Author: rvingwithapurpose

Tuesday, August 22, 2017 continued

Today began with our final breakfast and goodbyes to our wonderful friends at Hinton. Hinton was a great place to view the magnificent total solar eclipse and had we not been asked to help with hospitality there, we very well may have stayed at home or some other place outside of totality and missed this wonderful experience. We will definitely, if we are able, make an effort to view the total eclipse in 2024. After saying our goodbyes to Ken and Joyce, we drove over to Standing Indian to check the status there. We knew Standing Indian Campground was full yesterday due to the eclipse so we wanted to be sure we postponed our arrival until most of those leaving were out. The road is rather narrow and we preferred not to meet another rig our size. Everything was fine there so we returned to Hinton, packed up Fred and moved to the campground. As said previously, we will be without hookups and cell service. After getting set up it was time for a late lunch/early dinner. Nancy had the makings for shrimp and grits so together we prepared our little feast. This is actually our first day/night just enjoying ourselves with the new Fred, our first night without hookups. All our other travels have been project related.

 

After our nice little or not so little meal, we decided it was time for a hike. We decided since we have never stayed at Standing Indian we would start with one of the hikes with trail head in the campground. Nancy has been camping here since she was a child and she recommended the Kimsey Creek Trail. It was a very nice hike following a little creek. It connects with the Appalachian Trail but since we got a late start we hiked about 2 hours out and then turned around and returned to camp hiking between 7-8 miles. We really enjoyed the hike. We love the mountains. The trail was beside the stream a lot of the time. It had some pretty hard up hill sections that reminded us that we haven’t been hiking enough lately.

 

We returned to camp just before dark, had a snack, shower and went to bed, falling asleep to the sound of the creek flowing through our camp site. Nice day!

Monday, August 21, 2017

Wow! What a day! What a day to celebrate our 35 years together. We have been so blessed and thank God for each other.

Even though the forecast called for a beautiful day there was still some apprehension about the weather.

 

We started today with some stretching at the labyrinth with Hannah and then devotion in the chapel with Dawn. After breakfast Ken gave another great presentation on the eclipse which was, after all, what everyone was here to see. After that we had some free time to visit and walk around and decide where we wanted to set up for the eclipse. Then there was lunch and then time for the big, big event.

 

I’m sure those who only saw the partial eclipse may not understand this, but being under a total eclipse on a very clear gorgeous day was amazing. Much more exciting than we had anticipated. Without totality you miss seeing so much that goes on only under a total eclipse. We were able to experience the shadow coming over us. The weather changing with a drop in temperature and the cool wind picking up. As we approached totality there was almost a surreal look to everything. It seemed like you had your sunglasses on but you didn’t. Then right at totality you saw Bailey’s beads and the sudden burst of light with the diamond ring and then totality. The stars came out, you could easily see two planets, the Canadian geese loudly flew off, the crickets became quite loud, the people were very excited and then the look of an eyeball in the sky and it all happened so fast.

 

It was much better than we ever expected. An experience difficult to explain. So glad we were here and would definitely put forth the effort to do it again. Another unexpected joy of the last few days was the number of really wonderful people we met.  Maybe because of the shared interest in this somewhat unusual event that none of us had every experienced but there was an unexpected camaraderie that was a blessing.  What’s everyone doing in 2024?

PS. We ended this extraordinary day by getting rained on and helping wash dishes in the kitchen and it was all GOOD!

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Whatever needed to be done.  That’s what we did today. We could end it right there and just include some pics but guess we should elaborate a little.

First we got up early and met Els in the parking lot at 6:45 for the ride to the garden. It was just barely light when we started and a little foggy. We picked the corn in short order and were back at the campground by 7:25.

 

There were at least four varieties of morning glories in the garden.

After showers and breakfast it was time for worship led by Dawn who is responsible for the mission projects of Hinton. She is a deacon in the UMC and she is appointed to Hinton by the North Carolina Conference rather than a church. This was her first summer with all the youth mission teams and she loved it. We had a wonderful service in the chapel overlooking Lake Chatuge. What a wonderful worship setting. After worship we visited with some guests and spent some more time with Ken and Joyce. Then it was time for Anne to go to work. Joyce had kitchen duty at each meal today. Max and Ken also helped out washing dishes. Max and Ken also had parking lot duty. Parking lot duty has been more just walking around making sure everything looks OK. Guests have a parking permit in their cars and Max and Ken really just need to make sure we don’t have a lot of non-guest vehicles coming onto the property. The expected crowds have not appeared, at least not yet. Town is very quiet still. So the parking has not been a problem, yet. Again today Anne only stayed in the office about 20 minutes when she was asked to go to the welcome center and help out there. It was pretty busy there. More guests arrived throughout the day and with more people on campus there were more questions to answer, directions to give and do whatever needed to be done.

 

We were selling eclipse glasses and had an area set up so people could decorate their glasses and bling them out. When Phillip, the chef, came by to pick up his glasses, Jackie, the CEO, tried to get him to bling out his glasses. He said he was too busy but she could have at it and he tossed her his glasses. Jackie then took up that challenge and worked on blinging out the glasses. The ear pieces now say Chef Phillip and Bon Appetite with eyebrows of thyme and salt and pepper trim. We thought they turned out really well, but somehow he didn’t seem quite so impressed. Later this afternoon while Anne was still in guest services, Max was asked to accompany the disc golf tournament.

 

When that was over it was time for dinner, which was again very good. After dinner we had a question and answer session where Ken took questions from the guests concerning the eclipse. He did a great job! Made us NOMADS look pretty smart. Last event of the evening was the viewing of a documentary on the eclipse entitled “Totality: The American Eclipse”. It was very educational and at times very funny. We would recommend it if you have not seen it. So now it’s 10:00pm and we need to go to bed. Max has parking lot duty at 7:00 and Anne will be back in the office/guest services at 8:00. Tomorrow should be a very busy and exciting day. Totality!! So glad we are here.