I've taken on this particular task, and have so far been to "hiking" stores in Cashiers and Highlands that were completely barren, an "outdoors outfitter" in Sylva that had five, and a similar store in Bryson City that had two (but better ones). We already had a couple up at the department, so that's probably enough: but we may all have to share the same gridding overlay.
Today while I was in Bryson City I ate at the worst 'Italian' restaurant I have ever encountered. I'll avoid giving out the name, but it's the only Italian restaurant in Bryson City. Western North Carolina has much to recommend it, but not its take on ethnic food. The tendency is to strip out every kind of spice,. reducing to the absolute basic ingredients. 'Mexican' food -- if you don't go to the increasingly common taco trucks run by actual Mexicans -- is likely to be meat, beans, cheese and sour cream, plus tortillas, with no spice of any kind beyond salt and maybe black pepper. (Especially near and over the Virginia border, there's a local 'white sauce' that is truly horrendous.)
Now just to be clear. this only bothers me when it's presented as something it's not. There's a restaurant down the street called The Iron Skillet whose flavor profile is more or less exactly the same. It's fine. You can get pork chops (seasoned with white flour, salt and pepper), bacon, eggs, gravy, and it's authentic home cooking. Nothing wrong with the food not being spicy; and the local cuisine is just not. What bothers me is going into a "Mexican" restaurant or an "Italian" restaurant and receiving something that is very much not.
In this case, the food was also bad. The black bean soup I had was literally just black beans from a can, heated in water, with plain white rice and a dollop of sour cream added. This was followed by 'chicken parmigiana,' which was clearly a frozen patty they bought somewhere and reheated, served with overcooked spaghetti and what tasted exactly like Ragu spaghetti sauce on top of it.
It was terrible, but because I weigh 240 pounds and am a Strongman competitor I ate every last bite of it, desperately needing the protein and calories by lunchtime. The waiter kept commenting on how much I must be enjoying the food since I was demolishing it as fast as he put it in front of me. I didn't have the heart to tell him.
There is at least one exception on the 'ethnic food in Western North Carolina' rule. There is -- for Mike G, or others who may be passing through the area -- a fantastic Thai restaurant by the railroad tracks between Sylva and Dillsboro. The lady who owns and runs it is really from Thailand. It's amazing, but order at least two dishes because her idea about the amount of food a man needs at a meal is honestly Southeast Asian. So is her cooking, though, so spring for the pair.
There are also some great native Western North Carolina restaurants in Dillsboro, including especially the Heywood Smokehouse. The local barbecue is great, maybe as good as barbecue is anywhere. Nothing wrong with the local cuisine when they're making their own food.
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What is a map overlay?
So, instead of using latitude and longitude, the fire service has adopted the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) used by NATO. As a result, coordinates are given in an eight digit grid, which will get you within ten meters of your target if you navigate correctly. In Iraq, we used to use ten digit grids, which would get the mortar or artillery you were calling in to within a meter of its target -- a nice extra degree of accuracy if you're calling fire on a force you're in contact with already. For fire service purposes, our wilderness equipment isn't precise enough for that. Even at eight digits, it's just the starting point from which you'll conduct the search.
The overlay is scaled to a standard 1:24,000 topographic map, so that if you lay it over the map in line with the base grid it will let you calculate the finer position given by the eight digits. You can then mark it on the map with a pencil, and use your baseplate compass to navigate to it.
Interesting. All the orienting I have done is to find where I was, not to find others. IE, take a bearing, correct for magnetic deviation, take another, triangulate.
That part is obviously still important. You need to be able to orient yourself to the map and the map to the landscape. That gives your starting point. This other bit is another way of identifying your ending point. You may have to re-orient several times if landscape features force you to off your intended bearing, which is very likely in these mountains.
Way back -- way WAY back -- at Fort Hood TX.
Long story short, then, a Killeen Domino's Pizza would take orders for and arrange delivery to a customer in the field based on the grid co-ords.
I wouldn't like to swear that is still the case.
Wouldn't USFS maps have the grid squares?
I've eaten at the Heywood Smokehouse. It was pretty good. Not a fan of Asian food so never been to the Thai place.
Great story, JM.
Mike, they do have the base grid. To get to the eight digit grid, which would be a grid line every ten meters, you use an overlay. This is for paper maps. If you use a program like CALTOPO, the grid is already there and will expand as necessary as you zoom in or out.
IF the restaurant is run by people of the actual ethnicity of the food, you should talk to them before ordering about what's actually authentic on the menu, or what you can get off menu that is more authentic. My late uncle rarely ate non-Chinese food, because he wanted it, and could find it almost anywhere in the world. He just talked to the staff and got what he wanted, never mind the menu.
Yeah, there's some good taco trucks run by some of the Mexicans who've shipped up here. And there really is one good Mexican place, kind of California style, in the area. It's a chain called Papas & Beer, with spinoffs called Mamas & Beer and Fajitas & Beer. They're all good.
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