STORMY SATURDAY FOR FOOTBALL IN TENNESSEE

If you started watching the University of Tennessee and Oregon football game held in Knoxville Saturday, you know that there was a 70 minute game delay due to lightning.  That same storm rumbled across my backyard some 30 minutes prior to that delay, raining down some heavy drops that quickly turned into torrents down my drive-way.

I grabbed my camera and took a few shots and discovered a shivering hummingbird sitting on the feeder.

Lightning flickered across the sky and leaves and limbs came tumbling down from the trees.  There's always something to pick up or blow off my drive, but storms give me even more work.  It's the price you pay living under a canopy of Beech, Oak, and Hickory trees.  

From our second story screened-porch, it makes you feel like you're living in a tree house.  We love it, but we duck every time a storm comes through, or the Hickory turns loose of another nut!  They hit the aluminum roof like a rock and roll loudly off to the ground.

This latest rain gives us hope for a beautiful autumn leaf show, but it has been dry at the key time for turning the colors brilliant.  Up until the past three weeks, our place has been like a tropical jungle; all rich and lush with green grass and foliage.  Recently we noticed the usual August brown moving through the trees and across the grass.  However, there is still hope.

I'm still hopeful for Tennessee football too, although it will have to wait another fall to happen.  Today's game went as I expected it, even if I did go into the game thinking we might see some surprises.  We did...lots of young players, with a young coach, with lots of potential.  Next year my friends!

Yes, I'm mindful of what fall usually depicts - the end of life for another season.  With my current situation (see previous post), it does make me stop and reflect, and think about things to come.

EAST END OF THE NORTH BOUNDARY GREENWAY

Wednesday found Neena, Ron, Judy, and me on the trail again. This time we started at the east end of the North Boundary Greenway, which is on the west end of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We ended up doing 4.426 clicks…that’s 2.75 miles round trip!

The fall colors remained another week, and only began to fall today (Friday) after a good soaking rain which lasted most of the day.

After about a mile walk, we left the gravel road and walked along a rough bicycle path into an old rock quarry area where limestone was once blasted out to build roads, concrete pads, footers, and compressor stands for the huge K-25 Plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The K-25 site, along with Y-12 and X-10 plants, were once bustling worksites with over 12,000 men and women (my dad included) working on the world’s greatest secret – so secret they didn’t even know what they were building. Only General Groves and a select few knew the full mission.At some point, workmen hit an underground stream and the quarry flooded, probably covering equipment that couldn’t be removed in time.

The water today is beautiful, reflecting the blue sky above and the green cedar trees that line the quarry’s edge. Only a few scraps of iron and a pile of concrete fence footers remain to bare witness to the work that went on there.

Ron decided we needed to circle the quarry and return back by the Gallaher Cemetery, with is marked as #12 on the Oak Ridge Reservation. The Gallaher-Stone Plantation once thrived in the valley where the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant would be located some 113 years later.

This little graveyard contains both the once ornate markers, complete with dates and names of the slave owners, and the simple stone markers, no names or dates, of the slaves. This quite reminder of days gone by and of different ways of life sits quietly beneath colorful trees today. Neither the slaves buried there, nor those standing and contemplating the past, and the events of the day before (Nov. 4th), ever think that a black man would ever be elected President. Our country is finally changing its horrible ways!

Our little band of retired hikers moved on to Ruby Tuesday’s in Harriman for some food and libation - which is mostly the ultimate purpose of our hikes anyway!

At Ruby’s we met Neena’s son Jason, and together we feasted on various items (like the Sanora Chicken Pasta shown) and drank Samuel Adam’s Winter Lager! Now, everything is right with the world.

See you next time…

HEAVENLY SHADES OF NIGHT ARE FALLING

Heavenly shades of night are falling, its twilight time
Out of the mist your voice is calling, its twilight time

When purple-colored curtains mark the end of day
I'll hear you, my dear, at twilight time

Deepening shadows gather splendor as day is done
Fingers of night will soon surrender the setting sun
I count the moments darling till you’re here with me

Together at last at twilight time

[Written by: Alan "Artie" Dunn, Morty Nevins & Buck Ram-1944
Performed by: The Platters -1958
Produced by: Buck Ram
Appears on: Flying Platters-1958]

Couldn’t help but think of that old song this afternoon when I walked down to the lake, which is finally being dropped to its winter level by TVA, to get a fading shot of the setting sun’s light against the distant trees. I actually waited too late, having nodded off during the first 80 laps of the NASCAR race Sunday!

Maybe I’ll catch it a little earlier tomorrow…if not I’ll probably miss my last chance for the fall season. The morning frosts have just about removed all color from the leaves, all though they are somehow clinging fast to the trees. I haven’t even had to mow leaves once this fall! However, I’m sure there will soon come along a cold rain that will start them piling up in the yard.

When Judy and I first moved here, sometime around ’95, we tried to rake leaves, but the yard is just too big and we’re too lazy. So instead, I close the discharge shot opening with the mulching attachment and mow the yard 3 or 4 times up through December and I’m done with it! Actually, it’s good for the yard to return the matter the trees have taken from the soil and return it to the yard.

The added advantage of mulching the yard is that it gives the leaves a nice level path to blow off into the woods or into my neighbor’s yard!

SITTIN’ ‘ROUND AND RIDIN’ THE STREETS

My daughter Tracy had a hysterectomy Tuesday, and so Judy and I drove separately to the hospital. Judy knew Tracy would want her to spend the night with her, so that way I had a way home.

Of course Eddie, my son-in-law, was there, and so was Katie Bug and Zack, her “current” boyfriend.

Katie and Zack passed the time, about four to five hours waiting on a room after the 15-minute procedure, texting friends at school and comparing photos on their cell phones. I snapped this one as they mused over something interesting.

You can see Zack’s bum left leg from his recent truck wreck. I think he said he had a total of 42 staples in the leg in various places. He broke two bones and his ankle, and had to have a rod inserted to hold things together! He cannot get a “hard” cast until the staples are removed! As you might assume, he had a hard time getting around Tuesday, and especially getting in and out of Judy’s car when we went to eat, and my truck when I took them home with me later.

Please pray for Zack’s family too…his dad is battling cancer right now. That, plus the accident, missing school, and trying to maneuver is weighing pretty heavy on him right now.

The Chinese buffet at the Mandarin House, in Knoxville, Tennessee, took everyone’s mind off their problems for about an hour. The food was good, but it has been better there in the past.

We did notice that the parking lot was not a full as it usually is, but we were there well after the lunch hour.

The kids, and I, passed the time waiting on Eddie to get home from working late by watching scary movies – Jeepers Creepers and the most recent Omen! Then when Eddie came, they just left me here in this lonely house to fend for myself!

I stayed up until about 12:30 and then went to bed. I slept like a baby and didn’t get bothered by a single (or even a married) monster!

This morning I was up by 9, fixing fried Spam, eggs, and toast! Yep, Spam, and later I finished off the small can by fixing a great sandwich that included cheese and sweet pickles! I didn’t get to looking this way by accident!

After all that, I decided to go for a walk around Riverfront Park a time or two, and then drove around Harriman shooting photos of the brilliant maple trees along the streets, at the Harriman Cemetery, and, of course, in the backyard.

Oh yeah, I also talked to FHB for a short time. I pulled over and turned the engine off, 'cause we had some catching up to do!

Right now, I’m completely relaxed, full, and over the surgery waiting room exercise from yesterday.

Happy fall folks!

NORTH BOUNDARY – DÉJÀ VU

Judy was up and out the door to make the rounds at Curves by 8:30. Me, well, I was up by 9, or so, and heating up the oven and starting the coffee to drip. I popped 3 biscuits in the oven, and hit the bathroom, and by the time I was out, the biscuits and coffee were done.

When Judy got home she made her wonderful southern “white” thick gravy, while I scrambled 3 eggs and fried 2 pieces of “light” beef baloney!

After my second cup, I took a shower and shaved, and we were out the door to the community center where we both voted an early ballot, marking our selections by shading in a rectangular box with a number 2 pencil.

We then zipped about 12 miles up the road toward Oak Ridge, passed K-25, where I used to work, and on to the west entrance to the North Boundary Greenway. Yes, I’ve written about it before, but we love to walk there.

It’s a beautiful, usually isolated, easy walk of about a mile and a half out to the 4^th bridge, the largest one on the walk that crosses Popular Creek. We love the slight rolling hills that make you begin to sweat, but there are also long flat stretches that wind their way through the DOE property. The three mile round trip is just about all we really care to do.

It was another beautiful, dry, fall day, with the temperature just below 70, a light breeze, and lots of colorful leaves rustling all around us. It has been so dry here this summer and fall that you are really pressed to find brilliant colors this year. However, there are subtle red, yellow, orange, and still lots of green leaves around, but there is a lot of brown mixed in too.

Ron bicycled the route just a few days earlier and had told me about a new beaver dam just off on the right side of the second bridge you cross after leaving the highway.

There it was – such a masterpiece of construction too! It amazes me how they instinctively know just how to perfectly build a dam, seeming to know how much of an area the backwater will cover. Their lodge must have been further up stream, because we could not see it from the bridge, but you can bet it was up there somewhere, with a safe little family unit proudly surveying their domain.

Judy posed proudly with her new “hiking stick” that Steve, her sister Terri’s husband, made for her. It’s a strong hickory stick, tapered to an epoxy tip at the bottom. Steve cut groves into the top for grip, and inset an emerald stone, her birthstone, into the very top. Down the top forward side he carved “Lucy Dragon”. Lucy is the moniker she was awarded after leaving her purse in a public restroom in Key West! Luckily, some honest person turned it in to the police and she got everything back before the cruise ship sailed. We were truly blessed…again!

Steve has been on a mission of making hiking sticks for all the Dragons, and I think he only has one more to deliver. He has 19 acres of fine Tennessee forest, so he doesn’t have to look too far from his workbench for the raw materials.

I encourage you to get out and vote, and to take a nice long walk down some country gravel road before winter comes. They’ll both do you good!

There are other shots on my Flickr page!

LET’S PLAY LEAF FROG

Four of us (my Dragon and Ron’s Dragon) took a nice short hike at Frozen Head State Park yesterday. Ron and I got several nice shots with beautiful fall colors in them. The last two are Ron's (click on them to enlarge)…aren’t they great with all those rich colors reflecting in water!

The first one was taken after Neena thought she saw a frog along the path. Since it was in the 40’s she couldn’t understand what this frog was doing out. On closer inspection she realized it was really a leaf that resembled a big green frog!

The panorama was taken on the road leading past the Brushy Mountain Correctional Facility to Frozen Head. This is such a beautiful area and just about 10 miles from my house. They call this area “God’s Country” around here, but it’s really just Morgan County near Wartburg, Tennessee.

Why is it they always call places where sunlight is piped in and moonshine out “God’s Country?” It must have something to do with the isolation and the surrounding nature. It is pretty, but I’m satisfied to live 10 miles down the road.

We have been totally surprised at the fall colors this year. We are still over a foot behind in annual rainfall, and I expected the color to either be burnt off by the drought or by arson by now! There is always some idiot lurking around with a “jones” for wildfire when the forests get this dry. Well, it ain’t over yet!

We, well, I am glad the cool weather has finally arrived. After the hike and the feast at the local Mexican restaurant yesterday, I took the couch throw out on the back porch and took a nap. It was cold, but only my nose was exposed. Soon, both Baylee and I were snoring away!

Of course Judy was toasty on the couch with Dr. Phil lecturing in the background.

Ah, retirement…still highly under-rated!

More shots a Mushy's Flickr!

FALL, BEER, AND PIZZA

Ron and I made the Cades Cove, Parson Branch Road, Highway 129, and Foothills Parkway loop Monday. You have to go into Cades Cove, pass the settlement rest stop area, and turn off on the Parson Branch Road to make the trek we made. The road had been closed for a long time, but now looks really good. The park has spent a large amount of money on repairing the washed out sections and the large rock they hauled in might prevent the damage from ever occurring again.

It was about four miles in, or about half way, that we pulled over at the Gregory Bald and Hannah Mountain Trail heads to stretch our legs. This area seems to be the high point of the road trip and the colors there were better than expected. Here are a few shots, but you can see more on my Flickr page.

The eight mile road ends at Highway 129, about halfway down the famous “Tail of the Dragon”, where motorcyclist and sports car enthusiast come to test their skills on 318 curves in a short 11 miles! It has gotten so bad there of late that the Tennessee Highway Patrol has threatened to close it down! Here is just one reason why!

We made a quick stop at the Calderwood Dam overlook, before winding our way down to the Foothills Parkway.

From there, we made our way back through Townsend and on into Maryville, where we stopped at Uno’s Chicago Grill to take on food and beer! Look at this Shroom® Deep Dish with chicken and spinach! And, the Uno Amber Ale®, which is brewed especially for Uno by Samuel Adams, is wonderful!

It was our first outing since Ron returned from a visit with his brother in California and since I had been sick. It was good to get out and stretch my taste buds again!

FALL IN EAST TENNESSEE

Ron and I are going to the Smokys tomorrow in hopes of capturing some of the fall colors. The colors are not expected to be as beautiful as usual since we are about thirteen inches below normal in rainfall this year. However, at certain times the light is just right, like this twilight shot across my backyard and out over the lake. However, during the full light of day, the colors are not as pronounced.

Here is a Smoky Mountain webcam that will let you watch the progression of colors as the days grow shorter. Note, there are other webcams at the bottom right that you can visit. I really look forward to looking at the snow later this fall.

In further pursuit of those colors, is a planned trip in a few weeks to this webcam! It is possible the colors will be gone by the time we arrive, but the six of us (Ron/Neena, Gary/Charlotte, and Judy/Mushy) have always wanted to go, so we are soon off on another adventure!

Anyway, this is just a portion of the beautiful East Tennessee area. We love this area, and it is just pure divine intervention that brought me here. Thank you God.