All of the stories that come from being on holiday can be found here!
I'm always joking with my Illinois cousins that I'm probably the most hopeless member of my father's side of the family when it comes to Illinois cred. After all, I wasn't born here and truth be told...I think I've maybe spent a month of my life in total in this Land of Lincoln. Apparently my Illinois credit ranking did go up a bit last year when I was forced to pay Illinois income tax on…
Owing to the late check-in, I wasn't particularly interested in the breakfast buffet at the hotel. So as I'm loading the Traverse at 1000 to start heading east, I noticed that breakfast wasn't going to be a problem. Across the car park was a place called "Lion's Choice". I remember Hannah mentioning on Facebook things she missed about St Louis whilst she was at Emerson College in Boston and this one ranked pretty high on…
Heading a bit more west and dipping quickly into Georgia and back into Tennessee which also was the crossing-point into the Central Time Zone, the mileage sign showed I was far closer to Nashville than I had imagined. That could mean only one thing...let's see if we can do the tour of the cousins and visit Grandma and Grandpa in southern Illinois and possibly make it all the way to St Louis where more cousins…
There are several attractions on Lookout Mountain which straddles the Tennessee and Georgia border but the one I was aiming for was Point Park at the summit which would offer the grandest view of downtown and the river from about 2000 feet MSL. The ascent is a twisty and occasionally harrowing journey up the mountain, often on very narrow surface streets. When you arrive at Point Park, you really can't miss the building with the…
After an early breakfast and loading of the cargo, it was time to head southwest toward Chattanooga proper with the idea of ascending to the summit of Lookout Mountain to visit Point Park. Chattanooga is at the heart of the Tennessee Valley Authority which is a New Deal-era agency that was responsible for revitalising the economy that was devastated by the Great Depression along the Tennessee River by building hydro-electric dams and generators (and later…
After a very satisfying lunch at Lexington BBQ, it was time to continue west into the mountains with a couple of stops along the way to Asheville to get royally reamed at the pump. Darn it...I knew I should have stopped at that one station in Mocksville! But no matter...it worked out well to do another splash and go at Black Mountain and give the Traverse a proper tank of the high-octane petrol before really…