Friday, April 21 - Back Where We Started - St. Louis, Missouri

 We had an appointment set before our trip with an attorney that we couldn't miss.  That sorta set the timeline on our travels to this point.  As always, we made the best of it.

Adventure Time

Since the time I first met Brian I have been hearing stories of when, as a teen, he attended and then worked at the S-F Scout Camp.  All of the dumb skits he's replayed.  The crazy adventures.  The things that helped him grow more confident with hard tasks.  It wasn't right on the way, but Brian really wanted to stop by.  It was the final place he wanted to see before leaving St Louis, possibly, forever.

It is amazing!  Compared to the Scout Camps in Southern California where there is hardly any water, so no way of having a huge lake all for the campers.  The size of this camp was so much bigger than the other camps I've seen.  They really do a good job here.

These are the tents he would have stayed in as a staff member.

This Scout Camp is ginormous.  Even though the specific campsite Brian spent so many weeks at wasn't being used right now, there are several others that are very busy each summer.  

Clearly, his campsite hasn't been used for a long, long time.

The stories he's told about his time on the lake.  I can understand
why camp was so cool.  There aren't lakes like this so abundant in California.

Is it weird to feel honored that Brian would share this bit of his history with me?

 We stopped in St Louis for about an hour to visit the Attorney to settle things on our home in St Louis that we are now renting out.  Then off to play games and eat dinner with Nora, Max & Alta in Columbia.

Places to Eat:

*   Helen Fitzgerald's Irish Grill & Pub - (St. Louis) The day we stopped they had predicted thunder storms.  We chose to order take out since this place was right next door to the hotel.  The toasted raviolis weren't the best, but we had to have one more order before leaving town.  We split the Shepard's Pie, and it was really good.

Thursday, April 20 - Paducah, Kentucky

 By this point, we had seen the places we were most anxious to see.  We really wanted to be on our way home to San Diego.  Still, we had plans set in St. Louis that we couldn't change so we kept with the itinerary and made some quick stops in Paducah.

Adventure Time

If you're a quilter (I am) you may have heard that it is called The Quilt City of the USA (I had not). Ha! Still, I saw that the National Quilt Museum was located there and figured since we were close we should stop.  But then I started thinking we should just head West and forget about it.  Brian finally convinced me that we were already in town and I'd regret it if we left ... even though I know he was not interested, at all.

When we got to the Hotel last night, I noticed a big sign:  Hancock Fabrics.  This is a HUGE fabric store that has closed all it's shops and focuses mostly on online sales.  I actually didn't know they had a real store available.  That was the first stop of our morning.  

I've never seen one store this big with sooo many bolts of fabric.  At first I was excited and then I was overwhelmed.  Many months ago I visited Quilt Town USA, aka Hamilton, Missouri the home of Missouri Star Quilt Company.  That one fabric company has put Hamilton on the map with MANY quilt shops running down both sides of the main street.  But they are all owned by MSQC.  The different stores are different themes.  That compartmentalizes things and makes the smaller bites a little easier to handle.

Brian waited patiently on the benches labeled "The Lost Husband Waiting Spot" with another guy.  I ended up buying 2 items and we left.  Worth it!

Down the road we went to the National Quilt Museum.  It was A-MAZ-ING!  I never knew quilting could be like this.  

We were told there was a quilt made out of wood. 
We walked past this 2-3 times before we realized THIS is made out of wood.  😮

This type of quilting fascinates me.  I so want to learn this art.

I wanted to get Brian in the picture for scale.  These quilts are GINORMOUS!  

This is from a Chilean artist.

There's no way to zoom in enough to see the intricate quilting on this one.  It's like the fabric was created by the stitching.  I'd have no patience for this type of work, but I admire it a lot.

Made by a Japanese artist, this one is full of detail (can you find the open oven door?) and extras.

I walked away from the museum with such respect for artists of this medium.  I never think of the quilting I do as "art".  But it sure fills my creative impulses. 

Wednesday, April 19 - Mammoth Cave, Kentucky ... or not.

 Our itinerary had us going to Mammoth Cave for more hiking and exploring.  Because of our hike the day before, I wasn't really excited about having to climb hundreds of stairs down and out of the caves.  So we made a detour.

Adventure Time

It was a few days ago that I realized I'd heard of an amazing convenient store that we HAD to visit before leaving the South.  Buc-cee's!  This place really is BIG.  The bathrooms really are as clean and fantastic as they say.  The food choices are amazing and so appreciated!  We bought snacks for our road trip and gifts for family.  Wish this place was everywhere!

We still needed to go to Kentucky to mark it off our list.  Brian did some last minute research and had Google take us to Bowling Green to visit the National Corvette Museum.  Though we had family that suggested it, we weren't very keen since we aren't big fans of the Corvette.  Again, we did some research and thought it was worth a go.

To be honest, the history of the car was kind of a snooze fest for me.  Brian loves to read EVERYTHING when in a museum, so I did my best to find things of interest.  We had heard about the big sink hole that swallowed up 8 non-replaceable Corvettes in the museum back in 2014 (see video), so that was something to look forward to learning more about.  

Am I the only one that takes pictures of the tile in the bathrooms?  Ha!

That color wall!  So much to love!

Such a cool mosaic.  (not such a great picture.  Ha!)

This one won my heart.  1967 ... and that color!  Yes, please!
I guess I am a Corvette fan. 

After exploring the Corvettes, we kept driving to Paducah to finish the day. 

Places to Eat

   * Buc-cee's - We had BBQ brisket sandwiches freshly made right there.  I would suggest trying the famous Beaver Nuggets.  They took a bit to get used to, but we definitely finished the bag.

   *  The Station Burger - I'm not always hungry for burgers, but when I am ... I want a good one.  Again, our rule on a road trip is we can't eat at a place we've eaten before.  So we found this place online.  It got good reviews, but was located in the mall.  To be fair, so was Chic-Fil-A, so we gave it a chance.  We ended up splitting a burger and it was enough for us both.  

Tuesday, April 18 - Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is free to enter ... since the Highway goes right through the middle of it.  But this tends to mean HUGE crowds (estimated 11.5 million people per year).  That worried me a bit cuz I'm not a fan of people when I'm on vacation.  Ha!  Let's get to it!

Adventure Time

Again, we did our research ahead of time, got our parking permit early, and planned to hit the road before most vacationers would be thinking of it.  And, again, we were surprised by the lack of people.  We really did plan this vacation at a great time of year.

Cades Cove - This is probably one of the biggest highlights of the park.  It's an 11 mile one way drive through this beautiful valley surrounded by mountains.  We'd been warned that this can take hours to get through since people stop at any sign of wildlife.  We wanted to drive through and get going to our planned hike in another part of the park.  But we slowed our roll when we got driving and saw how truly beautiful the area is.  

The drive still took lots of time since people decided to drive through literally at 9 miles an hour.  And if they saw one of the MANY deer in the fields they would stop for sooooo long.  We tried to keep a peaceful demeanor, but were a little happy when a flustered tourist finally honked to get the slowky pokey to move to the side and let the rest of us go on with the drive.  

This river was truly beautiful.  Rather entrancing as we enjoyed it along the side of the road.

We could not get enough of these curvy tree shaded drives.  So peaceful.

About 271 people inhabited this area in the 1800's.  

This is a remaining home from that time.

There were churches left over from the different congregations, as well. 

How cool is this fence?!

Loving that view.  We really enjoyed the many different shades of green in the
mountains everywhere we went.  The new growth really made a difference.

Grotto Falls Hike - There were at least 3 hikes we had hoped to catch, but with timing of our other plans, we could only fit in one.  This hike beat out the others, with the hope that one day we'd come back and check out more of the park for a longer visit.  Even though the park was more empty, the parking at the hiking trailheads was HORRIBLE.  I can't imagine the frustration during the summer months.

A dream come true to hike through real FOREST!  Trees, shade,
 passing mountains streams, lovely temps.  The BEST!

There were a few families/groups at the waterfall, but it wasn't crowded at all.  Super pretty and worth the effort to get there!

We stayed up there for awhile.  We ate our packed lunch and Brian had more fun taking pictures with his camera.  We decided we wouldn't rush to try to catch the other parts of the park. We just savored our time in nature.

On our way out of the park we saw this cute one jump down to the road and the across
down the other side.  He was a little small so we kept our eye out for mama.  She didn't come. 
Brian was taking the picture out the window, which was great until the bear kinda turned back and we thought he might be jumping in our window.  Glad he moved on!  Ha!

Eventually, we had to leave the mountains to make the dinner reservations we had back in Pigeon Forge.  

Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are right next to each other.  While Gatlinburg is rather rustic and nature focused with the mountains and the national park.  Pigeon Forge is another Branson, or a Las Vegas for families.  I can't imagine how much money is spent each year by families in this place.  There are shows, rides, shopping, food, lights, distractions.  It was seriously overwhelming to me when we drove through.  But what can you do when dinner plans take you to the heart of crazy-ville?  You dive in and enjoy the ride.

I would be remiss if I didn't share this harrowing story.  There was construction on the main road from Gatlinburg to Pigeon Forge.  Google took us on a detour so we could still get to dinner on time.  No problem.  However, these are crazy mountain roads.  We were on hairpin curves on very narrow roads where we couldn't see if there was oncoming traffic to worry about.  And there were NO siderails.  The plunging views were stomach dropping.  I don't think I've ever been more afraid of a road in my life ... and Brian's driving had nothing to do with it.  When we got off the mountain I was visibly shaken.  Brian promised we wouldn't have to return home in the dark on that treacherous road.  Sorry I didn't get any pictures.  My mind was otherwise occupied with pleas to God to get through it safely.

Dolly's Stampede - Family suggested we do this show while in Branson, but we just weren't ready for that type of thing at the beginning of our trip.  We left it for towards the end.  

This is a fun dinner show with horses, shenanigans, and a true red, white, and blue patriotic theme.  The food was plentiful, to say the least.  You eat the tiny chicken with your hands, drink the soup from the bowl, and luckily get a fork for the side dishes.  We ended up being seated next to a travel group of elderly folk from Pittsburgh.  They were not very animated, but they were kind.  

The buffalo were a nice surprise!

Would we go again?  Probably not.  Still we weren't disappointed that we went.  After the show, it was back to the cabin for another soak in the jacuzzi and then rest for the continued drive tomorrow.

Monday, April 17 - Pigeon Forge, Tennessee & Dollywood

 We were both excited to be in real nature.  Where there were few tourist trinkets to lure people. The friend we met at church suggested we had to stop by Tallulah Gorge State Park in Georgia.  We'd never heard of it but decided to do a quick stop.

We got there just as a couple of school busses were dropping off kids for a field trip.  We hiked in and out quickly to enjoy the view in quiet and peace.  Ha!

Brian had lots of fun playing with his camera. 
We loved to see the gorge from above the bird's view.

To get from Georgia to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee we had to drive right through the National Park.  It was not a burden.  

This river followed alongside the highway. 
We had to stop and appreciate.

But the Smoky Mountains National Park was scheduled for Tuesday so we had to keep driving to our days ...

Adventure Time

On the schedule was Dollywood.  Since it's still Spring and the park had limited hours and we used time for the drive and extra stop in Tallulah Gorge, our play time in the park was short.  We worried we wouldn't be able to enjoy the attractions we most wanted to.  Before our trip we did our research, watched A LOT of YouTube videos to learn the best tricks of enjoying the park, downloaded the App, and had our plan.  (I would recommend watching YouTube videos and downloading the App to anyone planning a trip there.)  Finally we arrived and ... the park was empty.  No lines anywhere!  The weather was perfect, the park was beautiful, and we got through our entire plan hours before the park closed.  It was fabulous!!!

Seriously, the park is so pretty!  There are bits of art installments all over the place.

I have always loved Dolly's music and her influence, but didn't know that the butterfly was her trademark.  They were found all over the park in the trees, hidden in designs, etc.

I am a sucker for cute bird houses. 
They had these things all over the place in the park.

Our first time on a coal powered train.  Since we were in the
Blue Ridge Mountains, they are proud of their coal.

We went on a few rides together, and then Brian rode a lot of the rollercoasters solo ... again, my dumb neck issues.  It didn't hamper his fun.  He was able to ride everything he wanted as often as he wanted since there were no lines. 

Though we didn't get a picture, we did enjoy the famous Cinnamon Bread.  Worth a sample!

We grabbed some dinner in Gatlinburg and headed to our cabin in the mountains.  Wait till you see the view!!! (Here is an online picture from the jacuzzi looking out over the valley ... breath taking!)!!

The cabin was pretty ordinary from this side.
All the magic is from the other side of the balcony.

After a nice soak we were ready to sleep and prepare for the busy day planned for tomorrow!

Places to Eat

   * Mama's Chicken Kitchen - I don't think we've ever eaten as much good fried chicken in our lives like we did on this trip.  And this place was decorated with pictures of National Parks from around the country.  We loved this little pit stop.