Vacation in East Tennessee, 7-4-07 through 7-8-07

I have been unable to write in my blog because my father-in-law's computer would not allow me to get online into this website to write. Kate thinks that this is because of the security measures that my father-in-law has on his computer. Could be. He is somewhat paranoid.

Tuesday was interesting. I left around 9:30 with Kate to go on a foreclosure run, first to LaGrange, then to Summerville and then to Chatsworth. These trips were not really all that close but the route was planned to allow Kate and me to continue on toward our eventual goal of Knoxville. I let Kate drive, which created a little anxiety (Sorry, Kate), but we headed into Summerville which is North of Rome, then backtracked to Calhoun and then to Chatsworth.

The trip was somewhat interesting. On my route to LaGrange, I found peaches and tomatoes. I'm not sure where the peaches were from, but they turned out to be fairly ripe and the tomatoes were good. The Courthouse in LaGrange is brand new and very nice. My first stop was on the front steps of a very attractive modern building. I cried out the sale and then crossed across the street to the car. We found relatively cheap gas (around 2.74) and then got on I-85 toward Atlanta and the exit off of 85 to Summerville.

Summerville is a rough little town with a really old courthouse fronting on an old downtown which has a lot of empty commercial space. I cried out the foreclosure sale as teenagers ran their skateboards down the sidewalks across the street. The video from "Its the end of the world as we know it" by REM ran through my mind and I mentioned it to Kate. We fantasized that every driver who operated their vehicles in manners which irritated us was the one we were disposessing in the foreclosure sale. That was a little mental revenge.

Again we had to backtrack toward Rome to get a route to Calhoun which would lead us to Chatsworth. Kate was rather pessimistic about us getting to the courthouse in Chatsworth on time to cry the foreclosure sale out between the time period for sheriff's sales. That meant we had to get there before 4:00 o'clock pm. We drove through the country on a winding drawn out road that took us through the center of Calhoun, past the old Cherokee capital of New Echota, past the former residence of Chief Joseph Vann, the Cherokee Chief who negotiated with the Federal government to avoid the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Of course, nothing he could say would help. President Jackson was bound and determined to allow his concept of God's will to work.

We got to the courthouse in Chatsworth, which sat up on a hill overlooking a valley in which the city was situated. The weather was sunny with little fleecy clouds around the horizon. It was really pretty and the weather was not too humid or hot to make the weather unbearably hot.

When I got up on near the courthouse I noticed a chicken trotting around the courthouse. That was unexpected. Nevertheless, I cried out the foreclosure sale and popped back in the car and headed it North toward Tennessee. Several hours later we pulled into Maryville, which allowed us to work our way through the 5:00 o'clock traffic to the Airport Motor Mile through the valley between Maryville and Knoxville, then onto the Pellissippi Parkway to Northshore, which led us ultimately to Cindy and her parents.

I enjoyed our trip to Knoxville. We ended up enjoying the long weekend, with a little swimming, a little walk around the Knoxville Museum of Art, followed by a little hard to hear jazz and a walk around the site of the old City Market, which is now an open air area which is struggling to revive. There are some cute shops and some good bars and a couple of decent restaurants. Most of the people there are neo-hippies and older people. Quite a change from the old days when all the farmers from the area would come into town to sell their crops and their animals and there wares.

On Saturday, we drove down to a little town south of Knoxville on US 11 (the old Lee Highway)to nose around some little shops and antique stores and then ate lunch at a storefront restaurant. The meal was somewhat of a disaster with Cindy's meal getting all screwed up. We finally got everything straight and ended up in the store next door.

At that point, we were going to drive down to Athens to visit the Mayfield Dairy Headquarters and eat some ice cream. As it turned out, the place was hard to find and closed by the time we made it into the area where the place was located. As we headed back to the house, Kate wanted ice cream, so we went back to the ice cream shop attached to the restaurant. We worked our way back up US 11 to the house.

On the way we drove through the city of Loudon. Interesting. When we first came into town, it looked deserted. A lot of old storefronts abandoned by the former occupants. There didn't seem to be any commerce going on in the town. But then we made it to the north side of town, fronting on the south side of the Tennessee River. All of a sudden there were inns and restaurants and a lot of possibilities. It really was interesting.

After we crossed over the bridge, we made it to Lenoir City and then drove through the country to Harvey Road and the route to Cindy's parents' house.

Today, we drove back home after providing support to Missy and her parents as a result of a tragic shooting of some of the members of Missy's church. When we got home, it looked like it had rained quite a bit here. That's good.

Well, tomorrow is a work day. Ta ta for now.