Johnson City - Rally Site

May 18, Monday

Eric is going to stay here in the gorge most of the summer to climb, and Steve will be here a week or two, so after breakfast I packed up and waved goodbye, heading for Johnson City Tennessee, the site of the BMW MOA National Rally in July. I took more back roads, and found US 421 to be a marvelous ride through Kentucky and Tennessee. I found the Appalachia Fair Grounds, in Gray TN, our actual rally site, and got a grand tour courtesy of Richard, the big guy at the fairgrounds. He showed me where registration would be, where camping, vendors, RV’s and everything else would be placed, and helped me figure out a good route for the rally shuttles to take. I think this will be a well accepted rally site. I got a room for the night at the Jamison Inn, and tried to catch up with some email and blogging.

May 19, Tuesday

After sleeping in a little longer than usual, I grabbed some free breakfast, and headed for the first contact for shuttle help. Ed Johnson, General Manager at Ramey Ford quickly agreed to donate the use of two pick-up trucks for the rally. Next stop was all the way north to Bristol, right next to the racetrack, at Lady and Sons Equipment, and the owner was nice enough to donate a flat bed trailer for our use at the rally. Two for two, now all I needed was some vans for the hotel shuttle runs, and some hay bales for the flat bed, as the fairgrounds will let us use their “people mover” trailer. It’s the same setup as the one in Gillette. Tom, owner of the Chevrolet dealership agreed to donate a 15 passenger van, the only caveat being that he had to have one on the lot when we needed it, which is apparently very doubtful. We need 3 of them anyway to do a good job. Dennis Shelley rode down from Indy to meet me, and we hooked up at Applebees in Elizabethton TN for an early supper, then rode about 20 miles south to a state park to camp. This is a nice park, good tent camping although the sites have rounded pebble tent pads that you must use, no camping on the grass! $11 per night, not bad compared to some states. We had a nice fire going, and caught up on the past few months of activities. The temperature dropped quickly, so we both headed for the warmth of our bags.

May 20, Wednesday

The temp had dumped into the mid 40’s, and I had tried a different technique with my new Go-Lite sleeping bag. It doesn’t have a zipper, instead it has two straps that I placed under the sleeping pad. It didn’t keep me very warm, especially considering the rating for the bag lists at 20 degrees. I had more contacting to do, and Dennis wanted to see the rally site, so after some breakfast we headed up to Gray, visited the grounds again, then found the Enterprise Car Rental agency where I asked about Van possibilities. I was given a name and number, Laura in Morristown TN, which was west of Johnson City, and on the way to Huntsville, Alabama, where I would be heading on Thursday anyway for the Chicken Rally. Dennis and I had another early supper, this time at Cootie Brown’s, ( Real Food !) This was one of those “finds” that one occasionally discovers serendipitously, the menu was full of amazing items, like goat cheese salads with artichokes and stuff like that. I had the chipotle grilled chicken with a baked artichoke vegi antipasto salad, and Dennis had BBQ chicken and baked potato. I thought there was still a little room to spare, so I ordered the key lime pie for desert. WOW. This is a MUST HAVE dish when you come to the National this July. This key lime pie was better by far than any I had in Key West Florida! Dennis raved about the Orange Cake too. Of course by the end of the plate, I realized the room hadn’t been there in the first place, but it was a wonderful way to stuff myself. We rode back to the park, had another campfire, and dropped off to bed, with warmer temps this night, and a different technique used with the bag.

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Part of trip: Wandering the Americas 2009

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