April 05, 2011 journal, a major storm through the night swells the river and leveled trees. Power went off in the hotel for hours and I was caught without a flashlight so in absolute darkness where I could not find the bathroom. This morning the ducks were lined on the swollen river as if they were protecting the hotel from the wild surging river. They come for feeding and some stay for the next feeding. They all have different personalities like people and some of them are very bossy toward their fellow ducks. We now traveled on 441 through Cherokee north to cross the mountain but it was snowing so we turned back around and took Highway 19 east to Maggie Valley to find a big sign across the road closed due to the many trees down across it. Many cars went around the sign and we finally did to overtake the last roadblock near Maggie Valley where they were finishing clearing the road. With 276 to I-40 West to Newport and 411 West to Severeville then down to Pigeon Forge. Checking in at a Comfort Inn on the main drag which appeared to be American-owned but turns out to be Indian like 90 percent of the hotel's are Indian owned from India. Very soon the phone rang and we were ordered to move our vehicle to the other side of the parking lot because they were pressure washing the building. I said we would not have checked in here had we known you were pressure washing and while I appreciate concern for the car, I am more concerned about dirty water dripping down on my head. A few minutes later the desk called to say they had cancelled washing. This hotel needed lots of things but washing it with a pressure washer was not necessary. Traffic was heavy but the hotels were basically empty. By now the news was out that the City of Gatlinburg had a major sewer spill when the rising water broke down a wall and dumped a million gallons of raw sewage into the Little Tennessee River. We went to the outlet mall but very few stores were still there. Old-Time Pottery is still closed since their fire and the main buildings had very few stores left open for business. The food court was closed. I would guess there is 500,000 sq. ft. of retail mall space vacant. There appear to be about 7-10 stores left open in the mall and the original strip mall was also gutted from their original stores. The specialty shops and the strip mall across from the mall appeared more occupied. Entertainment wise Pigeon Forge is becoming a mecca moving out the cows and putting in modern theaters even a replica of the Titanic which seemed full up. There are plenty of new hotels high-rises on this side that mountain built modern style. As we left town going back east on the beautiful 411 highway to Newport we came upon a serious accident by a tractor-trailer truck having left the monstrosity Bush Beans factory with a load of Bush dog food had failed to make a curve in the cravey area where the road is imbalanced and not swaying in the right direction for 50,000 lbs. of a truck. The semi was completely turned over and bright yellow dog food bags were thrown all over every where. We were fortunate to get past that wreak to stop at Ruby Tuesday's soup & salad. "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploit-ed proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." John Steinbeck. "Over the last 35 years, there's been an abrupt shift: Total growth has slowed marginally, but the real change has been in how the results of that growth are distributed. Now, the bottom 90 percent have seen their income rise only by a tiny fraction of total growth, while income for the richest % has exploded by upwards of 275 percent. One can argue about why this. Some say it's the result of a decline in workers' bargaining power while others blame the rise of off-shoring and outsourcing. No debate about the realignment of income in our age: The already super-rich have vastly increased their share-at the expense of all others".