Go Know!

The last 24 hours have been filled with stories, and there’s a reason for that.  We are in Jonesborough,  the oldest town in Tennessee and the home of the National Storytelling Festival. For the last 41 years, the best storytellers in the country and beyond gather here one weekend in October for the listening pleasure of about 6 or 7,000 people descending on this town of 3,000.  Continue reading “Everybody has a story”

Before I comment on the exciting adventures of the day, some unfinished business about Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Dollywood is actually a classy place, in its own way.  But oh lordy, the main strip in town – which is actually about three miles from the park – is like nothing we have ever seen.  It is jam-packed with hotels – some you have heard of, and others just reaching out and screaming for your attention.  The selection of theme lodgings is unbelievable.  Would your interests include: King Kong; year-round Christmas; Jurassic Park; year-round Halloween; the Amish; the Titanic; medieval times; teddy bears; Bible stories; the Hatfields and McCoys?  Well then, just pick one and Pigeon Forge has a hotel right for you.  I guess this was good training for Vegas, coming up this weekend.Continue reading “A dream fulfilled”

Yes,  here we are in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and yes, we have succumbed to the charms of Dolly Parton and the overwhelming sweetness of Dollywood.  It prides itself on being “friendly” and we began to realize what a serious statement that was.  (And how important that is to the people who come to Dollywood.) Here, they really go out of their way to make sure you have everything you need to have a good time.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it. And yes, we have been to the happiest place on earth.  Guess this is the friendliest.Continue reading “Our day at Dollywood”

A day of real contrasts.  We started by driving past Knoxville to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  The Visitors’ Center was closed as of today, thanks to those folks in Congress whose name evokes a hot beverage.  We were very lucky to still find some toilet paper in the restrooms further up on the mountain.  Seriously, tomorrow would have been too late.Continue reading “The top – and the bottom – of Old Smokey”

We always go for the things that are the most-est, the tallest, the biggest, so we naturally had to go see the highest waterfall east of the Rockies. Here, in a wonderful gorge in the Tennessee mountains, we got to marvel at this site.

Continue reading “The forces of nature”

The Hunter Art Museum in Chattanooga has an old and a new side.  The old side was a mansion owned by a very clever man who went to Atlanta and talked the founder of Coca-Cola into selling the bottling rights to Coke, for which he paid the grand sum of $1.  The inventor thought he’d made an easy buck, because how the heck was that guy going to put tiny little bubbles in a bottle?  Well, the rest is history, with a mansion to prove that it all worked out just fine.Continue reading “Art and nature”

Remember yesterday in Lynchburg?  Well, we started our day up the road a piece in Cascade Hollow, where one finds the George Dickel distillery.  After all, if one distillery tour is good, two must be fabulous, says Don. Now George Dickel’s Tennessee Sipping Whisky (sic) may not be as well-known as Jack Daniel’s, and they may not merchandise themselves quite so cleverly.  However, they do strongly feel that “if you only know Jack, you don’t know Dickel.”  They share this sentiment in the men’s room, and on t-shirts.  Yes, we now have one, along with some of their premium whisky, so I guess they’re doing something right.  Continue reading “Hear that whistle blowing?”

The Battle of Shiloh.  A bloody fight that cost over 23,000 lives in two days of intense struggle that were extremely important as the war moved on from that April, 1862, encounter.  The first day, the Confederate Army was convinced they had a total victory, and could protect their important rail lines at nearby Corinth, where we stayed last night.  But the second day, Union reinforcements allowed U.S. Grant to turn defeat into a Union victory, though at a terrible cost of lives on both sides.  In fact, the South lost its best general there, General Albert Sidney Johnston.Continue reading “War and Peace”

Things like this are happening a lot.  Just after leaving Muscle Shoals, we see that a documentary is being released today about the famous music studio and the area.

The New York Times is not so fond of it (http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/09/27/movies/muscle-shoals-directed-by-greg-camalier.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0) but Entertainment Weekly loved it.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/09/26/muscle-shoals-aretha-franklin-video/

Spooky….

Today had a definite theme. We started out in the middle of the woods somewhere in Tennessee at the Coon Dog Cemetery. Yes, we were privileged to see the one and only place in the world where coon dogs are properly honored. This was a touching site, and we had it all to ourselves. Continue reading “Coon dogs, hound dogs and hot dogs”