My Travel Memories – Page 4 – To Hither and Yon

My Travel Memories: Nauvoo, Illinois

It is likely that nearly everyone in the United States has heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, more popularly called “the Mormons.” In the 2012 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney was a Mormon. Well, he still is. The “was” is for the term of his candidacy, rather than his religious affiliation.

Never mind that. The fact is that my mom was always sort of interested in Mormonism. When my mom was a new stay-at-home mom with a young child, she answered the door when two young Mormon missionaries were at the door. She became friends with them, and, though she did not convert, she found a lot to like about Mormonism, particularly their family orientation. She and one of the missionaries stayed in touch with one another for the next ten years or so.

So when the time came to plan our 1980 vacation, my mom wanted to go to Nauvoo, Illinois.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded by a man named Joseph Smith, in Palmyra, New York. He claimed to have found a set of golden plates that had the story of the “lost tribes of Israel” having fled to North America and Jesus having visited them there.

Soon after founding his church, Smith and his followers moved to Ohio, then on to settle in Nauvoo, Illinois. While they were living in Nauvoo, Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested and held in the jail in Carthage, Illinois. While they were incarcerated, they were murdered by an angry mob.

The central part of town, at the time, was the space where the Nauvoo Temple had once stood (the Nauvoo Temple was rebuilt in 2002). We visited a lot of houses, as usual, but the site of the temple really stuck in my head. Human memory is fallible, but I seem to recall that they asked non-Mormons (I was raised United Methodist, though I’m sort of between churches at the moment) not to walk on the ground where the temple had stood, since it was still considered holy. I didn’t find out until later that the Mormons had sold the Temple, and, after the Temple had been damaged in a fire, the purchaser had sold it to someone else. The Mormons purchased the land back in the middle of the 20th century. Maybe they had rededicated it, or whatever it’s called, reconsecrated, maybe? I don’t know. And maybe I’m misremembering and non-Mormons were able to run around freely on that land. Now that there is a new Temple on the site, only Mormons are allowed to go there because of the nature of a Mormon Temple.

Nauvoo Temple site — The site of the Nauvoo Temple in 1980.

Due to stress between the Mormons and the other residents of the area, soon after the Mormons elected Brigham Young as their new president, they moved on, eventually settling in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I have to admit that there are some things about Mormonism that I find appealing. Particularly, I like the health codes. I probably drink more soft drinks than is strictly healthy for me, and I’m a moderate consumer of caffeine (which is forbidden to Mormons) but I already don’t drink alcohol or smoke. I come from a family of alcoholics and my reaction to alcohol is more “Really?” than “Whee!” And the plan is for me to spend more time in a Mormon situation next year — Alex and I will hopefully be flying into Salt Lake City, then driving to Yellowstone for our 2016 vacation.

My Travel Memories: Jamestown, Virginia

Maybe I was a weird kid, but Jamestown was everything that didn’t impress me about Williamsburg. And there really wasn’t much to Jamestown. Jamestown was mostly ruins and empty lots that had once had buildings on them.

Jamestown, Virginia was the first permanent British colony in the United States, predating the arrival of the Pilgrims by 13 years.

Now, just a little personal background. I’m a Christian, but I grew up in a mainline Protestant denomination and our “youth pastor” was traditionally a seminary student. As a result, I wasn’t taught anything like what passes for Christianity in the greater consciousness of the United States. There wasn’t a single word about the Rapture or anything along those lines. Belief in God, yes, and the divinity of Jesus, of course, and, needless to say, the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but also interest, and trust, in the discoveries of science and a real desire to understand history, both of the Middle East and of the United States. As a result, I was not raised in a “The United States is a Christian country” mindset.

Looking at the original colonies, there’s Massachusetts, which was founded by Puritans who wanted a home for their new, “purified” Church of England; there’s Pennsylvania, which was a safe space for Quakers; Maryland, which was founded by Catholics, so you can point to them and say, “Look! Christianity!” But then there’s Rhode Island, which was founded by a Puritan minister, Roger Williams, who wanted to found a colony that explicitly had separation of church and state. In fact, within the first 30 years after the founding of Rhode Island, Jewish families from Spain started to move in. The Quakers and Catholics had experienced such profound persecution in England, that they encouraged freedom of religion, as well. So, other than Massachusetts, most of the other religion-based colonies were founded on freedom of religion, rather than on Christianity.

How does this connect to Jamestown? Well, Virginia wasn’t t religious at all. It was a commercial venture. As was, by the way, the Roanoke Colony in North Carolina. I don’t know agriculture was so much the original intent, I seem to recall it had more to do with the gold that was supposed to be here, and possibly involved piracy, but eventually these colonies grew tobacco and cotton, which led to that whole slave trade thing.

So, Jamestown. The place that started this whole United States thing, and of which there isn’t much left. Jamestown is where John Rolfe met his wife, Rebecca, better known as Pocahontas. There’s apparently some kind of fake village there, but I don’t remember that. I remember a shop that sold blown glass, which might have been the Glasshouse, but that I thought was kind of off by itself. While trying to make Jamestown profitable, they went into the manufacture of glass.

We bought three drinking glasses in that shop, though they weren’t particularly fancy, just sort of prolate spheroids (?) with the tops cut off. We noticed that the place where the pipe was attached were different and each chose one. Mine was my preferred drinking glass until I graduated from high school. I wonder where those glasses are now. Probably lost to history, since this was 35 years ago.

Jamestown ruins — Ruins at Jamestown. The caption on the photo refers to it as an “old estate.”

My most vivid memory, however, is standing on the shore of the James River, being told that the fort that started it all, Fort James, was now under the water somewhere. And apparently that information was incorrect. I’m not entirely sure where the park rangers got that impression, but apparently only one corner of the fort had disappeared into the water. They found the foundations of the fort in 1996.

My Travel Memories: Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

As I recall, we just spent a day or so in Colonial Williamsburg, a sort of “living history museum,” but it felt to me more like a theme park experience of the colonial era. The area consists of both original and reconstructed buildings that are made to look like they did/would have (as appropriate) looked during the Colonial era. The residents dress in Colonial-style clothing and engage in Colonial-era skills and trades.

Since we didn’t spend a whole lot of time there, I don’t have much memory of the tradespeople plying their trades and things of that nature. I was also just a little old for the activities that were targeted at small children. I do remember at some point during social studies (since this is 1979, it was either fifth or seventh grade) being told that The College of William & Mary was the oldest public university in the United States, so when I realized that it was right there, I insisted on at least getting a glimpse of it. We stopped by quickly and my dad took a picture of one of the buildings. It turns out to be the Brafferton Building, the second-oldest building on campus. The Brafferton originally was the “Indian School,” and now is home to the offices of the President and Provost. The original photo was entirely too blue, to I took a stab at making the colors look a little more like the building looks in the pictures I saw online. I don’t know how close it is to the way the building looks in real life.

The Brafferton Building, College of William and Mary.

It is sort of fortuitous that I ended up in Williamsburg on this post, since a recent Cracked article talked about the town from the perspective of one of the residents: 5 Insane Realities Of My Life In A Fake Colonial Town. I honestly did not make this post just because that article reminded me of this visit. It was just a timely coincidence.

My folks went back to Colonial Williamsburg at least once since we were there as a family. I, on the other hand, have not felt any such impulse. Maybe someday, once I’ve been everywhere else, I’ll make a return trip. It was nice, but it’s not in the top ten of places that I would like to visit again.

And One More Combined Travel Memory and Northern Illinois Destination: Cantigny Park, Wheaton, Illinois

I’m due for another Northern Illinois Destination, and since I have another 1979 travel memories that is also a Northern Illinois Destination, I figured why not? I don’t think that travel memories and Northern Illinois/South Texas destinations will ever converge like this again. The next Illinois travel memory, from 1980, will be Central Illinois.

The McCormick family were kind of a big deal in Chicago. Cyrus McCormick, Sr. held a patent on a mechanical reaper which changed the face of agriculture forever. The reaper was also the basis for the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which was later folded into International Harvester Company and is now Navistar International Corporation.

Another founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company was Cyrus’s younger brother, Leander McCormick. Leander was something of a real estate magnate. Leander’s great-grandson, Robert R. McCormick, grew up in the McCormick mansion on Rush Street, a building that was, for most of my life, the Chez Paul restaurant in Chicago. As an adult Robert was a politician and a soldier, first with the Illinois National Guard, then in the United States Army, where he served during World War I and reached the rank of Colonel. People referred to him as “Colonel McCormick” for the rest of his life.

After the war, McCormick founded a farm in Wheaton, Illinois, which he named for the Cantigny region of France. He and both his first and second wives lived there for the rest of their lives, and the farm is now a public park. Entrance into the park is free, but there is a parking fee. At the time I write this, the parking fee is $5 during the early hours in the day, but later in the day, the price drops to $2.

We toured the house and probably also the First Division Museum, which documents the history of the First Infantry Division, which had been McCormick’s division when he was in the Army.

The farmlands are now gardens. As you probably could guess, from my previous comments about being most interested in books and plants, this is what I remember best. The gardens of Cantigny are pretty well-known, apparently, though they have probably changed quite a bit in the 36 years since I was there. One of the most famous is the rose garden. My parents and I saw the most fascinating rose there. The petals were white on one side and red on the other. Years later, I asked my mom where we had seen that rose, and she denied ever having seen such a thing.

And when I was going through the old photograph albums doing the scanning, I found the rose. It’s an SX-70 photo, so it doesn’t nearly do the rose justice, but nevertheless here it is:

Cantigny rose with red and white petals — Rose with red and white petals from our trip to Cantigny.

The house, museum, and grounds are all handicap accessible. Additionally, the park has a tram service for those who cannot walk between the attractions. I do not know if the trams can handle wheelchairs, however.

My Travel Memories: Assorted Places in Maryland

I can recall four places in Maryland that we visited during our 1979 vacation. I also seem to recall spending the night in a Holiday Inn in Baltimore at some point before our 1988 return to Baltimore (more on that later), so this may have been the visit when we did that.

The four places I recall more-or-less clearly were the National Shrine of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the Barbara Fritchie House, the Antietam battlefield, and a cave. There is no indication in the photo album which cave we visited. It made an impression on me because the guy who gave us our tour looked to be only a couple of years older than I was, and he was *adorable.*

Elizabeth Seton was the first United-States-born saint (even though, technically, the United States didn’t exist at the time of her birth — she was born in 1774). When Seton’s husband was dying of tuberculosis, his doctor sent them to Italy, hoping the change of environment would be good for his health. It wasn’t, and he died. Seton converted to Roman Catholicism on the trip. As a widow, Seton needed a source of income, so upon her return home to New York City, she started a girls’ school, but this school failed because of anti-Catholic bias in New York.

Maryland was founded as a settlement for Roman Catholics. It is, after all, right there in the name. Seton was invited to move to Maryland and start a new school there, which she did. This was St. Joseph’s Academy and Free School, the first Roman Catholic school in the United States. These days, nearly all Roman Catholic churches have schools associated with them. This tradition started with Seton and St. Joseph’s Academy. Seton was beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1975.

The campus of the shrine is beautiful, though I don’t know if we spent much time in the basilica on the site or not.

We also went to the Barbara Fritchie House and Museum in Frederick Maryland. Fritchie is the subject of the Whittier poem about an elderly lady who interrupted the march of the Confederates by waving a Union flag at them during the Civil War. It is likely that this event never happened. Records show that Fritchie was sick in bed when the Confederates marched through Frederick and that the Confederates never marched down her street. And to top it all off, the house that Fritchie actually lived in was destroyed during a storm and the museum is in a replica built in 1927. It’s a lovely poem, however. Fritchie was also personal friends with Francis Scott Key, who wrote the poem which eventually became the national anthem of the United States. I seem to recall that the guest room was made up as if Key were staying there, though I may be remembering a different house entirely, or maybe I dreamed it. I have very vivid dreams.

We visited the Antietam battlefield because one of the tour guides, I think it was, or maybe it was someone who worked in one of the restaurants in Gettysburg, told us that Gettysburg was too touristy and that he always recommended that people go to Antietam instead. Now I’m wracking my brain. The place, which I’m now reasonably certain was a restaurant, had something to do with snipers. So after looking around, perhaps it was the Farnsworth House, which is a Civil War themed restaurant and the house was apparently a post for snipers. So that’s a good candidate. I wonder what would happen if I were to call them up and ask about a man in period soldier’s costume who told us to visit Antietam. . .

He was right, though. Antietam, site of the battle known both as “Antietam” and as “the Battle of Sharpsburg” was relatively untrammeled by tourists (see the empty parking lot in the photo below). The Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862, was the first battle of the Civil War to take place in Union territory, and was the single bloodiest day of the war. The Union more or less won this battle, as they only lost 16% of their men, versus 27% for the Confederacy. “Only” 16%. Eesh. It was also “only” the fifth worst actual battle of the war.

Antietam Battlefield, 1979 — Antietam Battlefield in 1979 from the 1895 Observation Tower.

It was very educational and the area where the battle took place was lovely, and is apparently becoming even nicer. The National Park Service is trying to restore the areas that were wooded at the time of the battle. Every fall and spring since 1995, they have had volunteers come in and plant over 18,000 trees in hopes of restoring the appearance of the area to how it looked in 1862. In the process, they hope to increase the ecological value of the land.

My Travel Memories: Washington, DC

I really need to return to Washington DC again. Alex and I went to D.C. in 2011, but I was only part-time at my job and hadn’t earned any vacation time yet, so we only had a long weekend. As a result, we hiked up to the Lincoln Monument and did the tour of the Capitol building, but other than that, we stuck largely to the Smithsonian Institution that weekend.

My 1979 trip to Washington DC was probably the first time I took a subway (though I remember taking the “L” in Chicago when I was very, very little — I think it was when my dad’s brother first started dating the woman who eventually became my aunt). I was thrilled by the Metro. The Metro stations were just awesome and the train was convenient and it was just one of the neatest experiences I had had pretty much ever at that point in my life. In fact, my delight in the Washington DC Metro may well be part of why I am such a fan of public transportation nowadays (the fact that I can get to my destination without having to stop reading my book or put down my knitting is a plus, too).

We also went to Arlington National Cemetery. Washington, DC was a planned city. Originally both Maryland and Virginia gave up some land for the capital, which was a square more-or-less bisected by the Potomac River. The government didn’t really do anything with the part of Washington that was on the Virginia side of the river, so Virginia asked for that land back and got it. Most, if not all, of that land is now part of the city of Arlington. Within Arlington, Virginia, is, unsurprisingly, Arlington National Cemetery. The centerpiece of Arlington National Cemetery is Arlington House, which is also the Robert E. Lee Memorial. The house was built by the step-grandson of George Washington, George Washington Parke Custis, whose daughter married Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee considered Arlington House to be his home.

During the Civil War, the government confiscated Arlington House and its grounds in part to punish Lee for leaving the United States Army to lead the Confederate Army. The grounds were turned into a military cemetery in 1864, and bodies were buried close to the house with a goal of rendering the house uninhabitable. After Lee’s death, Lee’s son later sued the United States government and the Supreme Court ruled that the house had been illegally seized and the government ended up buying the house and land from Lee’s son. So, that’s why there’s a mansion in the middle of the cemetery. The mansion was there first.

While at Arlington National Cemetery, we visited the Tomb of the Unknowns, and the graves of John F. and Robert F. Kennedy. The Eternal Flame on John F. Kennedy’s grave has been upgraded since our visit.

We didn’t do much of the Smithsonian, though I remember visiting the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the National Museum of American History (more on those museums once I get around to 2011). We spent most of our time on the National Mall visiting the memorials. We climbed up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial twice, once during the daytime and once at night. We also took the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument. Some of the monuments that are there today, such as the Korean and Vietnam War memorials, weren’t there yet.

National Mall looking east — The National Mall from the Washington Monument looking towards the Lincoln Memorial, 1979.

My parents and I visited the White House, as well. I seem to recall that we entered through the North Portico, and the light fixture there certainly looks familiar. It looks like my memory might actually be accurate. The White House website says that the North Portico was “(o)nce the principal entrance to the White House for both the family and the public.” These days it looks like the visitor tours leave through that door. It was a house. A very nice house, but a house. Not so much with books and plants (the rose garden is supposed to be very nice, but I don’t think we spent much time there).

At some point we took a side trip to Mount Vernon, which was where George and Martha Washington lived. It was another historic house. I do remember George and Martha Washington’s graves and being disappointed that so many of the outbuildings were reconstructed and/or replicas.

My Travel Memories (also a Northern Illinois Destination): Galena, Illinois

In 1979, we also took a several-day trip to Galena, Illinois. We stayed at what is apparently the ski resort in Galena. It was the off-season, so we got to stay there for less than the ski season cost and it was a lovely trip.

Westward view from Galena Illinois. — The view westwards towards the Mississippi River from the top of the ski lift.

We went into downtown Galena and enjoyed the small-town ambiance. We also walked down to the Mississippi River just to do it and walked along the banks through clouds of dragonflies (or maybe they were damselflies, I’m not much of an entomologist, and this was 36 years ago).

I also got to go horseback riding for the second time in my life. My first time horseback riding, two years earlier with my Girl Scout troop, had been . . . unexciting. Since I was the smallest girl in my Girl Scout troop, I got the “gentlest” horse, which was also the slowest. As the group walked, I fell further and further behind. Eventually the person leading our group saw me way, way back there and literally dragged the horse up to the rest of the group. I feared that the same thing would happen on this vacation, but, to my surprise (and pleasure) they gave me a horse with a bit of pep and I was able to keep up with the group.

My parents and I went on a riverboat. It wasn’t a big paddlewheel boat, but it was a nice outing up and down the river. This was the farthest west I had ever been in my life, so it was pretty momentous.

And, since my mom had a thing for historic houses, we fit at least two in, that I can remember. With the aid of photographs, I was able identify one house as the Dowling House, which was the oldest building in town.

The other was more memorable. It was the big red brick house that is now the Ulysses S. Grant State Historic Site. It’s a red brick house, where Grant lived. Apparently, he only stayed in Galena for eight years (four of which were the Civil War, so that makes it actually four years, I guess) and once he was elected President, he never returned. That’s a ringing endorsement of Galena if I’ve ever head one, so I don’t think I’d want to live there myself. As a place for my family to take their first “just the three of us” vacation, though, it was quite pleasant indeed.

Looking to the Future

Now that I’m down to actual identifiable years in my travel, I did a quick count of the places I can remember having traveled and the years I went. It looks like I have enough My Travel Memories posts to get me through until April or May of 2017, not counting the month or so that I will spend on my 2016 vacation. There might be more. I have a gap from 1983 through 1986 and if we went anywhere then, I can’t remember it. So if my dad can find my mom’s old travel journals, that may spark some new memories that I can use to fill in those years.

My plans for my 2016 vacation are Salt Lake City, Fishlake National Forest, the Golden Spike Monument, Yellowstone, and Dinosaur National Monument. So that will be a little more than a month.

So then I would be in June or July of 2017, which is when I will be taking my 2017 vacation, which is looking to be The Netherlands and Germany (if all goes as planned financially). That should take me through at least August and probably into September of 2017. After that? I don’t know.

And who knows? Maybe this travel blogging thing will lose its luster by January and I’ll stop in the summer of 1982 or wherever I am by then. But assuming I’m in this for the long haul (and I’ve been writing with one site since 2011, so I probably can stick this out at least that long), I will keep going at least through 2017.

As of 2017 I will have three weeks of vacation a year at my job. So maybe, just maybe, I can fit in some smaller trips to new destinations in that extra time. Maybe if Wild Earth Llama Adventures is still in business by then Alex and I can make a trip to New Mexico . . . .

My Travel Memories: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

We took two non-North-Carolina-or-Florida trips in 1979. I can’t remember which came first, though, and the photographs we have were all taken with a Polaroid SX-70, so they are completely undated. So we’ll do the bigger trip first, and then move onto the smaller one later.

The bigger trip was Gettysburg, Washington, bits of Maryland (including Barbara Fritsche’s house), Williamsburg, and Jamestown. Because of my parents’ thing about famous houses, we also fit Mount Vernon and Monticello (homes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, respectively) in on the trip. The order of that photo album has us going to Gettysburg, then the National Cemetery, then to Mount Vernon, then back to do the rest of D.C. and Monticello after Williamsburg and Jamestown, so that’s probably what I will do here.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is home to the aptly named Gettysburg National Military Park, which encompasses the battlefield, a national cemetery, assorted monuments, and a visitor’s center. The visitor’s center is home to a museum, a “Cyclorama,” which is a circular panoramic painting, in this case, of the battlefield.

The Battle of Gettysburg, which was fought on July 1, 2, and 3, 1863, is thought of as the “turning point” for the Civil War. Up until that battle, the Confederacy seemed to be doing pretty well, Gettysburg ended the Confederacy’s hopes of victory. And, indeed, the war only went on for nine months and six days (by my count) after the Battle of Gettysburg ended. Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, with over 50,000 casualties.

Devil's Den Gettysburg in 1979 — The Devil’s Den, Gettysburg, circa 1979

We stayed in town in a hotel next door to the house where the only civilian casualty of the battle, Ginnie Wade, died. Ginnie lived in the center of the town, and she had come to visit her sister on the outskirts of town at the time of the battle. A bullet, either fired by a sniper, or a stray bullet from a nearby skirmish, passed through two doors and hit Ginnie, killing her instantly. I looked at this area on Google Maps and I seem to recall more buildings in that area than there are today.

When we visited Gettysburg, there was an observation tower near the battlefield. The National Park has since seized the property under eminent domain laws and demolished the tower. The National Park Service apparently intends to restore the land to what it looked like in 1863, and since the tower had a very 1970s vibe to it (and, indeed, it could not have been built without access to computers to calculate the support necessary to build the tower with the minimum amount of steel), it had to go. Ir’s kind of a pity, though. The tower won an award from the American Council of Civil Engineers and was the subject of patent D227448. The Visitors Center and Cyclorama have been razed and rebuilt in a more 1863-ish style since my visit, as well. The new building looks more like a farmhouse and barn than the old building did.

My Travel Memories: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee and North Carolina

From where I sit right now, I think that this post finishes the 1977 and before parts of my travel memories (though I reserve the right to go back to some of these destinations if I find more photo albums that have more destinations in them). If all goes as planned, we will be back around October 28 for my travel memories of 1979, which I actually have both active memories and documentation of. It doesn’t look like we took a vacation in 1978. We moved that summer and I went to Girl Scout camp that year. What with the move and everything, we might not have had time and energy to travel.

Within the Appalachian Mountains is an area called the Blue Ridge Mountains. Within the Blue Ridge Mountains is an area called the Great Smoky Mountains. And within the Great Smoky Mountains is Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The Great Smoky Mountains get their name from what amounts to clouds that hang around near the mountain. There is a lot of water vapor already in the air, and as a result, transpiration, the evaporation of water from the leaves, tends to clump together in clouds that drape the mountains in gray fog. I really wish that we had used our cameras more during my childhood. We stayed in a hotel in the Smokies once and the “smoke” around the mountain across the street the next morning was one of the most beautiful things I can remember from my childhood travels.

The highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains, Clingman’s Dome, is 6,600 feet in elevation. On Clingman’s Dome is an observation tower that can let the visitor see up to 100 miles. The top of the tower is accessed by a ramp, but the half-mile path up to the tower is too steep to be used by wheelchair users. Much of the park is accessible by car, and there is one path that was made especially to be wheelchair accessible. That path is just south of the Sugarlands Visitor Center on Newfound Gap Road.

Unfortunately, the mountains are smokier than ever, due to smog. As the eastern United States increases in population, and the population of the United States remains car-dependent and the area remains powered by coal-fired power plants, the smog has increased. One statistic I found says that visibility in the mountains has decreased by 60% in the last 60 years (I think that’s a coincidence and not a linear progression. At least I hope it’s not, otherwise, by 2060 there will be no visibility at all). In recent years, attempts have been made to improve air quality, and it is working, but it is working slowly and so if you have asthma, check the air quality before attempting strenuous climbs, and always keep your inhaler with you.

And smog is not the only threat that the mountains are facing. The trees at higher elevations are being killed by pests called adelgids. The park rangers are attempting to save the trees, but the intervention, which includes and includes spraying the trees with soap and using beetles that eat the adelgids, is slow going. They have had some success in recent years, but over 90% of the Fraser fir have died in recent decades, which is devastating to the ecosystem (and probably doesn’t help with the smog problem).

Well, that was cheerful. I do have wonderful memories of the Great Smoky Mountains, and that is probably why I worry so much about threats such as these. Hopefully the forestry people (arborists and whatever else) can find solutions and someday the Great Smoky Mountains will once again resemble the mountains I remember from my childhood.