Lucy Has Escaped!

[moosetags]

That's an easy typo, especially on a phone, with the 'i' and the 'o' right next to each other.

Brian

[SteveSueMac]

Originally Posted by moosetags

That's an easy typo, especially on a phone, with the 'i' and the 'o' right next to each other.

Brian

That and these bratwursts I call "thumbs" 😜

[moosetags]

Lucy broke camp this morning in Chuckey. We headed west, making our way to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We traveled the back roads as we are trying to avoid the Interstate highways on this trip.

We traveled back through Greeneville and Newport, this time towing Lucy. As we started south on US 411, we came upon the headquarters and plant of the A. J. Bush Company, the makers of Bush's Baked Beans in Chestnut Hill, Tennessee. We stopped at the Bush Visitor Center. We had a great time learning about the company and it's products. The company is controlled by descendents of A. J. Bush, the Company's founder. We found out that Jay Bush, the company's television spokesman, is the great grandson of the company's founder. We stayed and had lunch at the Bush Family Cafe. If you ever get through Chestnut Hill, be sure to make a stop. You'll enjoy it.

We continued to Sevierville, and on to Pigeon Forge. We got Lucy set-up at the Creekside RV Park in Pigeon Forge. After we got Lucy settled in, we decided to start seeing the sights.

We drove into Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We drove the 11 mile Cade's Cove Loop. The Cove is a fertile valley between two mountains. Cade's Cove was originally settled in the early 19th Century. There are still a number of historic structures along the loop. It took about three hours to complete the loop.

We got back to Lucy just before dark, and got settled in.

Brian

[Arcticfox]

Great to see you guys on the road again Brian. We will be following your adventure as it unfolds

Cheers
Doug


Sent from my iPad using Airstream Forums

[Lily&Me]

Love Cade's Cove.


Maggie

[moosetags]

Lucy remained in her campground in Pigeon Forge, and we headed out into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We did a short hike to Cataract Falls. Then we continued into the Park and made the hike up to the Clingman's Dome Observation Tower. Clingman's Dome is the highest mountain peak in the Great Smoky Mountains at 6,643 feet above sea level.

The Half mile hike up to the Observation Tower was pretty much straight up hill and a little challenging for us old people, but we made it without doing any significant physical damage.

We came back to Lucy in time for supper.

Brian

[moosetags]

Today we headed back into the Park to take in more of the sights. We drove all the way through the Park on US 441. This route is the only road through the Park and through the Great Smoky Mountains. The speed limit through the Park is 35 mph. The road is so twisty that it is difficult to maintain the speed limit. We drove out of the Park at the south end and visited Cherokee and Bryson City, North Carolina.

When we headed back through the Park, we encountered several groups of Elk grazing on the side roadway. We hit some heavy rain in the north end of the Park. We got back to Lucy at about 8:30 in time for a late supper.

Brian

[moosetags]

Lucy spent another day relaxing at the campground while we headed out to explore more of the area.

We made our way across some beautiful countryside to the towns of Maryville and Alcoa, Tennessee. Alcoa had a large Aluminum processing plant in this small Tennessee town since 1913. The plant operated for nearly 100 years. In 2012, the plant was cut back to producing a single product, aluminum can sheet.

Maryville is a town that was incorporated in 1795. It is the home town of Samuel Houston of Texas fame. Maryville is where Sam Houston joined the U.S. Army in 1813 to fight in the War of 1812.

We spent some time in downtown Maryville taking in the historic buildings.

We made it back to Lucy before dark, and have settled in for the night.

Brian

[dbj216]

We really enjoy reading about your travel adventures, and the photos are great. The bit about the old Alcoa plant was interesting to me. The smokies are so perfectly "country".

David

[remphoto]

Are you going to visit Oakridge? That is on my wish to visit list.

[moosetags]

Originally Posted by remphoto

Are you going to visit Oakridge? That is on my wish to visit list.

Yes, we are. We are planning to head up to Knoxville and Oak Ridge tomorrow. We will come back to Pigeon Forge tomorrow night. On Monday we will tow Lucy over to the Airstream Park in Crossville. We haven't called yet, but we're hoping to get a site there for a couple of days. We've heard good things about it.

Brian

[moosetags]

We had a slow day today. It rained most of the morning here in Pigeon Falls, so we just hung out in Lucy and relaxed.

We left the campground this afternoon and went over to the Smoky Mountain Knife Works in Sevierville, Tennessee at the advice of our oldest son. We drove through the entrance to Dollywood on the way over there. Smoky Mountain Knife Woks bills itself as the largest knife store in the world. Now that we have been there, we must agree. We have never been in a store anything like this. They have more cool stuff than anyplace else on earth. We spent over three hours there and bought a bunch of neat stuff.

From there, we made our way through the very heavy Saturday night traffic in Pigeon Forge back to Lucy's campground. We made supper and settled in for the night.

Brian

[Lily&Me]

You saw elk in the Smokies.

I'm so jealous.



Maggie

[moosetags]

Again we left Lucy in Pigeon Forge and headed out to see the sights. We drove over to Sevierville, and toured the Historic District. Then we went up to Knoxville and looked around there for a while. From there, went to Oak Ridge to see what we could see of the National Laboratory.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is where the Atom Bomb was developed during World War II in secret under the name of the Manhattan Project. It was a massive project. In 1942 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bought 59,000 acres of rural farm land in East Tennessee. A city and three manufacturing plants of unprecedented scope were constructed that developed a technology that ended World War II.

The Y-12 Plant which was constructed to process the uranium ore covered over 44 acres. At the time of its construction, it was the largest building in the world. The Manhattan Project was kept secret during the War. This was an amazing feat as the Oak Ridge facility employed over 75,000 people. Most of the World War II facilities are now gone, but there are still some government operations on the site.

We looked around as much as much as we could. We drove back to Pigeon Forge, and got back to Lucy around 7:00 PM. We started breaking camp to pull Lucy out of hear in the morning.

Love, SuEllyn and Brian

[Tincampers]

We are in the same camp that you are in for the next few days...site 148. Stop by if you get a chance.

[moosetags]

Well today Lucy got moving again. We hooked her up this morning and headed west through the Tennessee countryside. We traveled about 120 miles over to Crossville. We got Lucy a campsite at the Tennessee Cumberland Plateau Campground. This is an Airstream only campground in a rural area south of Crossville.

We no more than got Lucy in place on her campsite than we were invited to a sunset Margarita Party. We had a very nice time and got to meet a number of other Airstreamers at the campground. All of these folks were Airforums members including mrprez and roadtoaster. We had a great time.

We had supper in Lucy and relaxed for the evening.

Brian

[Tincampers]

Sharon and I enjoyed talking to you. It was great putting a face to a name.

[moosetags]

We slept in this morning and got out around 11:00. We drove into Crossville and toured around town. Crossville is a very interesting town with a lot of history. We took in the historic buildings in Downtown Crossville.

We stopped by Kroger's Supermarket to get supplies for Lucy before heading back to the campground.

A big storm is coming in tonight. We had to get Lucy's awnings in and get her all secured for th storm.

Brian

[moosetags]

Today we came across an interesting piece of history here in the Crossville, Tennessee area. We visited the Cumberland Homesteads Historic District. It is located about five miles south of Crossville and is centered on US 127.

In the early 1930's, the Federal Government under the auspices of the New Deal created a number of Subsistence Homesteading and Resettlement Communities throughout the United States. There were 100 of these projects undertaken to aid communities that were the most hard hit by the Great Depression.

The Cumberland Homesteads were begun in 1934. The Government built a total of 251 houses and buildings which were built of the very distinctive Crab Orchard Sandstone, common in the area. Each homestead was built on a 30 acre parcel of land so that each homestead could be self-sufficient with a small farming operation.

The project was begun by building a tower building that housed the government offices to administer the project. The tower itself contained a water tower for the community.

We visited the Homesteads Tower and climbed to the top of the hundred foot tower. We also visited one of the houses that is preserved as a museum. This particular house, even though lived in by a family for over sixty years, had never been renovated or expanded and is a very good representation of one of the houses as it would have appeared in the 1930's. It was very well done, and was like walking back in time.

The vast majority of the original 251 houses and building are still in use today.

We also drove down to Pikeville, and visited Fall Creek Falls State Park. The Park has a 250' waterfall and a somewhat scary suspension footbridge.

We came back to Lucy in time to enjoy a pot luck dinner at the community center in the Airstream campground.

We started packing up Lucy as we are heading out in the morning.

Brian

[DoublTrouble]

Brian,
Those are really beautiful. Are those people in the pool below the waterfall?