After our excursion into America’s Heartland, I was homeward bound. I stopped and visited some friends in Tennessee. They live in Tennessee’s version of Florida’s Villages. Conspiracy theories abound here, as I parked my trailer under a Trump flag! I was in the presence of the Global Elite, and they didn’t even realize who they were. It was a truly surrealistic experience.
Tellico Lake Floating with the Christian Nationalists. Bless their hearts!
We did have a nice visit to the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend, followed by a long, slow drive into Cades Cove. This early settlement was absorbed unwillingly into the National Park—more seeds of discontent for the Federal Government.
Great Smokey Mountain Heritage Center
We left, heading southeast towards the coast. The drive through the Smokey Mountains was beautiful. We did the same drive last year but headed south toward Scaly Mountian, NC. This time, we went east and left the mountains once more for the less interesting drive to the coast and back home.👩🏿🦳
Lessons from The Heartland
What did I learn about the Heartland?
Corn is King!
Corn 🌽 is King!
It’s fucking big! I am glad I took as much time as possible to see what I did, but I think it is enough for one lifetime.
⬆️ The vibe improved considerably the further north I went. ⬇️ It pretty much went to shit when I was back in the South. 💩 Tennesse was the fucking worst.
🎖️ Wisconsin’s Driftless region is the best place I visited. I would live there except for the winters. It looks like the perfect place to raise a child like Theo!
There are not many brown 👨🏽🦰 or black 👩🏿🦳 faces the further north you go (at least where I visited in the country).
I have an increased appreciation for farming and the farmer 🧑🌾, especially the work ethic and commitment. I can understand a bit better how this contrasts with the urban environment.
If I feel something is too much from here on out, I will reconsider my decision. Hiking four hours and 1600 steps in the Bat Cave was not a good move. I ended up suffering the rest of the trip and having a less enjoyable time overall. However, I can live with pain if I have to, it seems. Maybe that is another perk of growing old.
😳
5,000 miles ~ 31 nights ~ Six stops ~ Another Excellent Adventure!
Final Thoughts
Are We Home Yet?
Ad in Georgia on I-95
Free from the tyranny of The Godless Hordes coming to get you this Fall!
When I got home, I parked out front, opened up the house, and ate some lunch. I returned outside to find this ticket. I guess this helps pay for those Ads in Georgia.
After a slight delay due to a major Oh-Shit, the Starship Excellent Adventure launches on the fourth installment of Jake & Eddie’s Excellent Adventure!
First Stop – Krystal
Many years ago, when I was but a pup, there was a Krystal Hamburger store in Cocoa Beach. The Krystal Experience, as I like to call it, is burned into my engrams. Originally, there was a counter where you could order food. Our mailman would eat breakfast there. You see, back in the 1960s, Krystal was well-known for their waffles!
He was a tank driver in the military. He told us how he would file down slugs and use them to buy cigarettes (I tried it later with no luck)! When we had our car accident at Third and Orlando, our car hit his Volkswagen Beetle and pushed it into the storefront of a cafe that was there (no one was hurt). These memories seem like a dream now. Maybe I made the whole thing up!
60+ Years of Krystal
Regardless, I always loved their crappy, grease-soaked hamburgers dripping with onions, mustard, and pickle slices on a square, fluffy white bread roll. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ~ indeed. It’s been my tradition when traveling the lower part of Georgia to always get me a sackful! Yum 😋.
Jake’s collection of puppys for the trip! Dino (from 2021) and Red (from 2022). Sluggo (from 2023) not shown. Plus his fav’s Santa Chop!
Cordele ~ Georgia
After a completely uneventful, mind-numbing drive north on I-75, we arrive at our first stop in bumfuck, Georgia. It thunderstormed all afternoon ⛈️.
Cordele Georgia or thereabouts 🤩
We left early, heading towards the dreaded Atlanta, the semi-truck capital of the South. After a short race on the USA’s largest raceway (aka I-285), we headed west on I-20 towards Birmingham. Then we took the backroads through northwestern Georgia, passing through Rome, to finally arrive at our next stop.
Leave It To Beaver
All Hail Mighty Beaver
In the book I recently read, Termination Shock, one of the main characters, T.R., is an oil billionaire who made his money off building enormous gas stations with dozens of pumps and a giant store to help travelers get rid of those cumbersome wads of cash (or more likely debit cards). He repents his sins of contributing to global heating now that his hometown, Houston, quickly going underwater by building a contraption to shoot sulfur into the upper atmosphere to cool the planet down.
All Hail Mighty Beaver. May the Beaver never go hungry! How fucking embarrassing is this stupid sign? For Spaghetti-Monster sake you mindless nitwits!
While this might just be a story, the gas stations are real – and called Buc-ees. Their mascot is a Beaver. Go figure.
Lookout $$$ Mountain
Lookout Mountain KOA
Our stop for the evening was near Trenton, Georgia. It is a very nice campground secluded in the rolling hills near the Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee state lines.
Lookout Mountain KOA campground
Lookout Mountain area – beautiful views but hard to find because of all the damn trees 🌲🤣.
We took a frustrating drive through Lookout Mountain, looking for some views of the sunrise the following day. The only good view was on a section of the road up the ridgeway with no places to stop! We finally got to Rock City, expecting to see the views. They are there. They cost $31.
In the morning, we head from Chattanooga towards Nashville and then up to Mammoth Caves.
Tennessee Valley Rest Area – a river that is now a lake.
Whenever I see the Tennessee River reservoirs made during the 1930s by damming the river, I always think of the fantastic Coen Brothers movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Over 100,000 people were displaced when the dams were built. In the movie, the valley is flooded right before the trio – Pete, Delmar, and leader Ulysses Everett McGill – are to be hanged, thereby saving the proverbial day! Classic!
Booze It and Lose It in Tennessee!
I generally try to avoid going through the city. My RV safe navigator told me to give it a try. What the hell – what could possibly happen?
Power Lines with Nashville in the background. More crumbling infrastructure. Yee-haw!
I managed to get through with a moderate amount of frustration. One guy honked and gave me a thumbs-up, and another flipped me off for pulling in front of him 😎.
Guns and Ammo – Lots of signs like this. Hell, yes, I need more guns and ammo! Gotta get me a Libtard! Others told me I was going to burn in Hell—more performative warfare on display.
We arrive in the early afternoon. The campground is on the hill overlooking the Interstate on one side and this one on the other:
Horse Cave – looking west
One out of two isn’t bad at all!
Tomorrow: Jake gets to stay home while I explore Mammoth Caves.
Bill, Laura, and I visited some museums in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Oak Ridge is the home of the Clinton Engineer Works, now called Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Mockup of Little Boy atomic bomb at Oak Ridge National Laboratory K-25 museum.
The uranium used in the ‘Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima was made here. The effort was herculean. The world’s largest building (at that time) was built and manned to hold the hundreds of machines used to enrich the Uranium. It’s known as the K-25 site.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Called the “Top Secret” City. The K-25 site, now demolished, where uranium was enriched for the first atomic bomb in the 1940s.
There were other efforts using different enrichment techniques at other locations on the large laboratory site.
At the K-25 Site
Today the Laboratory has very active programs. Especially for the production and use of neutrons for imaging and other high-tech application, as well as programs for our nuclear stockpile.
I stumbled upon a machine there which brought back some amazing experiences from my early professional work. My first job at Boeing was to test aircraft using a much more modern version of this hardware. Later I went to work for Hewlett-Packard which was making modern vibration test systems.
This is a machine to test vibration (my first job) using a Hewlett-Packard Oscillator – HP’s first product made in the early 1940s. I worked on its successors many, many years later during my time at HP in the 1980s.
In the middle with the big dial is a Hewlett-Packard Oscillator. This was a version of the original product Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard made in the garage in Palo Alto in the late 1930s. One of the first customers was Disney which used them to make the soundtrack for the movie ‘Fantasia’ during the same time period. I actually did marketing work on the successor models many years later and was directly involved in obsoleting the product line.
We also visited the American Museum of Science and Energy which had very good exhibits on some of the newer efforts of the lab as well as its history and general information on nuclear energy.
Located in the Smokey Mountian area outside of Knoxville. We drove up one afternoon to check out some waterfalls and the fall color. Lots of retired guys driving their motorcycles and Corvettes on a fine sunny day!
