Knoxville

Next stop, Knoxville. We stopped at the Ijams Nature Center on our way in. Carrie and I went on a trail walk to see how she was doing and break in my new shoes.

TN is thick with trees. There's no other way to describe it. Wherever there might have been a clearing in VA, nature tried to jam a ton of timber in here.

Carrie became fascinated with a grass carp while we were on the boardwalk. The picture doesn't do it justice. We were watching some bluefin swim around when this girl appeared from the murky depths. She had to be over two feet long. 

We did our best to figure out what species she was and then asked a guide about river fish when we bumped into him. He confirmed our guess, but also threw in "They're only good eating if you fry the hell out of them and throw them in a taco."

It was a scenic walk. I wouldn't have called it a hike, but we turned up the 'Mountain Trail' to get back to the welcome center.

The welcome center had a gift shop and a nature center. Getting your learn on is fun! I would have liked to have tried to hold the soft-shell turtle if I could. I've only seen those behind glass.

Speaking of glass, the gift center had an interesting economic idea.

Buy vodka, drink vodka, cut the bottle, and sell for $15 as a bird house? Was some alcoholic hillbilly trying to make a subsidized drinking dream come true?

The road expanded when we approached Knoxville.

Definitely, a city.

But, where was everybody?

The architecture and infrastructure was clearly made for a larger population than we saw.

Sidewalks were nearly empty.

Everything felt like it was built for a bigger scale than it was being used. There were some abandoned buildings, but overall the city seemed in good shape. Where was everybody?

Some of them were working construction at the University of Tennessee. Carrie and I went to the museum on campus while we waited for our room to become available. The Egyptian exhibit had me thinking about SG-1 (of course).

Including staff, close to 40,000 people work at UT. The city should feel far more alive during the school year. When we went out to dinner, the waitress said that most people left the city to beat the July heat. They traveled, went to the lake house, or disappeared into the Great Smokeys. It made for easy driving around town.

Carrie found us another home bed and breakfast to crash in for the night. 

We ended up in a beautiful, two bedroom basement.

I'd brought my laptop thinking I'd have time to use it, but we stayed busy.

After putting our stuff up, we went back into town to eat (food and ice cream!) and watch Spiderman Homecoming. I never wanted to see another Spiderman movie, but this one ramped up on Peter's nerdiness and cut out the origin story. It had some hilarious moments. I wouldn't recommend it to someone's who's completely anti-teen drama and comic books, but we were pleasantly surprised!

Morning brought Lemon-Blueberry-Banana Crepes and coffee. Then we were on our way.

Bonus info: It turns out the owner's uncle (great-uncle?) used to be a book cover artist.

She had an original painting he did for the cover of The Pearl by John Steinback. I read that back in middle or high school.

Also - The elementary school across the street was where they filed some of October Sky. One of my family's old neighbors taught one of the boys that movie was based on long, long ago. Neat stuff. I enjoy talking to people.