Oconaluftee Visitor Center was quiet today, except when it wasn't.

A family from Eden, North Carolina, north of Greensboro, said that she had a "panther" on her property that growled at her and her daughter.

"What should I do about it?" She asked.

I guess we're the information center for everything. This happened to the telephone company and that's why in the 1970s (I think), they changed their service from "information" to "directory assistance".

I suggested that she calls her county's animal control department and that it was probably a bobcat. "There hasn't been a bobcat in North Carolina since the 1800s."

"OK, bobcat, but they won't do nothing".

"Then you need to go to the state level," strongly hinting that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park couldn't do anything. But she kept on and on. There weren't too  many people around so I listened.

I must have listened too intently because I didn't notice that a bee or wasp had landed on my shirt collar or neck. But the next visitor did and flicked it away. The wasp landed on a stack of newspapers on the floor and I promptly stomped on it.

When I told Maryann, a seasonal ranger, about the wasp, she said that she knew about it but "she didn't like to kill things." When it comes to bees in any variation, I don't mind killing.

School is back in session for most of western North Carolina, including Asheville. I didn't see too many visitors on Kephart Prong last week so I stayed close by on the Mountain Farm Museum and Oconaluftee River Trail.

Corn and sorghum are really tall by now at the farm. The rest of the garden is also doing well, being lovingly taken care by volunteers. They also tend the pigs and chickens. Not me! I barely take care of my own yard. And the only animals I feed are the birds at the bird feeder outside. So I rove and talk to people.

The  River Trail is one of only two trails that allows dogs on leashes, and bikes. Then the skies opened up and I heard thunder. I kept walking because I was already wet and so did visitors with dogs. Several people on rubber floats on the Oconaluftee River passed by. They didn't care; they were already wet as well.

It is definitely autumn on the trail. Not much but cone flowers and you've seen plenty of pictures of those.  But I found passion flowers (passiflora incarnata) in the bushes on the way to the Mountain Farm Museum. Passion flowers are tropical but  Passiflora incarnata is an exception in that it is deciduous and can survive winter freezes.

We went to the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock yesterday. We took a tour of the home with a volunteer who was fascinating. Carl Sandburg was a writer, poet, biographer who won two Pulitzer Prizes but Mrs. Sandburg was a champion goat breeder. The goats are still at the site, being taken care of by rangers and volunteers.

But like all National Park site, this one needs help from its friends. Hence the fundraiser.

The Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara will host their third Hobo Ball featuring dinner, entertainment and an auction to benefit Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site on Saturday, September 11, 2010, at the Kenmure Country Club in Flat Rock. In the spirit of a Hobo Ball dress is casual and denim is certainly popular.  Knap sacks are welcomed.

Proceeds from the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and the Hobo Ball support diverse and growing educational programming for youth, school groups and the visiting public at Carl Sandburg Home NHS.  This spring Poet Christina Lovin resided in the Historic Farm Manager’s House and served as the Inaugural Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence. 

“The Friends have consistently been there in funding the site’s education programs and developing the Carl Sandburg Writer-in-Residence.  Their support is critical to ensuring school groups, families and and all who visit have an enjoyable and meaningful experience,” says Connie Backlund, park superintendent.

The other National Park Service sites dedicated to writers include John Muir National Historic Site in CA,  Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site also in CA, Longfellow National Historic Site in MA and Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in PA.

For more information or to secure reservations, please contact Kathleen Hudson at 828-698-5208 or Jan Spicka at 828-891-1606.  Additional information is also available at www.friendsofcarlsandburg.org.

We walked to Big Glassy and then back to the house where Lenny found Sandburg's chair.

Starting with 340.1 miles, 51,850 ft. ascent

Woodlawn Park to Old NC-105

15.4 miles, 3,100 ft. ascent

I'm back from vacation reestablishing my routine and part of my routine is continuing the Mountains-to-Sea Trail.

It has been hot and humid for weeks now but Sharon and I had a hiking day planned for a long time and 90 degree weather was not going to deter us.

Some say that the section from Woodlawn Park to Kistler Memorial Highway (Old NC-105) is the hardest section on the MST. I'll tell you when I complete the trail. The hike was in the Grandfather District of Pisgah National Forest but not yet in Linville Gorge.

We met at Lake James State Park outside of Nebo. We discovered that all the camping sites were walk-in and ours would be quite a walk. Then we were reminded that almost all North Carolina state parks are gated until 8 A.M. So we wouldn't be able to leave the next morning until eight o'clock.

We had a long and difficult hike ahead so we packed up, placed a car at the end of the trail and went back to stay at my house in Asheville. I'm glossing over the "place the car" bit but we knew where to leave the car only because I had checked it out with Jim Reel, a Carolina Mountain Club member who really knows the back roads in McDowell County. I still got lost on my first try.

The first few miles in the cool of the morning were on forest roads, meandering through meadows. Sharon proclaimed it a mushroom day and must have photographed every "shroom" we saw. My camera died early in the day and most of the photos are from her camera.

We crossed the North Fork of the Catawba River on a beautiful bridge, built in 2005 (see the picture above). Before that, MST hikers needed to wade in the muddy waters. We crossed the Clinchfield Railroad tracks and then the climb started to Bald Knob. By now, I was hot and sticky and felt I was peeing through my pores.

Sharon practiced her resting steps. Here's a good description from a website -- a step that hikers use on long and difficult treks, so that they can complete it without exhausting themselves. The step is so slow that the hiker has the experience of resting while moving forward. One foot is completely planted, before moving the next. Each leg is straightened so that the hiker's weight is supported by his or her bones, rather than muscles - enabling the muscles to relax.

The trail to Bald Knob (3,400 ft.) had good switchbacks. It  offered several rocky lookouts, though it was so hazy that we didn't bother with scenery photos. Then the trail plunged down only to climb again, without switchbacks to Dobson Knob.

The hike was tough but it was fine with me because the trail was well-maintained and blazed. There was never any question as to where to go. Thank you to Friends of the MST and the Bald Knob Task Force. I don't know how these folks maintain this stretch of trail but they made a difficult trail much easier.

The rest of the trail was again on pleasant forest roads. Sharon spotted orange-fringed orchids, a little past their prime but we were thrilled anyway. I had never seen these orchids.

We then passed the Overmountain Victory Trail. It's a trail that seems to pop up in small sections all over the area. Here's a little background, mostly from Hiking North Carolina's Blue Ridge Heritage.

The Overmountain Men settled in Sycamore Shoals, TN, now present-day Elizabethton, in the 1770s, thereby defying King George’s Proclamation of 1763, which stated that English settlers must not move west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. To rule themselves, the settlers created the Watauga Association, which today may be considered the first (male) majority-rule American democracy.

Fast forward to the summer of 1780. The British Royal army aimed to conquer the South. They thought it would be quick work and assumed that the South would be more loyal to the British Crown than the North. They then would recruit Loyalists to help the British Army in battle with the North. 

Instead, western settlers from Eastern Tennessee and southwest Virginia, dubbed Overmountain Men, marched through these mountains east to Kings Mountain, SC. As true volunteers, they provided their own horses, food, and guns. They defeated the Tories on October 7, 1780. This American victory freed the American South from British domination and was a turning point in the war.

The Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail starts in Abingdon, VA, goes through Elizabethton, TN, over Yellow Mountain Gap, down to Cowpens National Battlefield (another major encounter with the Tories), and ends at Kings Mountain National Military Park, SC.

There was an OVT sign and an information plaque which explained the significance of the Trail.

We got out of the woods and on the road for the last 0.8 mile, dusty, sweaty and thirsty but feeling victorious. Sharon put on her yellow crocks - how's that for a sight for sore eyes - and everything else as well.

Cumulative after day 30, 355.6 miles, 54,950 ft. ascent

Now through the end of August you can help your favorite land a $100,000 grant by voting in a National Park Foundation contest.

The funding comes from Coca-Cola, which will give the $100,000 to the state or national park that lands the most votes by August 31. There is no limit to the number of times you can vote, either.

To cast your ballot, visit this site.

By the way, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is in second place right now. There is no money for second-place winners. So let's keep clicking.

I'm back in Western North Carolina and back at Oconaluftee Visitor Center on Mondays. Never a dull day; I may think it's may be routine when I start out but it doesn't end up that way.

The visitor center was really short-handed. The Student Conservation Association students (the interns) have left and the seasonals are leaving this week. And the visitors were pouring in. Many ask "What is there to do around here? coming in completely unprepared. But that's why we're here.

A film crew from WLOS in Asheville showed up to film some clips for Thursday's Friends of the Smokies telephon. It's on at 7 P.M. They came to film rangers at the Mountain Farm Museum.

At 2 P.M., I went to rove Kephart Prong Trail. I was hot in my long pants and heavy cotton button-down shirt that constitute the volunteer uniform. The summer flowers were waning. Bowman's root, yellow coneflowers, red bee balm
and jewelweed are on their last legs. Red berries told me that nature was at the end of summer, even if it was 90 deg. in Asheville.

I climbed up to the shelter and saw no one on the way. I found a long-sleeve shirt and hat at the shelter and took it for garbage. I almost bundled it up in my garbage bag until a family of four came down and the woman retrieved her clothes.

Coming down at the second bridge (from the road), a British man with a huge camera stopped me.

"Did you see the three birds orchids?" he asked.

"Huh... I never heard of those."

He showed me a photo that he had taken on his large camera screen and told me where they were. And then I saw them; a small white flower with three petals that look like they will take flight. There's a bunch of them on the side of the trail between the first and second bridge, past the CCC artifacts. I looked them up in various flower books but found nothing.

A Forest Service website identified them as Triphora trianthophora and that's where I lifted the photo from. I felt better about my hike.

I also noticed that the new Oconaluftee Visitor Center now looks like a building - a building with a lot of growing to do, but a building nevertheless.

So far on our Alaska adventure, we traveled by public transportation and doing a lot of walking. Now, we rented a car and drove down to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula. The Kenai, about 150 miles (to Seward)  to 230 miles (to Homer) south of Anchorage, is supposed to be the warmest part of Alaska.

Seward is the gateway town to Kenai Fjords National Park. Now with a name that has Fjords in it, you'd think I would have figured out that there wasn't much hiking to be done in this park. Sure enough, Kenai Fjords NP has less than 10 miles of trail. The most popular one takes you to Exit Glacier. In a two-mile round trip hike, you feel like you get pretty close to the glacier. But you really don't - the glacier might be a good half-mile further. Before you enter the park, you pass signs like 1815, 1860 ... That shows how much the glacier has retreated. 

Here I am above, freezing with the glacier in the background. I really wouldn't want to get much closer. Many people also take a day cruise - some with a park ranger - in the fjords to see the wildlife. But I wasn't setting foot on another boat for a long time.

Seward is also the gateway to Chugah National Forest,  a huge forest with many trails. A ranger in Anchorage recommended Lost Lake Trail and said that it was one of his favorites in the the Kenai. The trail is 14 miles round trip with only 1,875 ft. of ascent. But 14 miles? I could not imagine a ranger in the lower 48 recommending such a long hike to a visitor.

But he said it was his favorite and Tuesday, we walked it. The trail started in the boreal forest but soon climbed out into the open tundra. It started raining and the fog was setting in but the scenery was magnificent. The trail was lined with snow-covered mountains with lots of waterfalls. It was a designer hike and the easiest 14 miles I've done in a long time.

The lake was "lost". Clear water but nothing around. We met a family who had camped by the lake and a couple of runners. A great way to almost end a vacation.

The last two days, we were in Homer on the other side of the bay. This artsy town attracts a lot of visitors. It may have been made famous by Tom Bodett, who did Motel 6 commercials. Like many Alaskans who were made famous by living in Alaska, Bodett no longer lives in Alaska.

We've left Alaska as well, arriving this morning in North Carolina on very little sleep. Now, it's laundry, stocking up the frig and going through three weeks of mail, because on Monday, I go back to Oconaluftee Visitor Center.

A cruise seemed like an integral part of discovering Alaska, so we signed up for a short cruise with Cruise West – four nights, three full days.

We started in Whittier, a tiny town (150 people year round) in Prince William Sound. The town can only be reached by a 2.5 mile one-way tunnel. Everyone lives in the same apartment complex, which also has a store, clinic and everything else you might want in the winter without going outside.

Only 12 children are in the K-12 school. Stephanie, the teacher for the 7 through 12 grades, gave us a tour of the town. She came here looking for adventure and she found a small town with lots of snow in winter and fog in summer.

I've learned that it is considered impolite to ask an Alaskan why he or she came to Alaska. Many came to get away from some problem. If the problem is not too big, (we’re not talking about murder, here) the state you came from may decide it’s not worth going after you. 

Our ship, Spirit of Columbia, is a very small cruise ship with 56 guests and about 25 staff. Our cabin is tiny but I have my own bed – which is more than what I had at Camp Denali.

The whole area is part of the Chugach National Forest. Our wildlife sighting starts off well with a whole rockery of black legged kittiwakes. Then a small black bear climbs past the mass of birds and grabs and eats two of them. Some passengers think that it might be a man in a bear suit.We have some cynics.

That first evening, we see harbor seals as well but our boat is too close to wildlife. The seals jump off their ice floats as we approached. If the animal changes its behavior because of you, you’re too close but the Cruise West management may think that the more animals, the better.

Day 2 - We wake up in front of the Harvard Glacier in College Fjords. It’s cold and most people are now inside in the lounge, learning about each other and downloading photos from their cameras. 

I have cabin fever even though the scenery is spectacular. We see humpback and orca whales and huge colonies of sea lions. Finally, we see  tufted and horned puffins. They're in the water just like ducks but then take off. I have made puffins a goal on this trip and I am thrilled to see them so early in the trip.

Day 3 – We dock in Cordova, a town of 2,200 on the eastern side of Prince Williams Sound. I can’t wait to get off the ship. Cordova is a port town with no roads in and out. We walk around and see downtown – two blocks including a coffee shop and bookstore. Each town has a counter-culture coffee shop and the Orca was it for Cordova.
I learn that there’s a Russian Orthodox Church and run up to the top of the town to see it. It's made of aluminum sidings and looks like a prefab.

After lunch, we go rafting with Alaska Rafting Adventures. We walk about 45 minutes on a trail to Sheradon Lake which flows to Sheradon River. We run several rapids, very gentle compared to those on the French Broad but the water is about 30 degrees so falling in is much more serious.

The U.S. bought Alaska in 1867, just after the Civil War. The glaciers around here were named for Union Civil War generals, like Sheridan and Sherman glaciers. Alaska became a state in 1959 at the same time as Hawaii, so now they celebrated their 50 year anniversary last year. 

Day 4 is as quiet as the second day. The weather is foul but that doesn't stop orcas, humpback whales and sea otters to congregate around the boat. I read, play with my photographs and look at the scenery.

Forty years ago, I went on a cruise. I think I'll wait another 40 to schedule another one.

Greetings from Barrow, Alaska the top of the world and the most northern city in the U.S.  It is also the home of the northern most National Park Service unit – the Inupiat Heritage Center.

We had come to Barrow on a one-day tour from Anchorage, an expensive and long trip. We are treating Alaska like a foreign country – who knows if we’ll ever come back again. Barrow, on the Arctic Ocean, 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is in the North Slope Borough and home to about 6,000 people. The Inupiat, the native people of Barrow, make up about 75% of the population; the word means real, genuine.

Our tour bus consists of a group of seven tourists from Turkey, a couple from Sydney, a couple from Oklahoma and us.

Ryan, our tour guide, is a very enthusiastic young man who doesn’t pretend to be an expert on his people. He seems to be constantly learning and is as thrilled as us to see a snow owl and as disappointed to not find a polar bear. But like I tell folks in the Smokies, “I can’t promise you that you’ll see an elk – this ain’t Disneyworld.”

In Barrow, houses are on stilts because permafrost lies on the ground from about 2.5 feet to 350 feet. If you built your house directly on the ground, you’d melt some of the permafrost and the house would shift. Permafrost determines so much of the infrastructure in Barrow – the utilities, sewer lines, telephone system, even how people are buried. Bodies are sent down to Anchorage for embalming then brought back to Barrow where they’re buried 15 feet below in the permafrost. The cemeteries just have wooden crosses, not monuments.

The Inupiat culture depends on whaling. The community is allowed to catch 21 whales in the spring and another 21 in the fall. The heritage center explains every stage of the whaling ritual. A huge whale suspended from the ceiling greets the visitor. There are whaling tools, ivory sculpture, dolls dressed in traditional parkas and old photographs of the celebrations after a successful whale hunt. A temporary photography exhibit show the modern whaling process from getting ready for the hunt, women cooking for the hunters, getting boats in the water to butchering the whale and celebrating with the whole community. Ryan emphasized that the whale meat are shared with the whole community – Eskimos and non Eskimos. Yes, it is fine to use the word Eskimo.

But it seems much more casual and homelike than most national park sites. Girls hang around waiting to perform drumming and dancing only to learn that the drummers have gone to a drumming competition and will not be able to join them.

Several artists lay out their wares of carvings, jewelry and dolls. They belong to Echospace, a native artist group. Lenny bought a pendant for his mother and just gave the artist cash. Gilford, one of the artists, explained that his grandfather owned a loon headdress which he wore for the Kalukaq ceremony, a special dance performed for the messenger feast. He showed me a picture of his grandfather and the headdress, which he donated to the museum.

The tourists from Turkey were surprised and then annoyed to learn that the Inupiat people did not live in igloos but in frame houses. They obviously didn’t do any reading or preparation for this trip.

Ryan kept after us to jump in the Arctic Ocean and join the polar bear club. None of us took the bait but he finally found several census workers in Barrow for a couple of weeks who jumped in with him. See the top picture. He was happy and I took pictures.

Hiking in Denali is very different from most of the hiking in the southeast in the lower 48. There are very few trails in the park; most are around the visitor center. We hiked a couple of those trails in the boreal forest or tiaga.

You could walk across Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia and still be in the same boreal forest, from the Denali Visitor Center. The boreal forest has black spruce, horsehair ferns, mushrooms and wonderful flowers. 

But it's in the tundra, the open spaces, grasses, and low vegetation that you really feels like you're in the wilderness.

Until 1980, Denali National Park was just two million acres. But just as Pres. Jimmy Carter was leaving office, he created 10 national park units in Alaska via the ANILCA (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act). For Denali, that act increased the park to its present six millions. The original park became a wilderness area. Another section allows subsistence hunting and fishing for anyone living in a rural community. The Preserve park also allows sports hunting. ANILCA protected these lands but didn't lock them up.

We hiked mostly in the wilderness area on tundra or river beds - see the top picture. But walking on a ridge, you might think there's nothing up here. Yet, the tundra is full of life - lichen, alders, flowers including tiny dogwood. Dogwood? In North Carolina, dogwood is a tree but in the tundra, dogwood are small, four-petaled white flowers.

On one spot, we had parked our bus on the side of the road and climbed up a hill. I looked down and  couldn't see the road. The scene was straight out of Into the Wild, about the guy who moved into a school bus in the interior Alaska and died from hunger.

The area around Camp Denali was in the middle of a mining camp, Kantishna. We went to the end of the Denali Park Road to see Quigley's cabin, one of the women who cooked for miners.

After she retired, she moved into her "retirement home", which is now being preserved by the Park Service.

But mostly, Denali is a large, intact ecosystem which attracts and retains those large animals that visitors come to see.

We're in Fairbanks, Alaska after four marvelous days in Denali National Park and Preserve. You may recognize the photo above as Mt. McKinley. They say that you can seeMcKinley only about 20 percent of the time. We were in Denali long enough to see it peek coyly through the clouds and then get covered again.

Denali is big, wild and empty. It's over 6 million acres, compared with 500,000 acres in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. With only one road, most of the land is wilderness. There are only 50 miles of trails - the Smokies has over 800 miles.

Most people see the park on a bus on the 92 mile road. When the road was completed in 1972, the park made the decision to not allow private cars beyond the 15-mile mark. It's a good thing, too, since the road is narrow and unpaved after that 15 mile mark.

Lenny and I stayed at Camp Denali, at the end of the road. It's one of only three private accommodations in an inholding in the middle of the park. No phones, wifi, radio or newspaper - which is why I'm getting to Denali now.

We were picked up at the train depot at noon on Monday and started an eight-hour bus journey. Brian, our driver and one of the guides at Camp Denali, helped us spot animals on the way. The bus trip is one of the best places to see wildlife, since you are high up. Many sets of eyes with binoculars also help.

Dall sheep were perched on craggy rocks, in the tundra far above us. The park was created in 1917 in part to protect these sheep. They made for good eating for the miners during the gold rush. If you're expecting great pictures of all the animals, you may be disappointed. With a small camera and no zoom lens, I didn't even attempt to photograph the wildlife; I just admired them through binoculars.

Grizzlies were digging through the tundra. It looks like poor pickings in the low bushes and grasses but there's plenty to eat: berries, mushrooms, and the occasional ground squirrels. I did take a few pictures of the grizzlies.

This bus ride was like a safari; could we see the big five? That's grizzly, moose, caribou, doll sheep and wolf. Between the ride there and  back, we saw them all and a coyote as well.

But Denali wilderness was more than big mammals; the wildflowers were at their peak. Here's an elegant paintbrush. How's that for a name?

Up and out to get the trail to Denali.

The Alaska railroad runs from Seward at the southern tip of Alaska to Fairbanks and beyond. Today, I rode the train for almost eight hours from Anchorage to Delani National Park. I love trains - I can look at the scenery, walk the aisles, spread out, read and even close my eyes. What mode of transportation allows all those options?

The Alaska railroad services both passengers and freight. It has several cars, economy and first class. The first class sits up high with glassed-in dome, for better visibility. But with the economy class, we can go up to our own glassed domed car. In addition, tour operators, like Holland-America cruise lines, hitch their train cars to the Alaska railroad. They wouldn't want to mingle with the likes of us, would they?

A train hostess, Lisa, kept a running commentary of what we were seeing along with a little Alaska history. She told a little of her young life. She was 19 and spent most of it in Alaska.  She loved this job and was so enthusiastic about it. I asked her what she does in the winter.

"Whatever comes up. I'm like a bird. I go with the wind."

To the left is Hurricane Gulch, one of the many trail sights. Finally at about 4 P.M., we reach the train depot at Denali but we are not technically in the Park. 

We got back to the Visitor Center as soon as we could after checking in. All the lodges and other services are "downtown", a strip that they call Glitter Gulch. It's more tacky than Gatlinbug, TN because they have to make their money in four months.

We had time to take a short walk to Horseshoe Lake (above) and check out the bookstore. Tomorrow, we go to Camp Denali.