Friday, August 19

This was our last full day of the trip.  We spent a quiet morning doing one last load of laundry, watching Olympic golf and playing on our computers.  At lunchtime we went to Uncle Bud's Catfish, Chicken and Such on the recommendation of our friends Barb and Bob.  This is truly a "local dive" with paper towels for napkins and lots of regulars.  We had the fried oysters and catfish.  Everything comes with cole slaw, beans and hush puppies and very friendly service.  Then we were off to see The Hermitage, which was the home of Andrew  Jackson.  Oh my, is that one beautiful and huge house.  Since it is located a fair ways from Nashville, especially in the 1830's when it could take 5 or 6 hours to travel there, many of their guests spent days with the family when they visited.  Some spent months!  They had 2 guest bedrooms with only 3 beds among them so you had to be prepared to share the bed with 1 or even 2 others if the house was full.  Apparently Jackson was the third richest former president when he died, after Washington and Kennedy.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and finishing up the food we had left over, which made for an interesting dinner.  Tomorrow we say so long to Tennessee.  It's been a fun and educational trip and I have a much more positive opinion of Tennessee and the south in general.

Thursday, August 18

Today was another Civil War battlefield day.  This time we went south to the town of Murfreesboro where the Battle of Stones River was fought December 31, 1862 - January 2, 1863.  This was another bloody battle with about 23,500 casualties.  This is also a National Park Service location and they have a nice Visitor Center but there weren't any tours. We went to the National Cemetery where about 6,100 Union soldiers are buried, about 2,500 of whom are unknown.  All of these unknown soldiers got us to wondering when military dog tags came into use.  According to various sources, some Civil War soldiers made their own as it became known that many bodies were not able to be identified, but the US Military didn't start issuing them until around 1906 or so.

We ate lunch at Demo's which was recommended by our shuttle bus driver the other day.  I had catfish and red rice and beans, both of which were delicious.  Michael was less pleased with his pasta in brown butter and garlic.

A couple of observations over out time here:  gas is anywhere from $1.72 to $2.18 per gallon.  I think it was $2.49 when we left home.  And there are lots of churches in the south and we'd guess that at least 80% of them are Baptist, all of which are large and many of which are HUGE.  It's true what we've heard; Southerners are very friendly.

Wednesday, August 17

Today was one of the best of the trip.  We took a tour down to the town of Franklin where arguably the worst battle of the Civil War was fought.  On November 30, 1864, 20,000 Union soldiers fought 20,000 Confederate soldiers in a horrific hand to hand combat for 5 hours from 4-9 pm (in the dark obviously) which resulted in 10,000 casualties (2,000 dead, 7,000 injured and 1,000 missing).  This battle was fought just outside the town of Franklin which had 750 people at the time.  Every possible building in the area was turned into a field hospital and some of the soldiers were there for 7 months.  The tour first stopped at the Carter House which was right in the center of the fighting.  The Carter family hid in the basement along with their neighbors.  There were 28 people hiding in one room for many hours including many young children and some slaves.  The house and outbuilding walls still have the bullet and canon ball holes.  Then we went to the Lotz House across the street.  This house took several direct hits by canon balls and you can see the patches in the floor.  Lotz was a German wood craftsman who had built the house himself and he knew a wood building would suffer great damage in the battle so he took his family to his neighbors, the Carters, to hide in their stone basement.  And finally we went to the Carnton Plantation which is a magnificent house a mile south of town that was not in the midst of the fighting, but was turned into a Confederate field hospital for about 300 soldiers.  After the war Mr. McGavock, the owner, donated 2 acres to be used as a Confederate cemetery.  About 1,500 bodies were exhumed from their hurried shallow burial spots and buried properly here.  At least one third of them were never identified.  In all 3 of these homes you can still see the blood stains in the wood floors especially near the windows, where the surgeons operated, and near the fireplaces where the wounded gathered for warmth.  The guides were excellent telling the stories of these 3 families and what that day was like for them.  On the drive back the driver showed a video documentary about the remains of a Civil War soldier which were found in Franklin in 2009 during a construction project.  The town got together and arranged a full military funeral in the style of the day and buried the unknown soldier in the town cemetery.  They don't know whether he was from the North or the South, but that didn't matter.  Each of these stories was very touching and the guides really put a human face on the terrible events of that day.

We also learned a lot about life in those days.  A couple of things stand out.  First the expression "sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite" refers to the ropes that held up the mattresses and had to be tightened periodically with a special tool.  And secondly, at that time young boys in portraits often had long hair, sometimes with curls, and even wore dresses.  You could tell it was a boy because the hair would be parted on the side whereas girls' hair was parted in the middle. Boys didn't get to wear long pants, or "britches", until about age 10 or so.

We didn't get home from the tour until about 5:00 pm so we just went to the Kroger and bought a roasted chicken and salads for dinner.

Tuesday, August 16

Today was a pretty quiet day.  We hung around the unit catching up on computer stuff and reading most of the day.  We ventured out for lunch at Chuy's, a Mexican restaurant nearby which is one of a chain and quite good.  It's located in the Opry Mall which is about a mile from us and right next to the Grand Ole Opry, so we walked around the mall after lunch.  The highlight for Michael was the huge Bass Pro Shop where he spent a while in the fly fishing section.

The main activity of the day was our evening at the Grand Ole Opry.  We took the shuttle from the resort so as not to have to figure out parking, which was a good decision.  It was quite an interesting experience.  The theater holds over 4,700 and it was sold out.  They only have shows 3 days a week.  In the 2 hour show (2 shows each night) there were about 7 acts, most singing only 3 songs, with commercial breaks in between since this is actually a radio show as well.  The headliner for this show was Keith Urban.  Our only complaint was that, as often happens with live shows, we couldn't hear the lyrics for most of the songs.  When we got home, out of curiosity we tuned into the radio show for the second show of the evening and the singer was quite clear as if on a recording.

Monday, August 15

This morning we did another load of laundry - love having the washer/dryer right in the units.  We took the resort's shuttle to downtown Nashville, about a 25 minute drive.  It dropped us near the convention center in the middle of town.  We headed to the Johnny Cash Museum which was very interesting.  It had lots of mementos, music, movie shorts and clothes worn by Johnny and June at performances.  I didn't know that he recorded over 1,500 songs.  Then, on the recommendation of the concierge here, we went to Southern restaurant for lunch.  We paid for it with the AMEX card from Wyndham, as well as the entry fee to our next stop at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum.  Again this was pretty interesting.  They have the gold plated Cadillac limousine which belonged to Elvis as well as the gold plated piano that Priscilla gave him on their first anniversary.  Actually, it was his piano already, she just had it plated in gold as a gift.

As it has been this whole trip, it was very hot and humid so we didn't do much more walking around town.  We caught the shuttle back to the resort and headed for the pool.

Sunday, August 14

Today was moving day and we left Fairfield Glade around 9:30 for the 2+ hour drive to Nashville which was a nice drive through the beautiful Tennessee hills.  We took Interstate 40 since that's the most direct route, but I really hate the Tennessee drivers who tailgate within a couple of car lengths at speeds of 65-70.  Made for a nerve-wracking drive.  We are now at the Wyndham Resort in Nashville, which is about 10 minutes east of town right near the Grand Ole Opry.  We agreed to do a lunchtime owners update again because they were offering a $125 American Express card as the gift.  The 75 minute update turned into more like 2 hours because we got to talking with our salesman and a supervisor, whose parents live in Bend, which was fun.  But then the sales pressure began.  We were strong and didn't buy anything again.  Next we headed to the local Kroger store to get a few supplies.  Like Oregon, you can now buy wine and beer in the grocery stores, but no hard liquor.  Back at the unit we opened a bottle of wine and had frozen pizza and salad again for dinner.  We're getting into a rut.

This is another very nice unit, a large 1 bedroom deluxe.

Saturday, August 13

Today we drove about 100 miles south to the Chickamauga, Georgia battlefield of the Civil War.  This is just a little bit south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Again I'm struck by the beautiful green hills of Tennessee.  This national park is a memorial to one of the worst battles of the Civil War.  We stopped at the Visitor Center and learned that one of the Rangers would be doing a tour shortly about prisoners of war.  He led a caravan of about a dozen cars and made stops at 5 places in the park to tell us about 5 individual prisoners.  It was a very different tour, but quite effective.  I hadn't really thought about POWs from the Civil War, but he had really done his research and told very effective stories about these prisoners.  Interestingly in the early days of the war there was an agreement that prisoners would be exchanged with the other side and then they would be returned to the war.  Often they were processed and then sent home to wait for their paperwork telling them to report to their unit.  Not surprisingly many soldiers chose to surrender rather than be shot believing they would have a nice rest at home before continuing on with the war.  That worked for a while until the agreement was changed because the Confederacy wasn't returning the black soldiers.  Instead they claimed that they were runaways and therefore the property of the south and were kept and imprisoned or put back into slavery.  The Union said that was not the agreement and stopped the exchange program. The soldiers captured at the battle of Chickamauga from September 19-21, 1863 were caught in this change of rules and, instead of going home as they expected, were sent to terrible prisons where as many as 25% of the prisoners died of disease or starvation.

After the tour we spent some time at the Visitor Center where there is an extensive gun collection which Michael enjoyed.

Again we got a little lost in a sketchy part of Chattanooga on the way back since the highways go right through town, but we eventually figured it out and made our way home.  Dinner was back at the Legends restaurant where we had the Italian buffet on Thursday because we still had a credit balance on the gift card from our owners update.  Tonight they had a special $21.95 prime rib dinner and the soup, salad and side dishes could be ordered separately for just $9.95 so two could split the large piece of prime rib, which is what we did.  The prime rib was great so it was a good deal.  For an hour of our time listening to the low pressure timeshare presentation, we got 3 meals which was well worth it.

Tomorrow we head for the last stop in Nashville.

Friday, August 12

This morning after our "owner update" we headed about 50 miles east for Oak Ridge and the American Museum of Science and Energy that explains the work that was done there during WWII as part of the Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear bomb.  A facility to make the nuclear materials and a city to house 3,000 workers originally, was built in a few months.  Over the 3 years from 1942 to 1945, it grew to 7,500 workers almost all of whom didn't know what they were actually doing.  They only knew they were helping the war effort and that they couldn't talk about it with anyone, even co-workers.  Women were trained to watch various gauges and make adjustments if they got out of a certain range, but they didn't know why or what they were doing.

Then a quick bite to eat at Wendy's and off to the Norris Dam where Michael thought there was a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) museum.  Turns out it was just a visitor center at the dam, but it was manned by a couple who were retired from the TVA and were quite entertaining with their stories and information about the dam and the TVA in general.

We decided to take smaller roads back home rather than the interstate we took to get there.  The map we have is not very good and so we took a couple of wrong turns in our quest to go through the town of Rocky Top (Michael wanted to say he'd been there) on our way.  After about 5 miles in the wrong direction, we got it straightened out and then ran into a major accident that shut down the road.  Another detour and we finally got back to the interstate only about 12 miles from where we had exited earlier in the day.  Ah well, at least we saw some of the back country.  Tennessee is really a beautiful state, I just with the drivers were better.  We watched agog as a huge semi-trailer clearly ran a red light right before our eyes.  Thank goodness no one was in a hurry going the other way.  This was just the worst of the red-light runners we've witnessed so I've learned to count to at least 3 before going on a green.

Our "gift" for going to the update was a $75 gift card that we could use at various businesses nearby so we used part of it for dinner at another golf course restaurant, Stonehenge.  Fried pickle appetizer (better than it sounds), caesar salad and deep fried shrimp and chips were pretty good.  Including 2 beers and tip the total was only $27 so the price was great.  Restaurant prices are very reasonable here.

Thursday, August 11

Today was check-out of the Wyndham Smoky Mountain resort day so we packed up our clothes and the remaining food and checked out at 10:00 am and stayed in the lobby of the resort for an hour or so reading until it was time to leave for a tour of the Wheatlands Plantation which is about 12 miles northwest on Boyd's Creek Highway and was built in 1825.  The original house built in 1812 burned down when 3 of the daughters took a slave girl up to the attic to teach her to read and lit a lantern which turned over and started a fire.  The plantation was built by the Chandler family and has a very interesting history.  Our tour guide, Richard, and his partner, John, bought the place about 10 years ago and set about restoring it.  They have a journal written by a family member from the 1870's until 1945 so they know a lot about the workings and history of the plantation.  The tour was recommended on TripAdvisor and we're glad we did it.

Then we headed off to our next timeshare resort at Wyndham Fairfield Glade near Crossville, a few miles off of Interstate 40.  This is a very large resort that is in the midst of a residential area with a few golf courses and a few lakes with marinas and boat rentals.  We have a 1 BR deluxe unit and again it is very large.  There's a separate room with a very large whirlpool tub besides the regular size bathroom with tub/shower.

We had dinner at one of the golf course restaurants, Legends, that was having an Italian night buffet for $12.95.  The food was OK, worth the price, but nothing special.

Everyone we have run into on this trip has been so friendly, and not just those who deal with tourists that you would expect to be friendly as part of their job.  We did the "owner update" here and our salesperson told us that they see a lot of people who move to Florida from the north to get away from the winters, but then get tired of the "same old, same old" weather so they move a little bit north to get some seasons, but not too much of the winter.  The locals call them "half backs" because they've moved halfway back home.

Wednesday, August 10

Today we took a drive east towards Newport - nothing special to see, just a country drive.  Along the way in the town of Chestnut Hill we came across the Bush's Baked Beans factory.  They have a museum so we stopped.  It was actually pretty interesting with a short movie about the history of the company (founded in 1908) and how their factory works.  There was also an extensive display of their history through the decades with original products and machinery.  They used to can all sorts of fruits and vegetables, but in 1990 decided to focus solely on baked beans.   From there we just took country roads.  These were mostly 2 lane roads with no shoulder that meandered through the hills.  The speed limit was always about 5-10 mules faster than I thought was safe since there were driveways and blind hills but the locals were comfortable enough to ride my tail all the time.  At the few passing opportunities they never did.

We put just under 11 gallons of gas into the car at a Kroger store - $1.76 a gallon after three 3 cent discount. 

We stopped again at Holstons for a beer and a Margarita with the fried green tomatoes appetizer.  Then a quiet evening eating up the little remaining food we had and watching the Olympic games.

Tuesday, August 9

Today we decided to get a paper map of East Tennessee rather than rely on our phone maps or the silly shopping maps they hand out everywhere.  Walmart didn't have one so we headed off to Knoxville and figured to find one on the way, which we did just outside of town.  Michael directed us all around in search of a nice neighborhood, which we never found.  We took a slow scenic way back to Sevierville and had our usual mid afternoon meal at Holstons Kitchen.  The hamburger and onion rings for me and meatloaf for Michael were OK, not great.  We spent a little time at one of the resort's two indoor pools since there were too many noisy kids at the outdoor pool.  Tonight is a small frozen pizza and the Olympics.

Monday, August 8

Michael had a sleep in this morning, so we got a late start.  After breakfast we headed for the Smoky Mountain National Park and the Cades Cove Loop drive.  This is one of the few National Parks that don't charge an admission because of an agreement with North Carolina when the park was established.  The drive is beautiful with stops along the way to explore old homes of those who lived in the area before it was declared a park and they had to move.  A couple of times we saw the local black bears who spend most of their time in the trees.  The weather has been rather warm (upper 80's) and quite humid and today was no exception.  It rained pretty heavily as we were leaving the park heading into Gatlinburg.  We stopped for a late lunch/early dinner at the Texas Steakhouse.  I had a 6 oz sirloin with BBQ ribs (love those ribs) with caesar salad and mashed potatoes.  Michael had smothered chicken and fries.  Their beer list was limited to domestic national brands which was a disappointment.  Not a terribly memorable meal, but it was reasonably priced.  Now we're back in the unit where Michael is napping and I'm getting ready to watch a little more Olympic coverage.  If we're hungry later, it will be a salad again.

Sunday, August 7

No sign of our bag this morning but according to the wheresmybag.com site, it arrived in Knoxville last night at 10:00 pm and was given to a driver this morning at 8:15 for delivery within 2 hours.  We are making progress.  We ate breakfast and watched a little of the Olympic games until Michael went to the front desk at 10:00 to see if there was any news.  As he was inquiring, in walks the driver with our case.  Yahoo - showers and clean underwear for all!  We decided to head towards Gatlinburg, the other side of Pigeon Forge, to check it out. Traffic was much better this morning.  We went to the visitors center for Smoky Mountain National Park to decide on our plan for tomorrow then had lunch at the Smoky Mountain Brewery, again very good ribs, mashed potatoes and cheesy broccoli with a delicious Helle beer. Michael had the shrimp appetizer and a side of fries.   Then we walked around the town under thunderstorm skies which cooled things off considerably.  It's a cute town with architecture reminiscent of an alpine village and lots of tourist shops, etc.  We drove the scenic back way home.  I think salad for dinner is in order.

Saturday, August 6

We are using some Wyndham timeshare points for a trip to Tennessee since we don't need to use our home resort in Alexandria, VA now that Daniel and Elizabeth live in DC.  Michael didn't want to fly somewhere for only a week so we put together 3 resorts that are close together all in Tennessee and the only time we had was in August.  We flew on the 6 am flight from Redmond to Seattle, one hour layover before flying to Dallas.  We were delayed for 1/2 hour by a woman who jumped up from her seat and ran to the toilet as we were taxiing for takeoff.  We had to pull out of line until she was well enough to proceed.  We had one hour in Dallas which was just enough time since that is one big airport and we had to  change  terminals.  We got to Knoxville on time, but our suitcase didn't make our plane.  We are sharing a bag this time.  I brought pajamas and clean underwear in my carryon, but Michael didn't want to.  American Airlines said they would send the bag to us so off we went to pick up our Payless rental car, a Mitsubishi something or other.  It's a basic car and not the most comfortable, but it will do for our purposes.

We got to the resort, the Wyndham Smoky Mountain in Sevierville  (pronounced saVEREvul), around 8:30 pm and checked into our 1 bedroom deluxe unit.  It's a handicapped unit so there's a little more room.  Then it was off to find some dinner and pick up a few breakfast groceries.  We got a little detoured and ended up going the back way to the next town of Pigeon Forge and coming back on the main road of 441 which took forever.  Pigeon Forge is like a beach town with tons of tourist shops, restaurants and carnival attractions.  It was packed at 9:30 pm.  We eventually made it back to Sevierville and ate at Quaker Steak and Lube, which was very good - 1/2 rack of ribs with slaw and baked potato for me and a salad with chicken strips for Michael.  Then a quick trip to Walmart for groceries and swimsuits for each of us since we forgot to bring them.  Again the place was jumping at almost 11:30 pm with lots of families shopping together.  Amazing.  Finally off to bed - no word on our suitcase.