June 8, 2014

Here's wishing you a lucky week from LeConte Lodge. If you find this four-leaf clover on lodge grounds and show it to me (please don't pick it), I'll get you a free glass of lemonade.

Hello from LeConte Lodge.  I hope your weekend has been pleasant and restful.  For the LeConte crew, our weekend has been pleasant, but restful may be one bridge too far.  We've been busy, but busy is good for business.  Today's High on LeConte entry is like the Powder River--a mile wide and an inch deep.

Since yesterday we've been seeing a mixture of clouds and sun.  The high-low was 65-51.  The rain gauge contained 0.24 inches of precipitation and a drowned mosquito.  The rain came in a heavy shower from about 4:30-4:40 a.m., which sounded great on my roof and nearly conspired to keep me in bed instead of rolling out to make breakfast.  However, my paycheck proved the greater conspirator so we had breakfast on time after all.

The sunrise didn't look too promising at first, but really came on strong in the end to put on a good show.  We had a couple of guests who made the decision to get up early and hike out to Myrtle Point to try their luck.  They ended up seeing a rainbow accompanying LeConte's sunrise spectacular.

Speaking of luck, I was running around camp doing chores yesterday when a four-leaf clover seized my gaze (above photo).  If anyone visiting LeConte Lodge can find it and point it out to me (please don't pick it), I'll give them a free glass of lemonade.

The rules on LeConte are that the cook and, upon completion of cooking, the dishwasher get to choose the tunes for that breakfast or supper shift.  During sunrise, I chose Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and wasn't the least bit disappointed as the colors chased each other over the spine of the Smokies.  We kept it Sunday classy throughout breakfast service and sampled Handel, Mozart, Smetana and Chopin in the kitchen.  I don't advocate getting up at 4:40 a.m. unless you're feeding horses or LeConte guests (they have a more sophisticated palate but aren't much help when getting charged by a bison), but it proved a nice morning with plenty of friendly people on the mountain.

Later, after we finished our morning camp preparations and chores, we sat down and feasted on a Sunday brunch Nicholette prepared for us (including some more fresh strawberries from one of our nice guests).  With all that fresh vitamin C from strawberries this week, we're doing all we can to take the fight to scurvy on LeConte.

Finally, I met a nice father and daughter from south Alabama yesterday afternoon.  The father owns a place on English Mountain, our neighbor mountain just outside the national park, which we could see in great detail this morning.  His daughter also told me she writes a blog about fashion and hair styling.

I had just been wrestling with our sun-starved incinerator to make sure all our food waste was properly burnt.  So I had some soot on me, was wearing a bleach-speckled shirt and probably smelled pretty special, too.  There were likely some remnants of leftover biscuit ash left on my bald head.  One look at me and the daughter didn't figure I was a candidate to read her fashion and hair-styling blog, but she and her dad seemed like nice folks.

Happy trails.