I am located in the upper East Tennessee area. I personally love it! It does keep a person in shape 😉 The mountains are sometimes very steep and sometimes more like rolling hills, but never flat land. Very rarely can GPS be utilized on the jobs I do, which is primarily boundary work in the middle of God's beautiful country. I work with a conventional total station. I can completely relate to setting up the instrument where I'm sitting on the ground on one side of the gun, and on my tiptoes on the other. FUN TIMES!!! It keeps things interesting 🙂 In the warm months, you have to deal with the usual irritants like ticks, mosquitos, pack saddles, and snakes (poisonous ones around here are rattlers and copperheads). I do carry a gun when I'm in more remote areas because of wild hogs, bears, coyotes, bobcats, etc., but I have been blessed to not run into anything that didn't run away from us first. The underbrush areas with briar, laurel and such can be a real pain, but many times the wooded areas do not have thick underbrush and you can get a decent line of sight. A traverse point at 200 feet is GREAT with the terrain, trees, etc (that's without thick underbrush). I do try to stay out of the woods on days with high winds. There are too many widow makers waiting to take someone out (dead trees standing). A good part of the time, we carry our lunch and drinks with us to keep from walking up and down a mountain for 30 minutes to an hour just to get back to the truck. I see many beautiful places almost daily and no two places look the same. I take pictures on a regular basis to show my kids ... "Look where I got to work today. Isn't it gorgeous!" 😀 The mountains, the streams, the hollows, the ridges. I traveled many places while serving in the US Air Force, and I've always thought East Tennessee was one of the most beautiful places on earth. Now I get paid to enjoy that beauty. If you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life 🙂
