Superman,Paducah,Paris and more

Our time in Nashville is over and we moved on to Pirates Cove near the Land between the Lakes area, we just purchase a TomTom Gps device last week and I'm still learning how to program it. This trip it got us to within two miles of the park and then it put us on a side street that was barely wide enough for the rig, so I guess my learning curve needs a little more bending. I keep calling it a Pom Pom by accident since that was my nickname in high school, this got me thinking about all the different nicknames that you pick up through life.

As a kid, around the house and neighborhood I was always called Jimmie James, in high school it became PomPom, this is because one of the cheer leaders snuck up behind me and smacked me in the head with her PomPom's (get your mind out of the gutter) and screamed Pom Pom as she did it, so that stuck for the rest of my time there. My first real job was working on the Tug boats and barges on the Detroit river, at the end of my first day the boss slapped me on the back and said, we'll see ya in the morning ZIGGY. WOW first day on the job and I got a nickname, I just figured it was after the comic strip since I was so damn funny. A week later we took one for the work boats out to the big barge and after taking a few steps onto the barge I heard the boss yell,Hey Ziggy, I turned around to see what he wanted and he was on his knees scratching the ears of a dog (the company mascot). So until I moved on four years later anytime some one yelled Ziggy the dog and I raced to see what they wanted.

On to the Detroit Police Department, during the academy the instructors had many nicknames for everyone which I won't print. Sometime during the second year that I was assigned to a precinct house I took a position that had been held by an officer (for many years) whose real given name was Jimmie, well with a James replacing a Jimmie you can guess what happen, I was Jimmie for the rest of my career, well most of the time. When the department started hiring women for street patrol and I got to train a few at the precinct. Late in the first year with the women, a few of us where in the kitchen when one of the nice young ladies referred to me as “Asshole”, turns out that I had a secret behind the back nickname, so until I retired I had two nicknames depending on the gender.

Now that I'm retired, old fat and gray, I've gotten another nickname, This one I'm going to keep and take to the grave with me “Grandpa”

Whoa! Got a little sidetracked there, lets see where was I, asshole, police, dog, pompom, TomTom, oh yah we just got into camp at Pirates Cove. This is probably the strangest campground we've been to, when you leave the office and drive down to the camp sites you have to make sure that you don't turn on the the runway, yes runway. There is a very small, narrow runway for single engine planes that is lined with houses which all have a pole barn big enough to use as a hanger, we haven't heard any planes yet but maybe this week end. The park in broken up into about five areas that are all hidden around in the various neighborhoods, we got one that's right on the water. Since everything is spread out, the bathhouse is located in the middle and is a ¼ drive.

We took a little drive today north to Paducah, Kentucky, every time I hear the name Paducah I think of a tough rugged looking dock worker with the stub of a cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a “MOM” tattoo on his arm. Anyway we didn't have any idea of what we would find, turns out that this is one of the cleanest towns we've been in, the historic downtown area and the river front were spotless. They have a large flood wall along the river that is covered with murals that give you a history of the town, we found out some fascinating thing about this town, which you can see in the pictures that follow.






























Found another Whispering Giant to add to our collection, we had to walk into the park since it's still closed from all the trees down from the big ice storm in February. This giant is in excellent condition and seems to be well cared for by the city.





Crossed the Ohio River into Metropolis Illinois, DA DA DAAAAAA, DA DA DA DA DA DAAAAA, you guessed it Metropolis home town of SUPERMAN, we'll visit with the man of steel after we tour Fort Massac.

Fort Massac dates back to 1757 and the French-Indian War, at the end of the war the Chickasaws burnt the fort to the ground, this area was used by George Rogers Clark during the Revolutionary War. In 1794 George Washington ordered a new fort to be built at this location, this fort was destroyed by the New Madrid earthquake in 1811. It was rebuilt again in time to see use in the War of 1812 only to be abandoned in 1814, a caretaker was left to watch over the fort but shortly after the military left the caretaker dismantled the fort and sold the wood to the locals to build their homes with. This site again saw service when it was used as a training center for the Civil War until a measles epidemic in 1862 claimed many lives. In 1903 The Daughters of the American Revolution convinced the state to purchase the property and it became Illinois' first State Park, in 1971 a recreation of the 1794 fort was built next to the location of the original so that archaeological digs could continue in the future.

Metropolis, just about everything in this town has something to do with Superman, bathrooms are labeled Clark Kent or Lois Lane, there are cutouts all over town where yoou can have your picture taken with the man of steel, and right in front of the City Hall you will find this.

TRUTH-JUSTICE & the AMERICAN WAY






Day Two at the LBL's

Just a lazy drive down the Trace to the city of Dover and Fort Donaldson, Fort Donaldson was the site of the first major victory by the Union during the Civil War. The South was winning this battle and should have been victorious except for a few blunders made by the politician that had been appointed to General. After making these mistakes he did what any politician would do, he snuck away to a ship waiting on the river and made good his escape while leaving the troops behind. Nathan Bedford Forrest also decided that he was not ready to be taken prisoner, but he mounted up on his horse along with 700 of his cavalrymen and rode out the front gate of the fort, for some reason they were not detected by the Union troops and just rode off to fight another day.



Here's something that Cathy spotted as we were driving through the park.






Although when Cathy and I were dating, I never promised to take her to Paris, today I decided to do just that, Paris Tennessee that is, but once we both saw the Eiffel Tower we decided that Paris was no big deal and we went home to Pirates Cove to watch our beloved Tigers lose another one.








We saw a small sign on a back road that said " B-29 Memorial", well when you see a sign like that you just have to follow the arrow, which we did for about two miles till the road dead ended and we saw another sign that said the same thing but pointing the other way. we decided to split the difference and right around the midway point we spotted a little cemetery back in the woods and sure enough that's where we found this. Click on the Picture and give it a read.
Then scroll down for the rest of the story.


On the night of July 1, 1945 the B-29 was on a training mission and had just finished refueling at Nashville and was flying into a thunderstorm, half the crew was in the front of the ship and the other half was in the rear, Elias, the sole survivor was walking back throught the plane to go to the bathroom. He was in the center of the plane when it took a lightning strike at that point and slit the ship in two.
He was sucked from the aircraft and said that when he came to he was falling in the dark so he yank on his rip cord and drifted to earth, he did see the ship falling in flames. When he hit land, he had no idea where he was at so he just covered up with his parachute and waited for daylight when he was found by some local towns people.
The Army then showed up from nearby Fort Campbell and for security reasons started hushing up the entire story.

We arrived in Lebanon Tn in the sunshine, not wanting to waste any of this precious commodity, we set up camp pretty quick and drove into Nashville so we could get to the Belmont Mansion before it closed for the day. Don't know about the Belmont Mansion, well here is the story about the mansion and the lady that built it.

Adelica Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatham,

Born Adelica Hayes to a wealthy Nashville family, her father was a judge, Presbyterian minister and a cousin of President Rutherfield Hayes. At 22 she married Isaac Franklin who was a cotton planter and slave trader, Franklin was 28 years older then Adelica and after seven years he died leaving her seven Louisiana cotton plantations a 2000 acre farm in Tennessee and 750 slaves.
Three years after his death she remarried to a Joseph Acklen, this is after she made him sign a prenuptial contract. It was at this time that they started building Belmont a 20,000 square-foot summer house, they summered in Nashville and spent the winters on the plantations in Louisiana, prior to the Civil War Acklen managed to triple her money.

During the war when the Union forces moved into Nashville Acklen, an out spoken southerner, fled to the plantations in Louisiana to prevent capture or execution, while down there he contacted an unknown illness and died. Adelica took here four children and made a trip to bring his body back to Nashville, during the trip two of the girls got sick and and back in Nashville both died within a month or so of each other.

Adelica was face with financial ruin, all she had was 2800 bales of cotton spread out on the Louisiana plantations, she went back to Louisiana and convinced the Commanding officer of the Confederate troops to loan her some wagons and men to transport the cotton to New Orleans so she could ship it to Richmond and sell it to the Confederacy. Before she could get all the cotton shipped a new Commanding Officer took over and refused to assist her in any way, now what would she do. She went to the Commanding Officer of the Union troops and told him that she needed his help getting the cotton to New Orleans so she could ship it to New York and sell it to the union. He agreed and all the cotton was loaded on a schooner and the Captain was given all the proper papers to pass through the Union blockade of New Orleans. Once the ship was past the Union blockade the captain sailed straight to London and sold the cotton to the Rothschilds for $960,000. When the cotton never showed up in New York or Richmond both army's wanted to know what happen, she told them that she had no idea of what happen to the ship or the cotton, since she never accepted payment from the Rothschilds, nothing could be proved against her.

Three weeks after the was she sailed to London and collected the money from the Rothschilds, she then spent a few years with her remaining children touring Europe on a spending spree, which is when she bought most of the artifacts that are in the mansion today. She returned from Europe and at age 50 married Dr. Cheatham who also signed a prenuptial agreement. After 20 years of marriage most of it spent at Belmont, she sold the mansion (valued at $250,000 for $56,000) left Nashville and Cheatam with her three adult children and moved to Washington D.C. Shortly later while on a shopping trip to New York she took ill and died.

The person that bought the mansion held a sale and sold everything in the mansion, with nothing left but bare walls he sold it to two ladies who used it to start up Belmont College. It is now about 90% restored and the center piece of Belmont University and is open for tours.
Why would we rush around for this, well Cathy does genealogy, has been for about 20 years now and is related through the Acklen part of the family. We never saw any of the family fortune but we did see the mansion, for a fee. So much for family ties.

DAY TWO
Cheekwood Gardens, the Zoo and a Tornado

Cathy and I very seldom pass up a garden or zoo, it's a beautiful sunny Easter Sunday so we figured that they wouldn't be to crowded so we packed a lunch and took off for Nashville. First stop was Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, don't know if i would call this a garden, compared to some we've been to. There were a lot of trails and some very pretty areas thanks to the Red bud's and Dogwoods, but the only formal type gardens were around the big hall and restaurant that they rent out for party's and weddings near the front gate. The gardens was a freebee for us so we can't complain too much but I don't think that it's worth the $14.00 a head that they want for admission. Well as we always say “No cost No foul”.

Found out something interesting about the Dogwood, what looks like the pedals are actually the leafs and the bloom is the little thing in the center.




A couple of birds back on one of the trails.







Now its off to the Zoo, It took a little to find it but it was worth it, to start with this is another Freebee for us, it was a little more crowed then we thought it would be but not to bad. They have a lot of very nice displays and exhibits but the best part of a zoo is watching all the little kids running around and seeing the look of amazement on their faces when they see an animal for the first time. They had two baby white tigers that were born on December 14th 2008, all one wanted to do was sleep and the other one just wanted to play, with the sleeping one of course. This is a very clean well laid out zoo and worth the trip.






We normally spend a week in an area but are only here for three days, that's because we ran into some bad weather while in Crossville, thunderstorms, snow and weather alerts for tornados, Spent 3 hours in the mens room with half the people in the park one night as a tornado touched down just a few miles from us. Which was better then being in this area, April 10th 2009 a large
tornado touched down in Murfreesboro, just 20 miles south of the park we are at in Lebanon, it passed right through town leaving a path of destroyed homes and businesses, about 142 in all. We tried to drive down and visit a few things that the news said were still open and undamaged, but traffic was so bad with the detours and emergency repairs crews that we turned around a gave up after a few blocks.

Who would have thought

Yesterday (the 6th) was our anniversary, I say that it's been 21 years and Cathy swears that it's our 75th, we decided to celebrate by staying in camp and watching all the opening day baseball games and finish the day off with a MSU victory at the March Madness. My Braves won, our Tigers lost and the MSU Spartans were flushed down the toilet. Well at least we still have each other (I get goody points for saying stuff like that).

Woke up this morning and flipped on the TV to catch Imus and the news for a ½ hour before getting out of bed, but wait all I see on the screen is NO SIGNAL, what could possibly be wrong, it was working great when we went to bed last night. Did the satellite fall out of orbit and crash, did a wild bear knock the dish over or even worst did someone steal the dish.

Well being as I AM the worlds greatest retire cop, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter. / Away to the window I flew like a flash, / Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. / When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, / But three inches of snow covering my dish and blocking the damn signal.


I made sure that Cathy put on a sweatshirt before she went out to brush the snow away, (this cost me most of my goody points).






So here we are snowed in, hopefully this will all thaw and we will be able to escape the Tennessee mountains before we run out of food and this turns into a Donner situation.





As a side note, we bought a TomTom gps the other day and I've been playing with it, but no matter what I do the only route it will show me is to CAPE CORAL, FLORIDA. Don't you just hate it when a machine is smarter then you.

Towers, Museums and FOOD

We've driven past this stone tower a dozen times, so today we decided stop and find out what its story was.
We it turns out that it was built as part of one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal Programs. It was built in 1937 to house the offices of the Cumberland Homesteads project. The tower holds a 5000 gallon water tank and has a winding stairway with 97 steps that take you to the lookout platform at the top. At least that's what they say, 97 steps my a**, I think that I lost count at 537, or maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my brain that had my count off a little. The base of the tower holds a three room museum with photos and artifacts from the project
This project was to build 250 homesteads in the area, during the first two weeks over 2000 applications were turned in, the project covered over 10,000 acres and all the homes were built with local material, all of them had indoor plumbing and were wired for electricity even though there was none in the area, the TVA came into the area a few years later. Some of the requirements to qualify for the project were, “high character, ability, honesty, and willingness to work and cooperate with the government in this planned Community. Sounds a little like how our new government would like things.
As you drive around this town if you see a house built from stone, it's one of the original homes from the project.

Everybody back on board please, our next stop is the Military Memorial Museum, located right downtown. This a small local museum that has only been open for a few years now but its packed full of pretty unique military items and gives a good history of the military people of the area. It starts with the Civil War and covers everything right up to the present. The neatest thing we found out is that there was a POW camp here in town which housed 250 German Officers. It wasn't much of a prison since the prisoners all worked at the local farms to make some spending money, they pretty much came an went as they pleased, as a matter of fact one prisoner did try to escape and it was a few days before any boy noticed that he was gone. Camp Crossville became known as the Hyatt Regency of POW Camps. After the war many of the prisoners decided to stay in this area and many returned after going home, for many years after the war prisoners would return to this area to look up the old friends they had made while interned here.

These are the patches that were used to represent General Patton's Ghost Army for the invasion of Europe, and cover up the real D-Day plans for Normandy.







Some one in this area must have had something to do with the film Band of Brothers because they have a lot of props from the movie on display here. Right before you leave you see two American flags on display, one contains the names of the 911 victims and the other has the names of all the police, fire and EMT's that were killed.











While heading home we decided to stop at the restaurant in the state park, they have a big buffet for $7.95 and everybody has been telling us how great it is, so we'll see if they're right. All I can say is WOW! Everything looked so good that I almost had my plate full when I noticed a huge platter of ribs at the end, I managed to squeeze everything to the side of the plate so I could get a few bones on the plate. These are the best ribs I can remember eating, on my second trip I started at the end to make sure I had plenty of room for the ribs, hell you can get salad and veggies anywhere. We found out that they normally only serve ribs on Saturday night and it's $14.95, they only started serving dinner on April 1st for the season and they had a new smoker that they wanted to try out before the first big rib dinner next Saturday so we ended up being the guinea pigs. Imagine experimenting on live human subjects like this, I'm not going to say how many trips I made or how many bones I ate but I sure got my $14.95's worth, oops I mean my $7.95's worth. Cathy didn't keep up with me on the ribs but she did have 2 deserts.
We flipped a coin to see who had to drive back to camp and who got to nap in the back seat.
A few weeks ago when we told some one that we we're going to Crossville for a week, they looked at us funny and asked “Why would you want to go there for a week there's nothing to do there”.

Tennessee's Favorite Son

What did you do for lunch today, well we ended up spending a little over an hour with the son, grandson and of Sgt. Alvin C York.

We're camped in Crossville, Tn and took about a 40 minute drive north to the little town of Pall Mall, which is also the home town of Sgt York. His house is now a State Historical Site and open for tours. The house is the same as it was when the York family lived there with all the same furnishing, also a lot of artifacts have been added to explain Sgt Yorks life and experiences in WW I.

There are a few different versions of what happen on October 8, 1918, during the Meuse -Argonne Offensive in France, but what is basically accepted is that Seventeen soldiers, York included, infiltrated behind the German lines in an attempt to take out the German machine guns. They had managed to capture a group of German soldiers when they fell under machine gun fire which killed 6 and wounded 3 of the Americans, leaving York in charge of the remaining soldiers.
When the engagement had ended more than twenty Germans lay dead, 132 soldiers, including 4 officers, and thirty-five machine guns which were manned by these soldiers became discouraged and surrendered to York and his six comrades.

Sgt York received the following awards, Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross , War I Victory Medal , American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal ,French Légion d'honneur ,French Croix de guerre with Palm , Italian Croce di Guerra ,Montenegrin War Medal.
After he returned home from the war he married his sweetheart, Gracie Williams and raised 7 children, founded the Alvin C York Agricultural Institute, opened a Bible school and operated a mill on the Wolf River in Pall Mall.

He tried to re-enlist for WWII but was turned down because of his age, so he supported the war effort by doing bond tours and giving speeches and was instrumental in forming the Tennessee State Guard in 1941.

He spent the last ten years of his life confined to bed, due to a stroke, in his home in Pall Mall, he died in 1964 and was buried with full military honors at Wolf River Cemetery in Pall Mall.
We were the only ones in the house while we were there, the house is exactly as it was when the family lived their until Gracie York died 1984 at which time it was turned over to the State of Tennessee. The entire house is open for you to tour and normally a family member will be there to answer any questions. After we toured the house we went out back and took a walk across the
property to the Wolf river, then down the bank a ways to a suspension bridge that we walked across to the Wolf River Cemetery where we visited the family plot. The view from the cemetery was fantastic, it overlooks the valley with it's meadows filled with grazing cows and a background of the Tennessee Mountains with all the rocky outcrops.


While we were talking with the son Andrew Jackson York, I asked him if anybody every asked him what it was like have Gary Cooper for a father ? He said that nobody had ever asked him that but quite a few people have told him that Audie Murphy did a wonderful job of playing his dad in the movie.
Right across the street from the house is the old General Store that the family owner, it's now a gift shop run by the state, just down the road and across the narrow bridge is the old mill which has a nice picnic area

Graves, Castles and stuff

Did a little wandering around the area on some back roads today and found the Silverdale Confederate Cemetery, it's only about 150 feet of off I-75 but if you don't know where to look it's a hard one to find. There are 155 graves here and they were originally marked with wooden markers but over the years they have rotted out stolen or gone missing in one way or another, so now there are 155 unmarked graves located here.

A few miles south of Chattanooga on a back road and we found this marker along side the railroad tracks. This is how far Andrews Raiders made it with the steam engine “The General” when they tried stealing it during the Civil War.






Time for a genealogy road trip over the mountain to the city of Winchester, Tennessee some of Cathy's ancestors settled in this area and she wants to spend the day in the basement of the county court house looking at old land records. This means that I get to run around town trying to find something to do, I found something really great.

The Old Jail Museum of Winchester, this is the third time that I've tried to visit this place and it's always been closed, but as I pulled up today there were cars in the parking lot and the front door was open. Turns out that it was all the volunteers doing the spring cleaning so they could open the museum next month, I told them this was my third try and that I would try again next year. As I was starting the car to leave one of the ladies knocked on the window and said that if I didn't mind the dust or stepping over a few thing I was welcome to walk through the museum. So for the next three hours Bo (one of the volunteers) and I wandered around the museum, Bo was born and raised in Winchester an knew the history front and back so I got a really good tour. I found out that Dinah Shore's family owner the department store downtown on the square and that she wasn't a blond until she left Winchester, that Franklin County at the start of the Civil War wanted to join the Confederacy but Tennessee was neutral, so the seceded from the state and that Andrew Jackson was a Circuit Court Judge here.


Ruth another volunteer who is 88 years old, told me that her mother was the school teacher i the one room school house, before the county built a school system, and that a couple of times she had over 100 kids in the school house and that her Grandfather rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest during the Civil War. Another interesting story she told was of a German lady the migrated here from Germany, married and raised here family on their farm, When WW II started since she was born in Germany, she was placed under house arrest for the duration of the War, she was 85 years old when the war started.

Bo gave me a few things to look for in the area so after I picked up Cathy we headed for the back roads, The first thing we found was the Falls Mill but is was closing time so well do this one another time. Across the highway and down about five miles of back roads we found the grave site of Polly Crockett, wife of Davie, they were in this area for a short period after he returned from the Creek Wars when she died.
Back in town we found the Hundred Oak Castle, which was badly damaged by a fire and is in the process of being restored, we could only get close enough for a distant picture of the south tower. Link to pictures before the fire.



Driving from Winchester to Monteagle this is the view of the Sir Franklin Templeton Library, (the wall street guy) he was also from Winchester.









We took old US 41 home and found a State Park just south of Tracy City that had about 200 of these old Civil War era coke ovens.







Another 15 miles or so and we found Foster Falls, there were about 5 couples loading up there backpacks and getting ready to hike down into the canyon for a night of camping, it's going down to the low 30's tonight, I'll take the motor home and heater.


We figure that next year we're going to have to spend a week or two in this area just to see everything, including the 16000 acre campus of the University of the South, built right after the Civil War, they tried to build it during the war but those Dam Yankees kept burning it down.

Books and Battles

One of the reasons we love Tennessee is McKay's Used Book store, they have stores in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville. We've been known to drive out of our way to stop at one of the stores. The trick we found is that as we travel around we stop at a lot of Salvation Army and Goodwill stores to pick up our books for 50 cents to a dollar, once we read them we put them in a box and save them for trade in. The first time we stopped at McKay's , about five years ago, we had about 50 paperbacks, you drop them off at the trade in counter when you go in and the give you a numbered receipt. When you see your number on the board you go back and they exchange the receipt for either cash or a voucher to purchase books with (the voucher is worth more then double the cash), the first voucher we got was for about $55.00. The vouchers are good forever and at any store and if you end up with more then one they will combine them for you, our last voucher was for over $89.00. We'll use most of that before we leave here stock piling books, then we save everything again until we get to the next one. We've probably gotten over $700 worth of books from them over the years and never spent a penny out of pocket, other then 50 cents or a dollar per book at the flea markets and such. If you love books like we do be prepared to spend at least an hour there, probably more because they are huge stores.

Today we went for a little drive along Missionary Ridge, this is the site of one of the major battles in this area during the Civil War, it's a very narrow winding road that as the name sez follows the ridge from one end to the other. It's a beautiful drive with some fantastic homes and very few places to park. The neat thing is that since the battle took place here and it's a National Park Service area there are monuments, markers, statues and signs everywhere along the street, which means in everybody's front yard. With so few parking areas it's very hard to stop and see them or get pictures. The NPS tried to place any canons exactly as they would have been during the battle, we passed one house that had two canons in the front yard, one on each side of the walk and pointed right at the front door, makes getting the morning paper a little strange.

Detour to Michigan

Well we made it to Michigan and back, I would say that we made it through the cold weather up there but it was 14 degrees when we left Chattanooga and it was 38 degrees when we got to Michigan.

Our grand daughter Rachel had her 10th birthday party and it was a big success, she got everything that a ten year old girl needs, tons of American Girl stuff and a new PINK Schwinn Mountain Bike. The day we got the new bike the temperature had dropped back down into the teens and she was a little peeved at us because we wouldn't go bike riding with her.
Our prize was that we had ordered 9 boxes of Girl Scout cookies and they were waiting for us in a box in the hall except by the time we got to them there were a few boxes missing. Rachel sold the most in her troop and gets some kind of prize for that, I think maybe the fact that her dad took the order forms with him to his Jennie Craig meeting might have helped put her over the top.

Rachel woke up early on her birthday around 4:00am, not because of excitement but to heave her guts out. So she got to spend the next three days home on the couch with grandma & grandpa, don't know how sick she really was the second two days but she did get to spend them with us.
The ten days seemed to fly by and we were on our way back to Chattanooga, wasn't a bad drive until we got south of Lexington, then we hit some snow flurries which turned to rain, and it didn't stop all the way to Chattanooga and then it still didn't stop, not for three days. It's going to be sunny and warmer for the rest of the week now so hopefully we'll get out and do something to avoid going stir crazy.

We spotted a new restaurant today, at least for us, Five Guys Burgers and Fries, and decided to give it a try. Wow, this was one of the best burgers we can remember having and the fries were the best, absolutely the best. If you spot one give it a try, we're hoping to spot another one later this week.

Our drive across Alabama

We left the Gulf Shores area and did a little drive up to Montgomery. We had planned on visiting the Confederate White House, but just like the last time we were here they are still working on the restoration, it's suppose to be open around the end of March. So the only thing we managed to accomplish was to find just about the best restaurant in Montgomery. Martin's Family Restaurant, it's located at Carter Hill Rd and Narrow Lane Rd, at the east end of a little strip mall on the south side of the street. They offer a meat and three, with about 4 different meats and 8 to 10 veggies, they start you out with a basket of the best corn bread biscuits that we've ever had and then they give you three times as much food as you can eat. Everybody told us to save room for pie but that would have been impossible, even for us. What I noticed was everybody ate about ½ their lunch, then a little bit of their dessert and the rest went home with them for dinner. We had the fried chicken and none of it made it out the door as a matter of fact we had a hard time making it out the door after all that food.

Next stop Scottsboro, home of the Unclaimed Baggage Store, you can get anything from ear buds for your Ipod to a 42 inches flat screen TV, Scottsboro is also famous for their tomato pie, but we had a big lunch when we got into camp so we past on it this time.

The drive up here was interesting, just as we got into Birmingham a monster thunder storm moved in with some really strong winds, we were on I-59 and and the traffic that was moving and not sitting on the should was only doing about 25 M.P.H. We were lucky and it cleared up right before we started crossing the mountain ridge on the back roads, by the time we pulled into Parnell Creek Campground the sun was out but the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees.

When we woke up Sunday to get ready for our drive to Chattanooga we looked out the window and there was an inch and a half of SNOW on the car and motor home, the last time there was this much snow on the motor home was our second day of full timing when we had to over night in Kentucky and that was 1997.


Now we have one day to get everything ready to leave the rig and drive the car up to Michigan for Rachel's big double digit birthday, that's 10 for you public school educated kids. Well be there for 8 to 10 days then hopefully when we get back down here it will have warmed up some, it's going down to 20 tonight.