“The Spectacle before us was indeed Sublime” – A Trip To Venus, John Munro, (1897) A technical task brings to mind a pleasant memory I love the ornate language that John Munro used here. I had never heard of his book “A Trip to Venus”,…
I find it almost unbelievable that we have lived here for just shy of 40 years now and are still discovering special things that our area has to offer. Sure, we have always enjoyed the Smoky Mountains, have frequently taken advantage of our Tennessee state parks,…
Last January (2017), Marcy and I enjoyed a day trip to the Hiwassee River Sandhill Crane Festival hosted in the little town of Birchfield, Tennessee. Along with Marcy and me, there were hundreds of other bird watchers queued up at the local high school to…
We saw pictures of a beautifully frozen Bald River Falls the other day and figured we might drive over on Saturday to get our own pictures. The thermometer was showing 5 degrees in the early morning and we talked ourselves out of that, but we…
Snatches from Billy Joel’s song “The Piano Man” came to mind as we fell in line behind the other cars queueing up at the Cades Cove Loop Road gate. The “crowd shuffling in” song lyrics didn’t fit the happy story of our day, but Billy Joel…
Again I reflect on our winter trip to Italy. The latitude in Tuscany roughly equivalent to Milwaukee but the Mediterranean climate brought signs of early spring to the February landscape. We were fortunate to start with a stretch of sunny cool days, but as our…
