Pigeon Forge TN continued, June 2012

   The past couple of weeks have been a little laid back.  Linda had a toe that was bothering her for a couple of weeks. It looked like an ingrown toenail to me. Finially she said I have to do something. We went to the local Urgent care center. After a two hour wait we finally got to see the doctor. He took one look and said"how attacthed are you to that nail". Well duh, "its attacthed to me". He said he would have to remove part of the nail. Linda said ok. I said I'm going out of the room. Linda said, you are going to leave me alone. I said,ok, I'll stay. I did and held her hand thru the whole procedure, but closed my eyes. We were both very brave. The numbing took about 15 minutes, the procedure took about 3 minutes. I did peek a little. After 3 days she said it is feeling much better. Now she is back up to speed. Linda did have to miss one day of work, not a problem. But, this passed week we had started new jobs working in catering. She was reluctant to call our new boss. But no problem, she is very nice. It is nice working in air conditioning with these 90+ degree days. We do enjoy working in catering. It is a great group of people, and we usually will only work one or two days a week. This passed week we had "The Coster Car" convention, a group of about 1700 attending to ride the new Eagle coster here at Dollywood. It was a busy weekend. The following week we had 900 girlscouts.
    Last week the employees at Dollywood had a special preview show. It was The Wonder Dog Show. What a super show. All the dogs in the show were rescued. About half were either Border Collies or Australian Cattle/sheep dogs. It was amazing how great they were. Of course one of the border collies reminded us of our Blazer. After the show we did get to talk to the trainer. He also just lost his 10 year old border collie. The show is dedicated to him. At the start of the show, they show some slides of him, as he was the star of the show. We all had tears in our eyes talking about our lost friends. And here is a guy with 15 other dogs to help ease the pain of his loss. Unfortunately our photo's are limited because of the lighting and the super fast movement of the dogs. The show will continue for several more weeks for all Dollywood guests.  See www.stuntdog.com

Almost all of our dogs over the passed 47 years have been adopted. We support pet adoption.

This dog just jumped 5 foot.

This guy reminded us of our Blazer.

That is two dogs jumping rope at the same time.

     While Linda was recovering we did a road trip through an area of Smoky Mountain Nat. Pk. we hadn't toured before. It is called the "Roaring Fork Motor Natural Trail". It is a beautifl ride and the rhododendron are in full bloom. In some areas when you look in the woods it looks like its snowing. There are many small streams along the road. The road is narrow and has some very steep dropoffs. There are also 5 or 6 old homesteads. I did a few quick and short walks, mostly around the homesteads and along the streams while Linda sat in the car. It felt strange without her. We took so many pictures it is hard to decide which to include here. So click on this link and it will take you to our photo's    http://community.webshots.com/user/101ontheroad?vhost=community
   
       The next week Linda's toe was feeling much better, so we drove to the Museum of Appalachia in Clinten TN, about 55 miles from here. This is one of the best museums we ever visited. You could spend several days looking and reading all the description of all the artifacts. The museum is both indoors and outdoors. There are 36 buildings, moved here from the surrounding area. The museum tells  the stories and resourcefulness of the Appalachian people. We took many, many photo's. and this link   will take you to them
http://community.webshots.com/user/101ontheroad?vhost=community . You can also see our  older albums.  We tried to pick what we thought were better pictures. Its one of those things, you have to be there to appreciate this museum. This is the website of the museum  www.museumofappalachia.org
   
      Then we went to the American Museum of Science and Energy" It is also about 50 miles from here. It is in Oak Ridge, TN. We did remember a little about the "Manhattan Project". But very little did we know.  We remember very little about it or the "Screat City". A very interesting story about the developement of the Atomic Bomb and all the history of how this facility was developed See more here  www.amse.org  .    See a lot more here, wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee copy the link and paste it in google and do a search. Very interesting.   You can have a hair rasing experience. here. 

A very important date for me.

Linda trying to keep the ball going.

A hair rasing experience.

This is near our hometown. Bethlehem Mine Corp was part of Bethlehem Steel.

    One evening we went to the "Cirque de Chine" show. An amazing  chinese acrobatic troupe. The show is about two hours of continued excitement. See  www.smokymountainpalace.com  .It is one of those things, "you have to see it to believe it".

Pictures weren't allowd, so there are very few.

A beatiful theater, the largest in the area.

After the show, see the steel cage in the background. There were 4 guys on motorcycles riding around at the same time in the cage.

See how young some of the preformers are.

     Another evening we went to Gatlinburg to the "Sweat Fanny Adams Theather".  The preformance was "The Incredible Adventures of Mary Bright".  The actors are know as "The Great Victorian Amusement Compaany". We laughed till our sides hurt.  There is a lot of audience participation.  There was a lot of vaudeville style comedy mixed  in the show and after the main show. See www.sweetfannyadams.com

 The villians

 Mary Bright in white and her friend Miss Goodheart.

 The villians

 This was after the Mary Bright part of the show. This part comedy, part vaudeville. They also did the famous Abbot and Costello act "Who's on First". It was great, the "Paper Dance" was hilarious, see below.

       This week our team leader brought in some cucumbers for us to share. She also said she had a super easy recipe for microwave bread and butter pickles, and it is super good. Well Linda knows how much I like sweet pickles so she ask her for the recipe. Linda made some the other day, and I tell you they are grrrrrrreat. If anybody would like the recipe, just emails us and we will gladly share it with you.
      Also great news. We got gas this week for $2.89 a gallon. Never thought I'd do the happy dance for gas at $2.89 a gallon. But in view of the passed couple of years $2.89 in something to celerbrate.

Tennessee Riverboat on Fort Loudoun Reservoir.

This has been a slow week for us. We decided to take a break from all the shows and just relax a little. We did have one adventure this week. We went to Knoxville to the Barnes and Noble store so Linda could download a few more books. Then we just toured around town and decided to do a Steamboat tour. We went to their river walk and had lunch. Then we made arranges for the riverboat ride. We had a lot of time to kill before the boat ride that boaded at 6:30 and left at 7 for a 2 hour cruise. The first picture of the steamboat was taken as we cross a bridge above it. The next photo is taken from their brochure, as their was no way for us to get the boat while out on the lake.

 Our lunch along the water. The dinning room set up for the cruise. The empty top deck before we left the dock and the top deck after dinner.

 Some of the many beautiful house along the Fort Loudoun Reservoir.

 The Knoxville skyline, the "Vols" stadium. The Coast Guard boat, this is one of 9 reservoirs of the TVA. This Coast Guard boat had a barge hooked up to it with maker buoys to mark the channels.

Information about Fort Loudou Reservoir from the TVA website. If I can remember correctly this was another great project the FDR started.

Fort Loudoun Reservoir, located on the Tennessee River at Knoxville, is the uppermost in the chain of nine TVA reservoirs that form a continuous navigable channel from there to Paducah, Kentucky, 652 miles away.

Fort Loudoun Reservoir takes its name from the 18th-century British fort built on a nearby site during the French and Indian War. The fort was named for John Campbell, the fourth Earl of Loudoun, commander of British forces in North America at the time.

Fort Loudoun is a popular recreation destination, known for bass fishing, boating, and birdwatching. The tailwater area immediately below the dam is an excellent site for viewing a variety of waterbirds, including herons, cormorants, gulls, osprey, and bald eagles.

The reservoir is connected by a short canal to Tellico Reservoir on the nearby Little Tennessee River. Water is diverted through the canal to Fort Loudoun for power production. The canal also offers commercial barges access to Tellico without the need for a lock. Barges passing through the Fort Loudoun lock carry about half a million tons of cargo a year

Sportfish ratings Ecological health ratingsTailwater improvementsRecreation facilities

Fort Loudoun:
Facts & Figures

Construction of Fort Loudoun Dam began in 1940 and was completed in 1943.

Fort Loudoun Dam is a hydroelectric facility. It has four generating units with a net dependable capacity of 162 megawatts. Net dependable capacity is the amount of power a dam can produce on an average day, minus the electricity used by the dam itself.

The dam is 122 feet high and stretches 4,190 feet across the Tennessee River.

Fort Loudoun Reservoir has 379 miles of shoreline and 14,600 acres of water surface. It has a flood-storage capacity of 111,000 acre-feet.

To maintain the water depth required for navigation, Fort Loudoun Reservoir is kept at a minimum winter elevation of 807 feet. The typical summer operating elevation is between 812 and 813 feet.

The 60- by 360-foot lock at Fort Loudoun raises and lowers river craft about 70 feet between the reservoir and Watts Bar Reservoir.

Elvis, Cher and others spotted in Pigeon Forge

Thanks to all that sent emails with good wishes for our anniversary. Funny, 47 years later to the day, we are at a waterfalls. This one was a about a mile and a half hike and much smaller.
 Our hike, with great veiws. A nice picnic area along a stream.

   We went to the Tennessee Shindig. Another great show. Were does all this talent come from.  We had great seats in the second row center stage. See www.tennesseeshindig.com 

     This week also started the BBQ and Bluegrass festival at Dollywood. Saturday was super busy. The booth we are working is across from one of the stages. We get to see and hear many of the lesser named Bluegrass groups, but still a lot of foot stomping music. They also have watermelon and cupcake eating contest in front of the stage. We also have the different chefs making different BBQ dishes. One chef made a pulled pork pizza that was given to our booth. Our luck,we were off that day but two of our co-workers said it was super. One day we did get a whole "tomato pie" to try. It was just ok. It was  tomato's and a lot of cheese with seasoning baked in a  pie shell. 
     We did get to attend a lot of the Bluegrass shows at the park. Some of them were really good, others just ok. There was a lot of Gospel music. Didn't know there were two types of gospel music. One is Country Gospel and the other is Bluegrass gospel
   The MC of the theater introduced the Marksmen Quartet. WAIT a minute, there's five of them. Several times he referred to  them as a quartet.  This bugged me during the whole show. As soon as we got outside I got out my smart phone, opened the app for dictionary, hit the mick icon and said quartet. Within three seconds it gave me the following definition - "any group of four persons or things". Now I know why they call it a smart phone.  I turned to Linda and said I though a quartet was four. She said so did I, but I didn't want to seem stupid and mention it, as I thought it was just old age and I was a little mixed up.   I showed her the definition on the phone and we both had a good laugh. By the way, the MC was the  editor of a Gospel newspaper. Don't remember the name of the paper. This takes us back to a Doo Woop show we saw with the Four Tops(I believe it was the Tops, or some other group of four) and out came THREE black guys. Now I counted them several times and there were only three. I guess in entertainment you can do this. There was no explanation of "oh, so and so is no longer with us".

Six different shows.  Top center is the "quaret". Bottom center is the group that player the kazoo's. Bottom left is a show in Red's Cafe, singing 50's and 60's hits.

      
      Another group was the Youn's, which is mountain  folks venison of y'all. They were a mix of bluegrass and a jug band. The also played kazoo's. Brought back memories of our "Blue Shoe Kazoo"  "gig" we played in at C.A.R.E. in Livingston TX.  See this blog--go to Labels on the right side of our blog and scroll down to Texas, it should be the first blog to open, the date is June 11,2010.
      Elvis, Conway, Cher and Kenny were seen in the Pigeon Forge Memories show. It was another great show with many hits from the passed. Cher, Kenny Chesney, Conway Twitty, the group and finially Elvis.

We lost a good friend this week

      Received an email this week that our friend Johanna Maturo passed away, after a two year battle with cancer.  We met Johanna and her husband Ed when we volunteered with them at the C.A.R.E. center in Livingston TX. That was in 2007. We met up with them in FL and traveled with them to a rally in GA. They came and visited us in our hometown area. We last met up with them in March of 2011 in Florida but keep in touch via email. We ask that you keep Johanna and her family in your prayers.