After years of working 70 hours a week at jobs I detested, I felt like the proverbial "hole in the donut" - solid on the outside, but empty on the inside. Searching for meaning in my life, I abandoned my successful but unsatisfying career and set out on a six-month solo backpacking trip around the world to pursue my true passions of travel, writing, and photography. My blog features stories about the destinations I visit, people I meet, the crazy things...Read more here....
On my way back to Atlanta to deal with the dreaded taxes (for 2010) I took a slight detour to visit my friends Ruth Barber and Keith Watson, who live near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Since the city is built on tourism and offers a myriad of Disney-like attractions and rides, I’ve always found it a bit difficult to get beneath the verneer and really learn about the culture of the area. On my last trip through, my friends had introduced me to “the real Gatlinburg – The Great Smoky Arts and Crafts Community.” This time they decided to treat me to a musical tour.
Ruth and Keith left their traditional jobs a few years ago to pursue their true passions – Old Time music, the music of Appalachia that would have been heard in and around the Great Smoky Mountains prior to the 1930’s and hailed from ballads brought over by Scottish and Irish immigrants. They formed their own band, Boogertown Gap, and when the City of Gatlinburg decided to provide free musical performances on the streets of downtown each night during the summer months for the enjoyment of tourists, they were one of the first to be hired. Now, three years later, they are old hands in the Tunes and Tales program, so they introduced me to all the other performers and invited me to tag along as they performed one weekend.
I walked from one end of downtown to the other, my ears peeled for live music. From bluegrass to barbershop to clogging; from country and western to hammer dulcimers, the streets reverberated with tunes of all kinds and, in the case of my friends, songs were accompanied by tales about the history of the various Old Time selections they performed. Visitors grabbed park benches or formed circles around the performers when they stopped to play; in one cases the town had even put out wooden rocking chairs in front of a stage. Gatlinburg may seem a bit touristy, but scratch just below the surface and a whole lotta’ culture bubbles up.
I spend most of each year overseas in developing countries where the cost of living is a fraction what it is in the United States. Each return to the States requires a period of adjustment. This time, I almost choked when I had to pay $75 a night for a hotel room in Minneapolis. That same amount would buy me eight days of lodging in Nepal or Mexico. I’m used to spending about $5 a day for food, so $20 dinners send me into shock. It didn’t help that this trip took me to Washington, DC to cover the Dalai Lama at the Kalachakra for World Peace, one of the most expensive travel destinations in the country.
By the time I reached Niagara Falls my wallet was thin and I went on the search for budget accommodations. Overseas I stay in guest houses or hostels, where I usually opt for four or eight-bed dorms. I love the camaraderie in the dorms, which are filled with people of all ages and income levels, from every corner of the world. In the U.S., hostels are relatively rare because our travel industry developed around motels to serve a society that has a love affair with automobiles. Fortunately, this is starting to change; hostels are popping up in larger cities and popular tourist destinations all over the country.
In Niagara Falls I discovered the brand new Red Lounge Hostel, a wonderful three-floor petit-hotel located only five minutes walking distance from Niagara Falls State Park with free off-street parking. Their four and eight-bed dorms were sparkling clean and each had an en-suite shared bathroom and lockers to hold my valuables. A common area on the first floor had a large flat-screen TV and their spacious shared kitchen had two refrigerators to store guest food. Bliss! I found a grocery store and stocked up on breakfast food, happy to save the cost of at least one meal a day.
Red Lounge Hostel
Red Lounge Hostel dorm room
Red Lounge Hostel common/breakfast room
After settling in I set off on foot to see the U.S. side of Niagara Falls. I had visited the falls many years ago as a child on a family vacation and had vague memories of spray from the falls pummeling my yellow rubber raincoat as the Maid of the Mist cruised into the torrent of water thundering over Horseshoe Falls. But I really didn’t know what to expect. Having seen the spectacular Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, I wondered if Niagara would seem anti-climactic. I walked along the high cliffs bordering the Niagara River chasm and into Niagara State Park, the oldest in the nation. Across the river, high-rise hotels, an enormous Ferris wheel, casinos and all manner of kitschy development designed to lure the tourist dominated the skyline, but on the U.S. side the falls had been protected from such crass commercialism by the State Park.
American Falls, viewed from the Canadian side of the Niagara River
After two weeks in the Adirondacks of upstate New York I began to learn more about the culture of the area. Though the Adirondack Mountains are ancient, the human history within them is relatively young. It is unusual to meet second generation residents and third generation families are a rarity, so it was a privilege to meet Judy Damkoehler, a descendant of the men who built the Irondequoit Inn. “My great-grandfather and great-uncle Herbert first saw the Adirondacks in 1877. To celebrate Bert’s graduation from high school in New Jersey, they decided to walk to Montreal to visit my great-great-grandmother. Bert went on to college and married, but he never forgot this area.” When Bert finally convinced his buddies to visit the area they were so smitten that they immediately began buying up land. The present-day Lodge and Annex of Irondequoit Inn – originally old farmhouses in the village of Piseco Lake – were dragged up to the site on rollers by a team of oxen. Soon, the partners were welcoming guests and selling shares in the property. One hundred and twenty years later, many shares are still owned by descendants of the original investors.
Judy Damkoehlar, a descendant of the developers of Irondequoit Inn, began coming to the Inn in 1930
Damkoehler first came to the Inn in 1930 at the age of three. Piseco was an unincorporated rough and tumble lumbering town, full of bars and raucous men. “There was no electricity in those days and we ate fried sneaker soles for dinner – probably illegal venison,” she grinned. “By the time I was 10 or 11 I was allowed take the rowboat out on the lake alone.” During the Depression years she worked at the Inn. “We called ourselves ‘slaves’ and lived in the ‘slaves quarters’ (the annex). We waited tables, washed dishes, cleaned rooms…and met boys.” Damkoehler has traveled to South America, Iceland and Europe but her favorite place in the world is still Piseco Lake. “It gets in your blood,” she insists, adding that the next generation – her cousins – are now coming to the Inn every summer.
Everywhere I went in the Adirondack Mountains I met people living close to the land. At the Adirondack Museum Caleb Davis was sponsoring a paddle-making workshop. Caleb made his first paddle by hand at the age of 11 and has run a paddle-making business each summer for the past 22 years. While it’s great fun, paddle making is also hard work; participants on the day I visited had sore arms and aching shoulders from working with wood planes and files. So why do they do it? “Making something themselves – I think that’s the thing people are missing more and more nowadays. It’s about being connected; working with your hands, your eyes…feeling things,” says Caleb. Certainly, that was motivation for Brian and Leia Johnson. “We’ve just gotten into paddling and we thought it would be kind of cool to have our own paddles. It’s a sense of pride to be able to say, ‘This is the one I made and I’m going to use it.’”
At Great Camp Sagamore, I found artisan David Woodward in the original blacksmith shop that served the Vanderbilt family back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. In his long leather apron and protective ear muffs, he stoked the furnace to a temperature of 3,000 degrees, pulled a red-hot metal wedge out of the fire, and pounded it with a ball peen hammer to demonstrate the rustic ornamental ironwork that the rich owners of the camps coveted. Woodward, who attended the Brotman Forge Blacksmith School in Vermont, has turned his fascination with the art of blacksmithing into a successful career. When he’s not demonstrating at Sagamore, he is in his studio, Train Brook Forge, where he creates intricately detailed metal implements ranging from fireplace screens to cooking utensils.
Back at Irondequoit Inn for dinner, I was mulling over the unique ways in which Adirondackers had carved out existences in this challenging corner of the world when I turned over the Inn’s dinner menu and read the following: Continue reading →
A cocoon of ethereal fog enveloped me as I walked to the end of the dock on Piseco Lake. The hush of dawn was interrupted by the gentle splish-splash of a solitary man walking languidly through calf-high water, far out into the lake. In the distance a white wolf-dog stood motionless in water up to his belly, staring intently at something on the shore. Beyond man and dog, all was swallowed up by the white curtain, beyond which echoed the lonely whoop and chuckle of an invisible loon, on the hunt for a mate.
I turned toward shore and let my gaze wander up the hillside, where even the Irondequoit Inn was obscured by the fog. Though my arrival at this rustic old inn had been unplanned, it had been no mistake. My press trip in Adirondack Park had drawn to a close the previous week but my inner voice told me I wasn’t yet done with the Adirondacks. Several years earlier I had visited Lake George during a leaf-peeping tour of the northeast and had written about the area with glowing words that rivaled the color of the fall foliage.
Relaxing on the porch at Irondequoit Inn
Irondequoit Inn in Adirondack Park near Speculator, NY
If you are looking for a dream vacation, here is a great list of the best beaches in the world by country Las Vegas Show Tickets Prague Hotels by Prague-Stay.com, the leading accommodation server in Prague
Best Budget Destinations 80% off. Pay at checkout.
Booked a holiday and looking for an airport transfer Holiday Taxis provide airport taxis and airport shuttles to thousands of destinations worldwide including sunny alicante transfers Get a quote & book online today with us!
If you are planning on taking the kids away on holiday, the don’t forget to look for family travel insurance before you leave.
