Things We Wish We'd Never Eaten #2.3: The Little House of Pancakes

The Little House of Pancakes in Gatlinburg should actually be known as the Little House of Not-So-Little Pancakes. Still famished from our hike the previous day and further exhausted from attempting Le Tour de Cades Cove, we stopped in here just before closing time for a late lunch (and an early heart attack).

Pancakes (and especially waffles) seem to have a close synergy with fried chicken in the south of this country. Don't ask me why. I think I got through one of the pancakes, maybe one and a half. Daniel polished off his fried chicken, doused in smoky BBQ sauce, and also managed a couple of free soda refills.

On a side note, you may notice that Daniel is growing a beard after deliberately "forgetting" to pack a razor. It has white whiskers and ginger streaks in the cheeks. Enough to put anybody off pancakes.

Cycling in Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Cades Cove

Every Wednesday morning Cades Cove Loop Road is closed to car traffic to allow cyclists free reign through this scenic valley. Daniel is never going to pass up an opportunity to pedal, so we hired single-speed bikes and sped off into the morning fog. Except we slowed down pretty quick. Turns out there isn't much juice left in one's legs the day after climbing a mountain. And the bikes were as stiff as our knee joints.

Magic

This hill was bigger than it looks, ok?

The loop isn't overly steep but there are more than a few rolling hills. In particular, there are two which you're supposed to walk your bike down. Naturally we ignored this sage advice. There would have been no dramas had Daniel not decided to lay down a skid of epic proportions (his words) halfway down. He managed to keep control for a few seconds before drifting sideways down the wet road, finishing upright but facing the wrong way and in the bushes. The GoPro was filming from my head, so he was pretty chuffed. Come to think of it, that was probably the reason he attempted this display of prowess (his words) or idiocy (my words) in the first place...

Challenge accepted...

The loop weaves through forests and meadows, and passes by a number of historic buildings which reflect pioneer life in 19th-century Appalachia. Interestingly though, they don't reflect the area when the park was chartered in 1934. The residents of Cades Cove were strongly resistant to the park's creation, and their properties were eventually seized by eminent domain. By this time, most of the locals were living in modern frame residences rather than the log cabins which have been preserved.

Old Homestead

On the Tennessee side of the Smokies (the park straddles Tennessee and North Carolina) there are two main gateway towns: Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. These have to be two of the most bizarre places we've visited. The main street of Gatlinburg looks like this: candy store, novelty t-shirt store, gaming arcade, ice-cream store, Ripley's attraction, and then just repeat. Four or five times. It's the strangest adjunct to an area of outstanding natural beauty. It seemed to be just as much of a tourist attraction as the park itself, although who knows for what reasons. We did play mini golf though. I won, just in case you didn't assume.

Things We Wish We'd Never Eaten: #2.2: Pack Lunch

You know what? This was one of our best meals to date, because god damn did we earn it. At Le Conte Lodge we were able to purchase pack lunches for $10 a pop, which is a pretty great amenity given that all supplies have to be carted up the mountain on llamas. We collapsed on their deck and devoured every last bit.

$10 well spent

Full of hearty, high-calorie hiking food, the pack contained a bagel and cream cheese, oreos, trail mix, fruit leather, a Gatorade sachet and beef summer sausage. Yes, you read that right, beef summer sausage. This tasty little treat was basically a cured concoction that may once have resembled meat and did not require refrigeration until opened. And yes, we were that hungry.

Hiking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park: The Conquest of Le Conte

It's quite confronting to get off a plane from the Midwest and suddenly find yourself in the South. It's even more confronting to arrive at your bed and breakfast accommodation in rural Tennessee to discover that the owner and his wife spent the 1980s living and lecturing in Perth. It's a really small world. This is the other side of the coin - it seems as though everyone we meet falls into one of two categories. Either they've never met an Australian, or they've visited or lived in Perth. On our third day of the trip we were at RadioShack buying a SIM card for our phone, and we answered the clerk's ubiquitous question with "Perth, Western Australia". Straight away, the guy behind us pipes up "oh yeah, Fremantle, Little Creatures." Turns out he spent some time working at a brick factory in Malaga.

The Smokies are our second National Park of the trip, and these mountains are very different to Glacier. For a start it's about 30 degrees and 80% humidity here. Perfect hiking weather. That was sarcasm, yeah? We threw ourselves straight back into left-foot-right-foot with perhaps a little more gusto than was wise.

After a sickly-sweet southern breakfast of orange marmalade french toast (carb-loading), we set off to summit Mount Le Conte via the Alum Cave Trail. It's an 18 kilometer round trip that gains nearly a kilometer in elevation, and it has a difficulty rating of 'strenuous'. As proof of this, I have a photo of me in which I'm the same colour as my shirt. And I was only halfway up. Needless to say, that photo won't be getting published.

Coral...

Sadly the trail wasn't as serene as we would have liked, as there were a few youth groups marching up carrying people on stretchers, presumably as a team building exercise. Although their relentless chanting and boundless enthusiasm was aggravating, I'll admit it was a pretty mammoth effort. I could barely carry myself up to the top. It took us two hours and forty-five minutes to reach the 2010 meter summit, against a guide time of three to four hours. We were stoked with that result. Our legs were not. But, as expected, the views were in line with the sense of achievement and in hindsight it was so worth it, although there were points along the way where I wondered.

At the top of the mountain is Le Conte Lodge, which was established in 1925. You can stay in one of the cabins up there, but you need to make reservations well in advance. We made do with a couple of rocking chairs on the deck and a pack lunch. It was blissful. Significantly colder at such altitude, it was also easy to imagine how quickly sweat-drenched hikers can succumb to hypothermia.

Top of the World at Le Conte Lodge

The descent took less than two hours but wasn't actually much easier than going up. Lots of hikers have walking poles, of which I'm often quite envious, but we're usually 20-30 years younger than those hikers, so a cup of toughen-up is what Danny suggested for me instead.

I know we seem to be spending a lot of time out in the woods, and we are, but I want to reassure you that we're never too far from 'civilisation'. Just in case you don't believe me, here's proof in the form of a drive-through discount cigarettes and beer store.

Our Hire Car

 Coolest thing we've seen so far?

The Mall of America

Just imagine a deep booming voice welcoming you to MALL OF AMERICA, the real reason we came to Minnesota. We're not alone in our lunacy; the mall receives 40 million visitors each year (more than twice the number of visitors to downtown Minneapolis and St Paul), making it the most visited shopping center in the world. Why, you ask? Well, for a start, it has a gross area of 96.4 acres. Nearly half of that is retail space for the 530 stores that give the Mall of America the distinction of having more vendors than any other shopping mall in the United States. Then there's the reason it all exists in the first place, the fact that there is no sales tax on clothing or shoes in Minnesota.

Mall of America

We did pretty well in that regard. Stuff is so cheap over here to begin with, remove the tax and it almost feels as though you're stealing. For example, Daniel's choice sneakers cost between $180 and $220 back home. He picked up a pair here for $80. As you'll note below, they're lovely and garish. It's very American to strut around in shorts and pristine bright white sneakers, so throw in the trucker cap he picked up in Montana and he fits right in.

Haul

Speaking of fitting right in, we're starting to find ourselves unconsciously mimicking American accents. Especially here, where people speak with such a Germanic drawl. Large numbers of Scandinavian and German immigrants moved to these northern states in the late nineteenth century, resulting in a dialect known as North-Central American English, or the Minnesota Accent. Certain vowels sound so familiar that we mirror them in conversation without intending to. That said, still nobody can understand a thing we say. We usually have to repeat ourselves - the first time around they're more interested in the accent than the content. Apparently "nobody comes to Minnesota", so we're quite the novelty. For two very shy people, we actually enjoy this immensely. We've found that being off the beaten path is much more conducive to conversation and cultural exchange than visiting, say, New York City or Los Angeles.

Now, back to business. Did I mention that the largest indoor amusement park in the United States is located smack bang in the middle of the Mall of America? Danny was giddy like a kid in a candy store. Inside an amusement park. Inside a shopping mall.

Dannytello (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Ride)

Lego Transformer and Amusement Park

We did, of course, ride a couple of the roller coasters. It was here we met the first person to be unimpressed by our Australian origin. The kid next to us in line very kindly asked if we wanted to share a row of seats, even though Danny warned this kid that he screams like a girl. "Are you Packers fans?" he asked, referring to Wisconsin's Green Bay Packers (NFL). When we responded that no, we weren't from around here, he narrowed his eyes and glared at us with a level of suspicion and contempt unbecoming of a ten-year-old. He didn't say anything but "Go Packers" for the rest of the ride, and departed without so much as a goodbye.

Things We Wish We'd Never Eaten #2.1: Fro Yo

Apologies - I didn't quite know how to number this post. I wanted to keep the old series alive but at the same time be clear that this is v2.0. It looks messy, but so be it.

Frozen yoghurt. We know it as fruity stuff that comes in tubs in lieu of ice-cream. It's posited as a healthier option, but you deliberately avoid looking at the nutrition label anyway. In America, frozen yoghurt is an altogether different institution.

A Coma in a Cup

Step 1: Grab your overly large cup and choose your fro yo base. If you're feeling virtuous, your choices include 'tart', which I presume is natural yoghurt. But, let's be honest, nobody outside of Los Angeles is choosing that, and it was tucked away in the farthest corner. Other options included vanilla, chocolate and strawberry cheesecake. They're located in pairs, and a middle lever will combine them for you (because to have to pull two separate levers would expend far too many calories).

There was, and I'm not making this up, a lever labelled 'cake batter'. Even Danny and I have boundaries, so we didn't confirm this concoction, but I wouldn't be surprised. It was paired with cookies and cream. We stuck with vanilla and chocolate.

Step 2: Toppings. This is the fun part. Yeh, there's a fruit section. Presumably that's for the people who get 'tart' yoghurt, but I was quite impressed to see fresh raspberries. Gummi bears, sprinkles, skittles, m&ms, choc chips, oreo, cookie dough and reese's pieces, now THAT'S where it's at.

Step 3: Weigh and pay. It's almost a double entendre.

What Ya'll Doin' in Minnesota?

This seems to be the standard reply when people in Minneapolis find out we're from Australia. I don't think many Aussies make their way to this part of the world.

The Amtrak train we took from Seattle is a route called the Empire Builder, and as it continues east from Whitefish it skirts the southern border of Glacier NP. A day and a half later it terminates in Chicago. We got back on the train in Whitefish but, having already been to Chicago, decided to disembark in the Twin Cities instead.

Something we love about long, scenic Amtrak routes is the running commentary provided by on-board National Park Rangers. As we left Seattle and wound alongside waterways, through forests and over mountains, we'd been regaled with information about the history, geology and ecology of the area. However, for some reason, the commentary in Montana was only provided within the Lounge Car, and our chances of getting a seat were nil. Bizarre, given that they sell the park as the highlight of the route.

Avoiding Chicago wasn't the only reason we stopped in Minneapolis; it's home to the Mall of America (more on that later) as well as Target Field, which has been ranked by ESPN as the number one baseball stadium experience in North America. Finals were well underway last time we were in the states, so we'd not seen a MLB game.

Target Field

We rectified that on our first night here, when the Minnesota Twins lost dismally to the Toronto Blue Jays. Turns out the team isn't as good as their stadium.

Strike

Cheese?

That said, we don't go to sports games for the sports. We don't even go for the cheese fries served in a miniature helmet. At least I don't - I won't speak for Danny. The atmosphere and the people are the real draw cards. We got lucky here and ended up sat next to a hunting taxidermist from Wisconsin and a local firefighter-slash-lumber salesman. Neither had met an Australian before, and couldn't quite believe what they were seeing or hearing. Our firefighter friend was so enamoured with us he invited us to live in his basement. They bombarded us with questions throughout the game, bought us beers, and we literally had them and their friends chanting Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi by the end of the second innings.

The icing on the cake (or the cheese on the fries) was making a brief appearance on the big screen during dance cam. In the interests of full disclosure, we may have been riding the coattails of a kid doing a pretty sick sprinkler two rows in front.