Still in The Mountains

July Fourth in the Mountains

We’ve been up in the mountains for two weeks now.  Wonderful.  July 4th is a great time to be here. We can stand on our deck and see fireworks going off in Elizabethton, Johnson City, Vilas, Mountain City, Jefferson.

Elizabethton Celebration

These are all relatively small productions, nothing like New York or Washington or even Tampa. Parade organizers tend to wear American flag polo shirts and look like the proprietor of the local dry goods store.

Waiting for the Fun to begin.

Or the fun is stored in trailers supervised by a couple of guys waiting to set up whatever game this is. Not the balls are red, white & blue.

Waiting for the parade.

Or a crowd in Johnson City on the parade route.

The Fireworks

But ends in spectacular fireworks.

The fireworks is what we saw from such a great distance and elevation. We watched a half dozen fireworks displays going off at once.  We’d see the fireworks and then with whatever length of time it takes for the sound to travel all those miles, we’d get the explosion.

Our Time Here

We’ve had a great time. The weather has rarely been above 74 and has been as low as 44 degrees one morning over these past several weeks. Each morning I’d walk up to the top of the mountain. It’s about two miles up and two miles back with an elevation change of 700 feet. Each morning I’d see deer, wild turkeys, skunks, ground hogs, rabbits. Not many people live that high so the road I walked was primarily empty. So I had the walk up there and back pretty much to myself.

I walked along this road each morning. Quiet, just the sound of the wind and birds. Several times deer trotted past me almost soundlessly. I didn’t know they were there until I saw them. This is an experience absolutely unduplicatable in Florida.

Which is why we have a place up here.

Usually we would get up around 5:45. Marian wants to get down to the track she runs before it gets crowded so I get up and start my way up the mountain.

One morning I took this picture on the deck. Our deck faces due north but turning to the right gives me this view. In this case fog still was in the valleys between the mountains and the sun was just beginning to rise above the mountain tops. Just beautiful. A scene pretty much unchanged over the last century.

The trees are all second-growth, naturally. Lumber companies had the first shot at these trees. What we see now has grown since the timber industry moved west.

During the non-ski months the ski runs are untended. Wild grass grows to inhibit erosion and this fence bounds the ski slope.  Just a beautiful scene to walk through each day.

Our neighbor put a barrel with deer corn out below our deck and, sure, enough, at sunset we began to see deer. Late at night we can hear other creatures eating there but it is too dark to see who they are.