“People who make no mistakes lack boldness and the spirit of adventure. They are the brakes on the wheels of progress.” – Dale Turner
Just how many pictures of colorful leaves are you going to take, I finally started asking myself. — Photo by Pat Bean
Adventures with Pepper: Day 49
After the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, Skyline Trail in Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina and Smoky Mountain National Park into Tennessee, where my RV was lucky to be able to get up to the 35 mph travel limit, Gypsy Lee needed to stretch her wheels.
The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson in Nashville. — Wikipedia photo
So, because I planned a journey of about 210 miles this day, I reluctantly took to Interstate 40. to Nashville. The roadsides were autumn colorful, and the drive not too stressful, until the last fourth of the journey when I hit Nashville Traffic. All lackadaisical sight-seeing and journal notes went out the window at this point.
It got even worse when I got onto Highway 45, also known as Old Hickory Boulevard and which passed by the Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson’s former plantation. This home became a public museum honoring both Jackson and the antebellum South way back in 1869. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1860 and is the fourth most visited presidential home in the country today.
The structure escaped a near-disaster during a 1998 Nashville tornado outbreak. While the house escaped, many old trees, some of which might have been planted by Jackson himself, were blown down. Wood from these fallen trees was used by the Gibson guitar company to make 200 limited edition “Old Hickory” guitars.
A fitting use in a city that’s known for music, I thought.
Book Report: Spent an hour working on Travels with Maggie this morning. No word-count report because I’m doing what I probably shouldn’t be doing. The book is about 85 percent complete but I was suffering from a need to go back and reread everything up to this point. I felt I needed a refresher read before I tie everything up. I also wanted to make a few changes that I decided on a couple of week’s ago in the book’s structure.
Bean’s Pat: Palestine Rose http://tinyurl.com/bmptucc I avidly believe this is oh so true. How about you?
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