day 12: bristol, va./tn. to nashville, tn.: "country roads, take me home"

This is one of those days I'm going to remember for a very long time...

...and then the very first picture I include is a sign of McDonalds--nice! I have included it for a couple of reasons. Today after we left our hotel and went to the car wash (only to have it ruined tonight as we came into Nashville, but still, it was nice for a time), the boys were already hungry. We stopped at McD's because neither Daren and I were hungry (except for a hot fudge sundae!), and because they had an outdoor playground, and because it was in the mid-60's at 11-something a.m. As the boys were playing, (except for Ben, who was drawing) I looked up at the McD's sign that said over 99 billion served. I was thinking, outloud, that I wish I had a picture from when I was young to remember how many it said they had served back then. Then I thought I'd take a picture for my own kids because when they have kids and they look up to see the sign say "over a gazillion people served," they will look back, perhaps in disgust, at how much grease and gunk they ate here. Which, in reality, isn't a whole lot these days, esp. now that In-n-Out has opened. Well that was a long, dumb story. You'll never get that minute back!

Our original plan yesterday was to drive to Knoxville, Tennessee, but we got kind of a late start (shocker) so we found a place closer, in Bristol, Virginia, on the Virginia/Tennessee state line. I hadn't ever heard of this place before, so this morning I grabbed a few of the little flyers from downstairs at the hotel to check out what was around here. It's amazing what you can find just from reading those, like that this city is divided down the middle, literally. If you drive down their State Street, half of it is located in Virginia, and half of it is in Tennessee. There is this really cool sign that is 100 years old this year to show the two states.

We also found out that country music got its start here, in Bristol. I would have thought it was Nashville, but no.

And last, but not least, I read about a Quilt Trail. I have never heard of this before, but have since found out that it's not only located in northeast Tennessee, but in many other states as well. It was started by a lady named Donna Sue Groves, in rural Adams County, Ohio. Check out the youtube video here. Donna painted a quilt square, which honors her mother who is a master quilter, to hang on the barn she and her mother owned. It quickly caught on in that county, and has now spread to barns in 20 other states. I wonder if we have any in Utah.

We just tried to find a few of the barns where we were in Tennessee. This was the first barn we found, just off of I-81. It's the Coates Barn in Sullivan County and the pattern is 'Stars and Cubes.'

Next was the quilt block 'County Fair' at the Farm and Home Museum building at the Applalachian Fair Grounds in Washington County.

This is the 'Star of Lemoyne set inside Swallows in the Window,' found on the Thomas Barn, also Washington County.

Daren was a trooper to entertain this little side jaunt. We actually had a lot of fun finding them and thought it would be great fun to spend a whole day finding more barns. I'll bet there are some really cool barns that are further out from the main roads, but we didn't have time to go find them all. This was the last one we found on our map, the Dobson farm with 'Grandmother's Flower Garden,' in Greene County.

Also in Greene County, in the city of Greeneville, was Andrew Johnson's grave. He was the 17th president of our country, and this is where he was born and raised, and was buried in 1875. There were lots of other things to see about him, but we didn't make it to them--there are only so many hours in the day.

This is the stone path around Andrew Johnson's grave. I can only imagine who has walked here before.

This is the quintessential picture of what is so fun about getting off the freeway for a drive through the countryside. We were just driving along on the country road and saw a sign for a historical covered bridge, so we turned and found our way to the Harrisburg Covered Bridge, built in 1875, over the East Fork of the Little Pigeon River. It was incredible.

We spent most of our day on the country roads, winding in and out of the hills and small towns of eastern Tennessee. We also saw a couple more barns with quilt squares on them.

It was well worth our time to take the road less traveled today. I wish we could do this every day, because there is so much to see everywhere you go, but we will take what we can get.

The boys were pretty much oblivious to what we were doing today. To Ben, it was one of the best days ever because he spent his day drawing and watching movies. He made a whole book about Sponge Bob! Does it get any better than that?! His drawing skills are getting very good.

So we finally stopped for dinner, and then it was dark so we headed for Nashville. We passed Knoxville around 7:30pm, and it made me think back on our day at how much we would have missed out on if we had driven to Knoxville the night before. What a great day!!

This is the view from our hotel room at night in downtown Nashville. When Ben looked out the window he said, "Wow, it looks like Wall Street out there!" Not that he knows what Wall Street looks like, but it was cute. It does look like quite the colorful alley.