Browsing CategoryTennessee

Kingsport & Johnson City, TN

Johnson City, Tenneseeeeee! Johnson City, TN That song is the reason why we knew Johnson City was a place. (Thanks Old Crowe Medicine Show and mostly Darius Rucker.) We snagged a couple of campsites at Warriors Path State Park for Wednesday through Tuesday, tossed Scott and Lucy in the rig, and left Knoxville for the Johnson City/Kingsport area. Warriors Path State Park was interesting. The sites were a bit jumbled, seemingly plopped willy-nilly, and often at strange angles. A busy park, it was packed on the weekend with happy campers and their herds of cyclically giggling/crying children who seemed to…

Knoxville, TN

Knoxville is a smelly, unmuffled, scrappy city with good ice cream. City on the left, Dyna on the right. We parked Dyna on the top of a parking garage at the convention center downtown for 2 weeks and were treated to a (sometimes barf-inducing) bouquet of aromas for the entirety of our stay. Overall, I reflect on Knoxville fondly. Mostly because it is one of the few cities in the U.S. that provides RVers a place to live pro tem within walking distance of its fun stuff. My heart hosts a (currently mostly vacant) spot that can only be filled…

Chattanooga, TN

I have a difficult time thinking of Chattanooga without the Chattanooga ChooChoo song invading my mind and then hanging around for hours on repeat. If you do not know this song, then I’m not going to recommend clicking that link. If you do, I am sorry that it is now on loop in your brain too. I know this song because I grew up with parents who dabbled in the world of antiques. Throughout my childhood years, I spent many many hours in antique stores. Some, my parents owned and operated. Others, they rented space to sell their treasures in.…

Memphis, TN

I would argue that no, all roads do not lead to Memphis. But, I get the sentiment. And I’ve already spent my allotment of arguing energy for the day discussing politics via telephone with my dad this morning (hi dad, love you!). And also, apparently this time the road did lead to Memphis. For us at least. And we are thankful it did. Because Memphis is mad cool. Against the warnings of some fellow nomads, we decided to risk the sanctity of our nostrils and park Dyna at T.O. Fuller State Park. Apparently this place smells like shit much of…

Nashville, TN – 3rd Edition

A brief excerpt on driving Dyna, based on our drive from Cincinnati to Nashville. When driving Dyna, I can’t ever ‘get in the zone’ like in a car. There are no Lady Gaga top of my lungs sing alongs with choreographed shoulder dancing moves while driving Dyna. The constant need to be checking blind spots, which happen to be extra large when Dyna is involved really wet blanket my Gaga dance parties. And then there is the constant barrage of ‘what was that noise?’ – “Oh, typical Dyna creak – pretty sure” – “Or it could be a punctured tire…”…

Nashville, TN (Round 3)

421mi of pavement lay between Atlanta and Louisville. Conveniently, so does Jake’s ‘cousin’ and her fiancee – Kara & Dave. They live in Nashville (because they’re hip like that). We had planned to meet up with them when we returned to Nashville to pick up Dyna after Christmas, but a plague knocked those plans off our calendar. So, we decided to take a break in Nashville again. And this time, the rendezvous went down. We parked our big butts out at Seven Points COE, which is a beautiful facility. We slept one night. We worked one day. We met up…

Nashville, TN (2)

On the drive back to Nashville, TN from NY, Jake felt it coming. The ache. Except this time, it wasn’t the ‘adventure’ ache. It was the ‘oh shit, my head aches’ ache. We had been had. Had by the awesomeness of being surrounded by our people. And had by the wretched diseases they (especially their 5 year old ranks) carried. Yep, for the first time since we started our mobile lifestyle (18 months!) – Jake was getting sick. Which inevitably meant I would also be getting sick. Probably because we spend most of our time within 10 feet of each…

Nashville, TN… & back to St.Louis MO

We planned to spend some time in Nashville, TN.   But… then we decided to go back to St.Louis, MO. Another sign that our life is #blessed: we can decide to change our planned place of living (Nashville) to somewhere 320 miles away (St.Louis) over the span of a 5 minute conversation (which may have originally started on the topic of pizza). We had been planning to have Dexter and Andy (my brother, aka, ‘Daddin’) come down for a visit over Dexter’s Thanksgiving break from school (Kindergarten is important!). A few months back we bought 1 way plane tickets for…