afield We camped out in the Smokies one night, and went on two hikes, one down to the White Oak Sinks, and another the next morning along the Chestnut Top trail. Both are in the same area of the park, and at approximately the same elevation, but there really was no time for a thorough exploration, […]
Category Archives: Mississippi River Bike Trip
In the Smokies.
01-May-14Being Pro-Life In Tennessee.
30-Apr-14http://circleplastics.co.uk/2017/09/26/marching-towards-a-greener-future-enabled-by-ge-technology/ When I was a child of maybe ten or eleven, I remember hearing a bunch of teenagers talking about a recent camping trip they had been on. There was a stream by their campsite, and they walked up the stream, catching every frog they could, and then smashing them. “We musta gotten fifty frogs!” they […]
Knocking on Heaven’s Door.
29-Apr-14We woke up in Sevierville and walked over to a pancake breakfast place. It was indicative of this area of Tennessee: the entire approach to Great Smoky Mountains National Park is lined with tourist-themed businesses, motels and restaurants and putt-putt golf places, in a profusion that I could hardly believe. Many people complain of the […]
Redbuds.
29-Apr-14Driving along the highway from Kentucky into Tennessee, I was astonished by the redbud trees, which were in peak bloom at the time. I had never seen them in such numbers before, and in this area they grow up as weed trees right along the highway and in other edge habitat. Their deep purple colors […]
More Disasters.
28-Apr-14I had prepared for this moment for days, by going to the ATM machine bit by bit: my account does not let me draw more than five hundred dollars out on any day, and I don’t have a credit card, so for large expenditures like this I have to pay cash and draw the account […]
The Berry Center, New Castle, Kentucky.
24-Apr-14We followed the road, US 421, which was narrower, with more twists and turns, than any other federal highway I had ever seen, more a byway than highway. We followed a creekbed and got off the rolling hills into relatively flat country. We were in northern Kentucky, and it was beginning to look, as it […]
Into Rural Kentucky.
22-Apr-14Wednesday had been appointed as the departure date from Lexington: Catherine would be starting Easter break, and she could then drive me down to the Gulf and leave me there with my bike. But Catherine got off work and the truck was not yet ready. I had come up with an alternative plan: we would […]
When I had first pulled into the transmission place in Lexington, I will confess that I felt a thrill of Providential Comfort, the sense we have from time to time that our decisions are being guided by a benevolent Power, and may be settled into with confidence. Whether this is truly an inkling of divine […]
In the Footsteps of Clay.
28-Apr-14The next dawn came and I was still stuck in Lexington. I had arrived on Monday, and now it was Thursday. I asked if there was a problem. “Salways trouble with these Foward Rangers. It takes forayver to blade ‘em out. Say, whayn you chenge a clutch you gotta blade ‘em, to get the bubbles […]