Conclusion

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You can read of our current journey on our blog www.09fall.blogspot.com

This is the final post for the blog of our Spring 2009 U.S. Road Trip.
We have visited Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky.
History: We have seen Davy Crocket's house, Jimmy Carter's house, A.P. Carter's house, Martin Luther King's house,
During which we have been to Bluegrass festivals at Palatka, Waldo, Palmdale and Brimstock, as well as a Bluegrass Party at Connie and Jim's.
We have been entertained at Dixie Stampede, Grand Ole Opry, Lake City Rodeo, The Carter Family Fold, Kingsport Muncipal Center for a bluegrass concert and The Epcot Center, as well as taking an airboat ride at Sleepy Hollow.
We have visited Columbus Stockade, The Rosa Parks Museum, The church where Martin Luther King preached, Huntsville Space Center and Museum, The Old Rail Depot at Huntsville, Constitution Village in Huntsville, The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel, The Birth of Country Music Museum in Bristol
We have visited the Civil War Battlegrounds (and POW Camp) of Andersonville, Chicamauga, Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain.
We have seen many big rivers, Withlecoochee, Itchtucknee, Tennessee, Clinch, Cumberland, Holsten. Driven through The Smokies, Clingman's Dome, Cade's Cove.
Visited Americus, Columbus, Montgomery, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Pigeon Forge, Kingsport Bristol, Nashville and Knoxvillle.
We have been to bluegrass jams in Rocky Branch near Townsend, Netherlands Inn in Kingsport, with friends at Kodak, at Marilee's in Istachatta, as well as at festivals.
We have driven about 5000 miles, 2217 of them towing the trailer.

Final Thoughts

We completed the cleaning, despite the rain, and the trailer and truck are now safely stored for the summer. I even had time on Sunday night to get to a jam with David and Mike, our internet jammers. I certainly had a great time and they say they did as well, though we spent a fair amount of time talking about local mountain music, which I found fascinating.
We have started to get to know George and Kay, who are part of the family who's land we are storing the rig on. We got on like a house on fire, they are lovely people and we feel that our little home in America is in safe hands for the summer, even if Tim, Kay's brother, had to tow the trailer for us because the ground was muddy after all the rain we have had recently.
On Wednesday George and Kay dropped us at Knoxville airport, we flew to Clearwater (near Tampa), where we picked up a rental car. We had arranged to stay with Marilee for one night before driving to Orlando for our Transatlantic flight home. We were quite surprised when we arrived at Marilee's to find a lot of our friends waiting for us, for a little party!!! We had a lovely reunion with them for one evening. Thankyou so much for that.
On Thursday we set out for Orlando and home.
We have arrived safely and driven down to Derby to see our children, grandchildren, niece and nephew and their children for a weekend reunion.

Turning for Home

We have been to the Grand Ole Opry.
The best of the bunch was Del McCoury. For his three songs.
I don't like to be critical, but we were not over impressed. Give me a dozen friends round the fire outside Connie and Jims RV anyday.
However, Lebanon State Park was lovely, no one there but us for 2 nights. Then three RV's came in and parked one opposite, one next to us (with a dog) and one a couple of sites along. You would think with all that space they would want some privacy, we certainly did, but didn't get it. Still we left the next day. Saw some lovely spring flowers there.
We drove back East to Knoxville, to Raccoon Valley, where we are going to leave the Trailer. It is beautiful, a secluded area amongst tall oak trees, yet only a few miles from Knoxville. The only problem is that it has rained almost non-stop since we arrived, so cleaning the outside has been tricky and we have been concentrating on cleaning the inside.
You may remember we met up with some people to jam with, following a search on the internet for a local jam in Pigeon Forge. Well we are close by again so will try to see them.

Return to Nashville

As we have tickets for the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday night, we have returned to the Nashville area. However we are on a different campground, this one is called the Cedars of Lebanon State Park, although they are actually Juniper trees (no I don't know the difference, they looked like cedar trees to me). It is set out in ,what they say, is the largest stand of Cedar trees n the USA. It is very peaceful and we have seen lots of birds.
Most memorable sight was the discovery of Fireflies as we sat round our campfire on Sunday evening. We could see the little flashing lights amongst the trees. This is the first time we have seen fireflies since we were in Westchester, Pennsylvania in August 1978. It was interesting to follow the aerial pathway of a firefly as it flashed on and off. I timed one at about 2.5 seconds per flash cycle, another one seemed to be on a 4 second cycle. This was on a different night, so other factors could be involved). Fascinating.
Yesterday, we drove into Lebanon town centre. It is built on the traditional town square format with one road in on each side of the square. Looking at the buildings, they all seemed to be Victorian, good old Americana shopfronts. In one corner an old log cabin has been placed by a natural spring, to remind people of the origins of the town back in 1802. Today, we roadtested A White Castle fast food joint. Bought their celebrated mini burger, it was not very nice. The meat looked quite miserable and the whole thing had a soggy texture, so it is an historically interesting place, but the food is lousy. I will write more about the history of the hamburge at a later date.
Overall, as with so many U.S. small towns, it is a Fascinating Place.

Brimstock 09

Clay County TN is the least most populated county in Tennessee. By coincidence, this is where The Brimstock Bluegrass Festival is held. We drove up there (it is on TN’s northern border with Kentucky) on progressively smaller roads. The countryside is more rolling hills than mountains, mostly limestone/shale/sandstone layers, badly distorted by continental drift. The instructions said to follow the road, until it became a gravel path, then you are there. True to the directions, we followed a winding road through a lovely valley and when the road gave out, there was the farmstead that is Brimstock. It is the most beautiful place; narrow winding, steep sided valley, flat meadow bottom land, river running through it. We pitched by the river in the shade of some trees (still not fully out, as we are still chasing the spring north). As the weekend progressed, the banks of the stream turned multicoloured as the wild flowers bloomed. Very, very pretty.
We had a great weekend as the weather was amazing and there were some good acts, a mix of local and national bands. Most impressive was Johnny Butten, who is actually English, but an excellent musician. He has moved to Minnesota and is making it as a bluegrass musician. There was also some brilliant clawhammer banjo playing from Phillip Steinmetz and His Sunny Tennesseans, nephew of ‘Old Grandpa Jones’ a famous Old Time Music player (who, for those of our readers in Florida, will be appearing at Palatka next year).
We really enjoyed meeting with some local lads and did some jamming over the weekend. The festival hosts, Garry and Dianne, were absolutely brilliant as they bent over backwards to make sure that we were OK and they worked hard to put on a great bluegrass weekend.
As we left on the Sunday, we were invited to stop off at the house to watch the Humming Birds. This was fascinating, it is the first time we had seen them.