Blogs from Tennessee, United States, North America - page 6

Today, I dragged the family to Cade’s Cove which is an area in the park that used to be a town. It is a 11-mile one-way loop with several historic homes, churches, etc.. It wasn’t that great and I'm sorry we went. It was crowded and required stopping and walking to many of the locations. We stopped at Cable Mill Historic Area and got some souvenirs and saw some historic buildings that had been moved to the site (two barns, a home and a mill). Drove out of Cade's Cove on Rich Mountain Road (dirt) and around back to Elkmont. This took way longer than expected. Then we picked up the trailer and left via Pigeon Forge which was Gatlinburg on steroids and the location of Dollywood and headed toward Shenandoah a day ahead of schedule. ... read more

It rained all night. In the morning we drove to Visitor Center and asked for Junior Ranger books which once again weren't sent with the materials I requested. Due to being over 13, we got a “not so junior ranger” flyer which requires attending three ranger events. It turns out we couldn't make three events, so this is another park that we didn’t get badges for. Junior Ranger requires participants (usually kids, but sometimes adults) to do activities to get familiar with a park. They usually require attending one ranger activity. When you are done you get sworn in as a Junior Ranger by a park ranger and get a plastic or wooden ranger pin. I have all of the pins from the other parks we've visited through the years in frames for the kids. We ... read more

This is a definitive “Heck, yeah!” to those of you who asked if there are to be anymore trip blogs after our sale of Mufasa, I hope this alleviates your worries! Since we sold our motorhome after 45+ years of RVing, most questions have been the same one...can you still do a blog?? The answer to that is definitely “Yes”! We have just given up RVing, not traveling. This is our first blog (but not first trip) post Mufasa. You will have to be the judge of whether or not the blogs are still fun! Stay tuned. Mufasa is safe in his new home in East Tennessee (thanks Kip!) and has already been to Oklahoma. His new owner is going to be following John and me on this journey. To those who were not aware that ... read more

Yesterday (Sunday) was a very busy travel day so I didn’t get a chance to update the blog. As such, everyone gets a doubleheader blog post encompassing Day 6 in Nashville and Day 7 on the road and in Georgia! We woke up on Saturday morning in our awesome Airbnb apartment on the outskirts of downtown Nashville. We had a corner apartment on the 5th floor and the views were incredible. We had purchased groceries the night before on our way in, so breakfast was en-suite as Heather scrambled up some eggs and made bacon and hash brown potatoes for all. Livy slept through and had her breakfast bowl later while Heather, Diego and I went to check out the pool situation. The building has a rooftop pool on the 2nd floor of a six-story building. ... read more

We had an extra half day in Memphis which was very welcome as there is so much to see and do. The bad news is that we can’t get up to Red Wing and Minneapolis because of the flooding. A number of the docks in the towns we were scheduled to stop at are under water. The good news is that we have an alternative - shortly we will be changing course and sailing up the Ohio River and finishing on the same date in Cincinnati. The riverboat company will just change our flight from Minneapolis to Chicago to Cincinnati to Chicago. I have to say I am not surprised as the river has risen a few inches as we have been sailing north instead of receding as expected. So a new adventure awaits us. One ... read more