makes me a wee bit thoughtful about planning any more extended trips. *pause* Okay, I’m over it. I’m thinking about Ireland next spring…three months traveling the whole island, north and south. What do you think?

Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland

So, I need to get busy reading for the trip. Any good Irish literature you’d like to recommend? Send me an email.

And so, my friends, happy trails to you until we meet again–wherever the spinning compass may take us. Thanks for coming on this adventure. It was good to have you along.

Best~ Cindy

Oh, Atlanta

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view of downtown Atlanta skyline from Piedmont Park

And so the 2018 Fall Family and Friends Road Trip draws to an end. We said goodbye to Chattanooga, and my nephew and his wife, and headed for home. Atlanta, Georgia, just happened to be directly in our path, so we thought we’d stop for a few days to see what the city has to offer. It’s been almost 40 years since we last visited.

I was immediately struck by how beautiful the city is—pleasantly hilly and beautifully wooded. I read somewhere that Atlanta is the most wooded metropolitan area in the US. The trees really make you feel more like you’re in the suburbs, rather than a sprawling city. Every section we drove through felt like a cozy neighborhood I could live in. I love the architecture of the homes. Most have a traditional, but modern, feel—lots of stately brick and stone. The more contemporary homes look stunning with all that wood and glass surrounded by trees. There’s new home construction everywhere.

potting shed in Piedmont Park–not your typical Atlanta architecture!

To see the city, we rented a tandem bike and rode the marvelous Eastside Beltline, a rails-to-trails convert. First stop was Jimmy Carter’s presidential library and museum. After visiting FDR’s library last spring in Hyde Park, I’m making a point of visiting every presidential library I come across. It’s fascinating to look back on the particular challenges each president faced while in office, especially given the perspective of time. To follow the issues while they are developing is completely different, I find, than seeing how they stand up in the context of American history.

Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum

We continued north up the Beltline to the fabulous Ponce City Market where we stopped to have lunch at an amiable little Cuban restaurant. Then on to Piedmont Park, the crown jewel of Atlanta. Lots of greenery to take in and great views of the downtown skyline.

Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

On our return to the bike rental shop, we stopped at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. A touching tribute to a man who devoted his life to bringing about change on such an emotionally charged issue through non-violent means. That his life was ended prematurely by the violence he worked so hard to avoid is a genuine tragedy. 

tomb of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King

Oh, Atlanta, we have enjoyed our time with you, but home beckons and we must go.

The Smoke at Dawn

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Chattanooga’s manhole covers

My first thought regarding Chattanooga, when I started planning this trip, was the Civil War battle that occurred there that some would argue was the death knell for the Confederacy. A year or so ago I read a biography of Ulysses Grant (a distant ancestor, I’ve since learned), and the Civil War battles in the western theater became more than just names of remote places. I began to understand the significance of Grant’s victories, not just in terms of land acquisition and enemy soldiers killed and captured, but also of gaining strategic control of the Mississippi River, closing off supply lines to the Confederacy, etc. It was an eye-opener.

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park

To better understand the battle in Chattanooga, and read it from a different author’s perspective, I chose Jeff Shaara’s The Smoke at Dawn. You may have heard of The Killer Angels, an historical fiction about the Battle of Gettysburg written by his father, Michael Shaara. It was made into a movie, Gettysburg, in 1993. It’s safe to say that that movie forever changed how I viewed the study of history. It transformed vague names in a textbook into people who once lived and breathed, loved and hated, and felt so compelled to preserve the way of life they valued that they went to war for it, sometimes against their own dearest friends and family members. It made history personal for me.

Chickamauga

After Michael Shaara’s death, his son Jeff wrote over a dozen novels about the Civil War. The books are based on extensive research into the politics of the times, the battles, and the men who orchestrated and fought them. For additional readability, Shaara added undocumented–but credible–dialog; hence his books are considered historical fiction.

Civil War memorial on Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga

So, back to Chattanooga…as we approached the city I started scanning the horizon for Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, key geographical features in the evolution of the battle. When we went downtown for dinner that night, I looked again and was horribly confused. I kept looking for the mountain and the ridge across the Tennessee River from the city, but they were behind me. And then my nephew explained that after the war, they moved the city from the north side of the river to the south. I had so closely studied Shaara’s maps that I struggled with the orientation of the “new” Chattanooga the whole time we were there.

amazing views of Chattanooga and the Tennessee River from Lookout Mountain

When exploring the Battle of Chattanooga in situ, it’s best to start at Chickamauga, Georgia, just ten miles away. The Battle of Chickamauga happened just prior to that at Chattanooga, and the National Park Service has created one park to commemorate both battles. There wasn’t much to see about Chattanooga at the park, aside from an excellent movie in the visitor center that linked the two battles. After touring the park, we drove up Lookout Mountain. Point Park, on the mountaintop overlooking the city, is little more than a scenic overlook with very little information on the battle. I would have loved to see some informational plaques pointing out strategic landmarks of the battle. Ah, well, I’ve got vivid images in my head, thanks to the gift of a wonderful writer.

Chattanooga

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the riverfront, with Lookout Mountain in the clouds

Absolutely love this city! It’s the perfect size–large enough to offer great museums, shops, and restaurants, but small enough that you can conquer it in a day. And then the rest of your stay is getting to know your favorite areas in more detail.

the Hunter Museum of American Art on a bluff overlooking the river

Our favorite area is the Bluff View Arts District. It’s not large, but it is jam-packed full of beautiful art and architecture perched high on a bluff over the Tennessee River. Our favorite part of the District was the Sculpture Garden.

These guys welcome you into the garden.

 

my favorite sculpture

 

cool–an angular Death Star?

And did I mention the food? Fortunately we have family living here who helped us hone in on the some of the best places.

amazing bakery across from the Sculpture Garden–love the architecture!

GSMNP

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Smoky Mountains

Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in the United States. What? More so than Yellowstone or Yosemite? This surprised me until I considered its proximity to the population-dense East Coast. Its 800 square miles straddle the North Carolina/Tennessee state line, and the popular Blue Ridge Parkway connects it to the Shenandoah National Park. The park is extremely popular during peak foliage season, which is now–except that this is a dud year for foliage in this part of the US. Ah, well, there certainly are no guarantees.

absolutely perfect creek on the Alum Cave Trail

But not so, according to the woman from Pennsylvania whom I talked to in the park. She was quite upset that there wasn’t much color to capture in her camera. “My friends in Pennsylvania assured me this is peak season for foliage in the Smoky Mountains,” she lamented. “And there’s really nothing to see.” She regretted making the nine-hour drive when it was obviously not Peak Week. “But this is peak foliage week,” I told her. “It’s just not a peak foliage year.” She looked at me dubiously, and I wondered how she could live in Pennsylvania and not understand the relationship between a year’s weather and its fall foliage color. It’s not like the leaves don’t turn in PA.

below the arch

Despite the lack of color, we enjoyed seeing the Smokies–our first time. According to Wikipedia, the mountain range gets its name from organic compounds that are released from the conifers in the dense forests that cover 95% of the park. These chemicals have a high vapor pressure and naturally create smoky-looking vapors when released into the air.

through the eye and out the top of the arch

We hiked part of the Alum Cave Trail in the park. The first milestone was the arch naturally carved from the rock by wind and water. It’s 1.4 miles off Newfound Gap Road (US 441), the main thoroughfare that crosses the park from Cherokee, NC, to Gatlinburg, TN.

chubby little bird

Another mile along the trail was the Alum Cave Bluffs, with inspiring views of the mountains below us. There actually is no Alum Cave; the trail gets its name from the protective ledges that project from the bluff walls. The trail continues to Mount Le Conte, the second highest peak in the park. We opted out of the remaining 3.2 miles of strenuous, uphill scrambling and returned to the trailhead. Wise choice, as the sun was already starting to set.

victory cairns created by hikers who successfully return to the beginning of the trail

On our way out of the park, we were rewarded by an appearance of a park resident we were beginning to think was purely myth. Elk were reintroduced to the park in 2001, but despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find the herd. Three elk were grazing nonchalantly in a meadow next to the Visitor Center. They even performed a little rutting pas de deux for us. A planned performance for the tourists? I wonder….

 

“They’re paying me $1.50 an hour for this gig. What are you getting?”

Deep Creek

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Tom Branch Falls

The Deep Creek loop, just inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Bryson City, North Carolina, is a great hike that takes you past three small waterfalls. Each fall is not remarkable in terms of height, but is pretty in its own way.

hellbender salamander

These hellbender salamanders, known locally as “snot otters,” are found throughout western North Carolina. This one is approximately 15 inches in length, but they can grow to about 30 inches. They have a frilly skin that ruffles as they move through the water, earning them the additional nickname “lasagna lizards.”

Indian Creek Falls

 

undercut

Love these undercut banks along the trail! There’s a lot going on here, a veritable forest in microcosm. Looks like the perfect home for woods fairies!

Juney Whank Falls–you gotta love the name!

 

fill ‘er up!

 

The rain held off (barely) while we hiked, but started up when we sat down for a picnic lunch afterward. Fortunately Marcus brought a tent with him. Roughing it in the Smoky Mountains!