Blogs from Tennessee, United States, North America - page 5

Today was highly anticipated by Nathan of the day that Uncle Mike and Auntie Jenn would get their camper out of storage. After an easy cereal breakfast, Ellie, Rosie, Vivian and Steve played a little soccer outside before Mike, Jenn, Nathan, and Ellie needed to go get the camper. The day was supposed to be cold but the sun was out and it was a perfect warm temperature. While they were gone getting the camper, Steve, Tory, Gray, Rosie, and Vivian had a fun time together. Grayson rode his Berg around and was going really fast as the 4-wheel pedal go-kart turns on a dime! Then they walked around the neighborhood because they had some garage sales and Gray and Rosie were talking and holding hands like best buddies. Mike and Jenn came back with the ... read more

We woke up and Jenn worked as our short order chef for all the kids with flapjacks and eggs. Ellie and Grayson showed Steve their schoolwork area and amazed him by how well that they both could read for their ages! Steve had to work today so everyone else made the morning trip out to Luckyladd farms in Eagleville, including one of Ellie's friends Piper as seen in the pictures from the day on the back of Mike's truck. The farm was full of pumpkins and plenty to do such as: petting goats, picking pumpkins, sliding on sacks, seesawing, and climbing. At the end, the kids all had peanut butter (Nathan) or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the back of Uncle Mike's truck and we took some adorable pictures. Back home Vivian napped and the ... read more

The day started with me going down to the lobby to collect our breakfast boxes, while Mom stayed in the room. One unfortunate reality of coronavirus times was that those hot breakfast buffets, where you and all your fellow road warriors would chow down before getting back on the highways, were gone. In their place was a cold sterile cardboard box. Not even remotely good enough. We made due though and got a move on. We were headed west to Tennessee. Ever since I was a kid I had wanted to see Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Now with international travel shutting down, I figured it was time to strike. To get there we would need to navigate the mountain passes of Southwestern Virginia. I remembered back to a January day seven years before when I ... read more

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.” – Plato Our latest adventure takes us to a very special place if you're a fan of certain genres of music. We were safely "isolating" on the beach in Florida when the call came in ... would Dave like to work at a pediatric hospital ..... in Memphis? This was too much to pass up, both professionally and because of the special types of music in this city. Memphis is a very special place and is aptly titled the “Home of the Blues” is located in the southwest corner of Tennessee and sits on the mighty Mississippi River. Deep in the heartland of America, rich in history, Memphis is a stone’s throw to both the Arkansas and ... read more

KNOXVILLE The Department of Energy got underway as a branch of the Tennessee Valley Authority beginning in about 1940. The Manhattan Project, in which we developed the atomic bomb, originated at the Oak Ridge Laboratory outside of Knoxville. Science and Energy have always been a big deal around those parts, and the locals quietly take a good deal of pride in it. The engineers at Oak Ridge started out using carbon as the primary source of energy to drive the burgeoning nuclear program. In due course of scientific trial and error they deduced that carbon, as coal, did not produce the rapid release of energy needed for the nuclear trigger to detonate an atomic bomb. Carbon did, however, perform admirably enough as a source of power in dry cell batteries. It has provided a cheap, reliable ... read more