SavageLlama
05-09-2004, 16:57
Great article I found..
Hiker haven; Mountain Moma's nourishes trail's tired bodies, souls
BY FRED BROWN
April 25, 2004
The Knoxville News-Sentinel (http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/_javascript:NewWindow( 'FIISrcDetails','?from=article&ids=kxvl');void(0);)
WATERVILLE, N.C. -- Caroline Thigpen and her husband, John, didn't know the first thing about hiking when they opened Mountain Moma's about 14 years ago.
But it didn't take them long to discover that their old stone store was situated on the snaky line of the Appalachian Trail where it leaves Tennessee and enters North Carolina. The transposed Floridians knew something was up because of the bedraggled, sweat- salt-stained backpackers who marched up to their front door looking for water, food, nourishment, a friend.
They found all of that and more at Mountain Moma's.
Caroline and John were frequent vacationers to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Jacksonville, Fla. From their many visits, they learned to love the mountains of western North Carolina and East Tennessee.
In 1991, the numbers 321, 32 and 40 drew them like some sort of lotto number. Those are highway numbers around and through the mountains, so they decided to see what was on the other side of the hill, around the next bend.
"We had never driven the highways of (U.S.) 321, (State Route) 32 or (Interstate) 40. So, we started out that day and as we rounded that curve right there," says Caroline, "John said, 'Look at that.' "
"That" was a dilapidated stone building. The wooden parts of the structure were falling in. But John saw something, and it just wasn't the "for sale" sign above the door.
"I'm going to buy that and move you up here," he told his wife of 43 years. They did, and the rest of the story has become part of hiking lore and legend. Mountain Moma's has become a way station on the Appalachian Trail.
The store, jam packed with hiker food, cold drinks, a bathroom, shower, news, mail from home and other necessities a modern through- hiker needs these days to keep body and soul together is roughly at the foot of the 5,835-foot Mount Sterling at Waterville.
As the Appalachian Trail pounders emerge from the trail from Davenport Gap, they bounce out onto the road in the Mount Sterling community beside Deep Creek, at Progress Energy's Walters Plant that towers over the Pigeon River. The store is a couple of miles down the road on Deep Creek.
The mountain stone and wood building is also where Abigail the dog and Ugly the cat hang out on the front steps to welcome visitors. Well, Abigail handles the welcoming committee. Ugly stretches out in a chair chiseled from a stump, warily eyes those who arrive and promptly goes back to sleep.
Mountain Moma's has become a combination refuge, country store, mail pickup, and a source of food, news and some really good life instructions from Caroline Thigpen, 60, the woman of the house who treats everyone who enters as if they were one of hers.
And in a sense, they are.
In the winter of 1992, their very first customer was a shivering, cold, hungry hiker who wandered in off the trail like some ghostly apparition.
"I didn't even know there was a trail going from Georgia to Maine," says Caroline as she watches a couple of through-hikers wolf down one of her famous cheeseburgers. Make no mistake, the cheeseburgers are known far and wide. They are the size of platters, loaded with lettuce, onions and tomatoes. And it does require two good hands to handle them.
"I didn't have a kitchen then. That hiker told me he was cold and hungry, so I just cooked him something."
At the time, Mountain Moma's was a store with the usual store items. Caroline and John, 64, lived in the back of the store, as they do now.
Today, Mountain Moma's is known for its kitchen where Dee Dee Johnson runs things at the stove seven days a week. Mountain Moma's is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but the kitchen closes at 5 p.m. when Dee Dee calls it a day.
Mountain Moma's is open from March through the end of October, but the Appalachian Trail months are generally from March through May with the thousands of hikers doing the trail. There are few days in those months when Mountain Moma's isn't busy.
The Appalachian Trail starts in Springer Mountain in Georgia and winds 2,160 miles across the Blue Ridge Mountains into Maine's Mount Katahdin, the trail's northern terminus. Like great mountains, the trail is the challenge for hikers.
Most serious hikers take 5-7 months to walk the entire length. Some never make it, dropping out, victims of the trail's rugged mountainous terrain, weather, exhaustion or nerves. Many start with do-or-die bravado, filled with adventure, and come to know themselves a little better on the personal journey.
On this day in Mountain Moma's, Michael Langan, a lanky 53-year- old with an earring, and Dan Rothenberger, 48, have just plunged into Mountain Moma's. This is a first Appalachian Trail trek for both.
Langan, of Hartford, Conn., is an experienced hiker, but Rothenberger says, "I'm doing this just off the couch." He looks worn, but he is a former Marine helicopter pilot and figured he was up to the challenge.
"I had 11 zero days to start," he says with a sheepish smile. Translation: that means his first 11 days were spent either lounging in camp or in his tent. He didn't take the first step out on the trail.
"It was either the weather, or I was just too lazy to go," says Rothenberger, of Brewster, Mass. He says his only preparation for the hike was to do about two years of research on the Internet, reading and some planning. But, he admits that he "just put on my backpack and walked out the door." So far, he has lost about 20 pounds.
As the two men ease into chairs at a table, Dee Dee hauls out two paper plates that bend on the edges from the weight of the food. The cheeseburgers dwarf the plates, which are also crowded with French fries the size of large pickles.
"I feed people something that will fill them up," says Caroline, sitting in a nearby booth. She knows that most of the hikers on the trail don't get their veggies, so, like a good mother, she layers lots of lettuce and onions on the cheeseburger.
Langan says he hopes to finish the Appalachian Trail by mid- September. Rothenberger will be satisfied to get to Mount Katahdin before it closes for the winter.
After that first hiker staggered through in the winter of '92, Caroline says, a few days later, five or six more tramped in. Then 12 or more. That's when she decided she would open the kitchen and start cooking and providing for the hikers.
Today, Mountain Moma's is in many of the hiking books and trail guides as the place to stop when doing the Appalachian Trail through the Smokies, just before going on into the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.
In the past, Mountain Moma's was open through the winter, but last winter, John became seriously ill with a heart problem. They shut down the end of October and did not open again until March. And that gave Caroline and John the idea it was time to slow down a bit.
"We have decided that we need to stop and smell the roses," says Caroline. "John was very sick, and I tell you, that would be the end of me if something happened to him. He is my life. I married him when I was 17 years old. We grew up together."
Caroline and John have two grown daughters and eight grandchildren. When they married more than four decades ago, they joked that John would work the first 25 years, and Caroline would work the second 25. And that is the way it is working out.
She runs Mountain Moma's and let's John "fish and visit his friends." But, it was John who named the store. It was just Mountain Moma's from the start.
"Me and John aren't nothing fancy, but we don't try to be. We just try to make you feel welcome when you come, and if you give us half a chance, we will."
- - - -
Hiker haven; Mountain Moma's nourishes trail's tired bodies, souls
BY FRED BROWN
April 25, 2004
The Knoxville News-Sentinel (http://mail.yahoo.com/config/login?/_javascript:NewWindow( 'FIISrcDetails','?from=article&ids=kxvl');void(0);)
WATERVILLE, N.C. -- Caroline Thigpen and her husband, John, didn't know the first thing about hiking when they opened Mountain Moma's about 14 years ago.
But it didn't take them long to discover that their old stone store was situated on the snaky line of the Appalachian Trail where it leaves Tennessee and enters North Carolina. The transposed Floridians knew something was up because of the bedraggled, sweat- salt-stained backpackers who marched up to their front door looking for water, food, nourishment, a friend.
They found all of that and more at Mountain Moma's.
Caroline and John were frequent vacationers to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Jacksonville, Fla. From their many visits, they learned to love the mountains of western North Carolina and East Tennessee.
In 1991, the numbers 321, 32 and 40 drew them like some sort of lotto number. Those are highway numbers around and through the mountains, so they decided to see what was on the other side of the hill, around the next bend.
"We had never driven the highways of (U.S.) 321, (State Route) 32 or (Interstate) 40. So, we started out that day and as we rounded that curve right there," says Caroline, "John said, 'Look at that.' "
"That" was a dilapidated stone building. The wooden parts of the structure were falling in. But John saw something, and it just wasn't the "for sale" sign above the door.
"I'm going to buy that and move you up here," he told his wife of 43 years. They did, and the rest of the story has become part of hiking lore and legend. Mountain Moma's has become a way station on the Appalachian Trail.
The store, jam packed with hiker food, cold drinks, a bathroom, shower, news, mail from home and other necessities a modern through- hiker needs these days to keep body and soul together is roughly at the foot of the 5,835-foot Mount Sterling at Waterville.
As the Appalachian Trail pounders emerge from the trail from Davenport Gap, they bounce out onto the road in the Mount Sterling community beside Deep Creek, at Progress Energy's Walters Plant that towers over the Pigeon River. The store is a couple of miles down the road on Deep Creek.
The mountain stone and wood building is also where Abigail the dog and Ugly the cat hang out on the front steps to welcome visitors. Well, Abigail handles the welcoming committee. Ugly stretches out in a chair chiseled from a stump, warily eyes those who arrive and promptly goes back to sleep.
Mountain Moma's has become a combination refuge, country store, mail pickup, and a source of food, news and some really good life instructions from Caroline Thigpen, 60, the woman of the house who treats everyone who enters as if they were one of hers.
And in a sense, they are.
In the winter of 1992, their very first customer was a shivering, cold, hungry hiker who wandered in off the trail like some ghostly apparition.
"I didn't even know there was a trail going from Georgia to Maine," says Caroline as she watches a couple of through-hikers wolf down one of her famous cheeseburgers. Make no mistake, the cheeseburgers are known far and wide. They are the size of platters, loaded with lettuce, onions and tomatoes. And it does require two good hands to handle them.
"I didn't have a kitchen then. That hiker told me he was cold and hungry, so I just cooked him something."
At the time, Mountain Moma's was a store with the usual store items. Caroline and John, 64, lived in the back of the store, as they do now.
Today, Mountain Moma's is known for its kitchen where Dee Dee Johnson runs things at the stove seven days a week. Mountain Moma's is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., but the kitchen closes at 5 p.m. when Dee Dee calls it a day.
Mountain Moma's is open from March through the end of October, but the Appalachian Trail months are generally from March through May with the thousands of hikers doing the trail. There are few days in those months when Mountain Moma's isn't busy.
The Appalachian Trail starts in Springer Mountain in Georgia and winds 2,160 miles across the Blue Ridge Mountains into Maine's Mount Katahdin, the trail's northern terminus. Like great mountains, the trail is the challenge for hikers.
Most serious hikers take 5-7 months to walk the entire length. Some never make it, dropping out, victims of the trail's rugged mountainous terrain, weather, exhaustion or nerves. Many start with do-or-die bravado, filled with adventure, and come to know themselves a little better on the personal journey.
On this day in Mountain Moma's, Michael Langan, a lanky 53-year- old with an earring, and Dan Rothenberger, 48, have just plunged into Mountain Moma's. This is a first Appalachian Trail trek for both.
Langan, of Hartford, Conn., is an experienced hiker, but Rothenberger says, "I'm doing this just off the couch." He looks worn, but he is a former Marine helicopter pilot and figured he was up to the challenge.
"I had 11 zero days to start," he says with a sheepish smile. Translation: that means his first 11 days were spent either lounging in camp or in his tent. He didn't take the first step out on the trail.
"It was either the weather, or I was just too lazy to go," says Rothenberger, of Brewster, Mass. He says his only preparation for the hike was to do about two years of research on the Internet, reading and some planning. But, he admits that he "just put on my backpack and walked out the door." So far, he has lost about 20 pounds.
As the two men ease into chairs at a table, Dee Dee hauls out two paper plates that bend on the edges from the weight of the food. The cheeseburgers dwarf the plates, which are also crowded with French fries the size of large pickles.
"I feed people something that will fill them up," says Caroline, sitting in a nearby booth. She knows that most of the hikers on the trail don't get their veggies, so, like a good mother, she layers lots of lettuce and onions on the cheeseburger.
Langan says he hopes to finish the Appalachian Trail by mid- September. Rothenberger will be satisfied to get to Mount Katahdin before it closes for the winter.
After that first hiker staggered through in the winter of '92, Caroline says, a few days later, five or six more tramped in. Then 12 or more. That's when she decided she would open the kitchen and start cooking and providing for the hikers.
Today, Mountain Moma's is in many of the hiking books and trail guides as the place to stop when doing the Appalachian Trail through the Smokies, just before going on into the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.
In the past, Mountain Moma's was open through the winter, but last winter, John became seriously ill with a heart problem. They shut down the end of October and did not open again until March. And that gave Caroline and John the idea it was time to slow down a bit.
"We have decided that we need to stop and smell the roses," says Caroline. "John was very sick, and I tell you, that would be the end of me if something happened to him. He is my life. I married him when I was 17 years old. We grew up together."
Caroline and John have two grown daughters and eight grandchildren. When they married more than four decades ago, they joked that John would work the first 25 years, and Caroline would work the second 25. And that is the way it is working out.
She runs Mountain Moma's and let's John "fish and visit his friends." But, it was John who named the store. It was just Mountain Moma's from the start.
"Me and John aren't nothing fancy, but we don't try to be. We just try to make you feel welcome when you come, and if you give us half a chance, we will."
- - - -