Tennkiller Lake Oklahoma 10/2-10/4/10

From Hot Springs we journeyed to Sallisaw, Okla traveling through western Arkansas. This part of AR is mostly rolling hills, oak forests and rural farms. Nothing to photograph or memorialize. A stop here gave us the opportunity to visity where Lili's mom was born and pay respects to Lili's grandparents in Okla City. On 10/3 we traveled to Lake Tenkiller in the Cooksen Hills of central eastern Okla where Lili's grandparents owned a combination grocery store, bait and tackle shop and 2 gas pumps for 20+ years. A couple of summers were spent helping out

at the store and eating all the candy and pop available for the efforts. This photo was taken in 1959 of Lili, her grandparents, her mom and brother in front of Charlie & Clara's store. Lili's last visit was in 1964. The store was sold to the neighbors, Fin & Feathers, resort which has now developed into a major RV park, conference center, additional cabins and meeting halls and encompasses most of what is called Paradise Hill. Much to Lili's delight the store

and gas pumps are still there with an additional pump for diesel fuel. We enjoyed a picnic on the grounds of Fin & Feathers which is now closed for the season so we weren't able to visit with one of the family members Lili used to play
with on her vacations here.

It was a good stop for us........................and the journey continues

Hot Springs Arkansas 9/29-10/01/10

This old bathhouse is now headquarters for the Hot Springs Nat'l Park office in the downtown area. In 1883, the US Gov't purchased all the bathhouses to regulate an "out of control" situation. Many of the houses were shut down due to poor standards and run down conditions. Today, 5 bathhouses and the springs have been restored and are used for medicinal, healing and just relaxing purposes. The Fordyce Bathhouse is 4 stories and serves as the museum of Hot Springs in it's glory years with it's stained glass windows, Sir Francis Drake Fountain, below, women on the left, men on the right, special rooms for special treatments and so on and very segragated, in all aspects. No, didn't take a bath but did get a great massage!

Up on the hilltop The Mountain Tower stands as the century of the village rising 250' tall. It was a great landmark and made it easy to stay the course toward town. In several places throughout town one can walk or drive to a "jug fountain" and obtain free hot or cold spring water directly from the earth, compliments of the Nat'l Park.

This Sir Francis Drake fountain is in the men's section with a towering ceiling with an ornate stained glass window depicting Neptune's daughter with dolphins and fish swimming about. Behind the orange doors are showers heads with 15 to 20 outlets vintage 1800's. Kohler has nothing on these faucet makers.

Since it was a Friday evening and the weather was perfect for a stoll , after dinner we returned to town to find 100's of other folks doing the same thing. There were many civic activities going on to celebrate the end of tourist season. We heard steel drum music coming from one of the bathhouses and found Darril "Harp" Edwards playing to an enthusiastic audience of 40-50 ladies on a retreat from Oklahoma City and were they keeping him busy with requests. The fun began when several began dancing with each other and before you could say 1,2,3 the place was really jumpin'. What a blast

This jug fountain is about 2 miles out of town and in the center of a neighborhood. You just bring your jug, push the black button and the water poors in, free. Scientists have determined the water from these springs if 4000 years old and the park collects 700,000 gallons a day for use in these public drinking fountains and bathhouses. During the Golden Age of Bathing over a million visitors a year immersed themselves in the park's hot water. They then stolled Bathhouse Row with cups to "quaff the elixir" at decorative fountains...................and the journey continues

Elvis, Rock and Roll and golf 9/26 - 9/28/10

This is truly Elvis, in bronze, as he stands guard at the visitors center on the Mississippi River. His home, Graceland was purchased in 1957 for a mere $102,000.00 from Dr. and Mrs. Moore who built the house in 1941. It was named Graceland to honor Mrs. Moore's aunt Grace long before Elvis purchased it.

The house is pretty modest by today's standards but certainly was elegant for the time. The stained glass peacocks were magnificant leading into the music room off the living room.

His music achievements are well documented in a room 10 x 40 feet. Too many to photograph but this is just a corner of that room.

A trip to Sun Recording Studio displayed a valued photo of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and Johnny Cash having an unplanned jam session that was recorded by the owner, Sam Phillips. During Sun's haydays, this was known as the $4 million dollar photo. Probably worth a lot more than that today!

This is an early record cutting machine in the Sun Studios museum. It was state of the art at the time.

Mirimichi Golf Course..........why you ask? This is Justin Timberlake's course........and is the first Audubon certified GC in the US. Mirimichi means "a place to relax" and this course was anything but relaxing! The greens were like putting on glass, tight fairways and lots of sand traps! We both hit quite a few of them................and the journey continues

Memphis 9/23

Memphis is about everything American. It's history as a river port is depicted in the Riverwalk along the Mississippi showing how it flows from Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. Again, a strong slave state, TN was a stronghold for the seperation of black and whites.

After the war, the KKK was born not far from here and there was a rather violent recontruction period. MLK was asassinated here in the 60's and this was a city where busing was part of the early civil rights, EEO movement.

This carriage is drawn by Penney, crewed by Claudia and dog Macy. We pranced around downtown Memphis learning exactly how much this town is still racially divided but it's music is the heart and soul and the common denominator bringing folks together. After a wonderful dining experience at the world famous, Peabody Hotel, where the ducks are on parade twice a day, we journeyed to Beale St for a first hand look at the heart of the blues and the starting point of rock n roll. This section of Beale street is just 4 blocks long and baracaded like a maximum security prison to prevent any potential problems. Lots of booze and probably some drug use.

We stopped at Dyer's hamburger stand to get the obligatory walking margarita for the stroll to
listen to music drifting from every bar, court yard and watch acrobats doing back flips up and down the blocks. No need for a flash light here, neon lights do the job just fine. It's a miniature Las Vegas strip.

BB King is alive and well in Memphis. He celebrated his 85th birthday a few days after our visit and performed at his club. Beale St will never be the same.................and the journey continues

9/14-9/17/2010 Land Between The Lakes, KN

This motorhome parked next to us during the night and of course we were amused with all the art the next day. Must be quite a distraction on the road....it certainly took us several minutes to read all the details...........turns out the owner is a pro-hunter and we're outta here heading to Memphis TN before he wakes up!

On our way from Lexington to Memphis, TN we wondered what Land Between the Lakes was. Found out the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers flow out of TN into the Ohio & Mississippi Rivers. They are separated by 10+/- miles of land and include both TN & KN and was settled in the early 1800's. During the Civil War, KN was a neutral state but most of the western residents sided with the south. As neutral as it was, 75,000 KN's served in the Union army as well as thousands of freed slaves. The Union eventully took control of the area of the two rivers because of the vital supply routes. After the war and into the early 1900's, tobacco was big and there were a lot of tobacco wars waged on the farmerm who did not join the tobacco co-op. Night riders would burn home and crops of farmers who didn't join to keep the prices inflated.

Floods in the 1920's prompted the FED's to dam the TN River and created Kentucky Lake and later the Cumberland R was damed to create Lake Barkley, named after Truman's VP in the 50's, together they created the largest man made water system on the planet. In the 60's all the land between the two lakes was acquired by, in many cases, eminant domain , by the US Gov't and TVA creating a massive recreational area. On the non-fed side of the Cumberland River, the St of KN has 4-6 State Resort parks which in themselves are massive and contain trails, marinas, stables,lodging and golf courses on the scale of a Nat'l Park. The scenes here are looking at Barkley Lake at the State Resort Park from our lunch table in a Yosemite style lodge.

Within the LBL is a nature center with many species of rescued animals including 5 species of owls one of which posed nicely for us. We became acquainted with a couple,who are naturalists here and soon will wed and wanted to honeymoon in Yosemite, we chatted and gave them suggestions on how to enjoy the area on limited time. Very nice couple and we wish you much happiness John and Aviva. Kentucky is a great state, especially the committment to their park systems.

We took a week away from TN to return home as Lili's mom passed away on Sept 16th, we are back to TN and will continue westward so..........the journey continues

9/10-13/10 more horses and bourbon

Around Lexington lies 1,000's of acres of blue grass horse farms. If the grass were left to grow long it produces a little blue flower, thus the name. We drove many miles and observed ranch after ranch with miles of white or black fences, trails, jumping facilities, some with race tracks on site and if you don't have a mane, long perky ears or bridle with your name on it your not a local here. Like a picture on the wall, it really has more feel to it once you're here. We have nothing but good feelings seeing this part of Kentucky.




Shown in the Champions Ring at the Kentucky Horse Park are many past derby winners and just old horses that are donated by their owners to represent their breeds. This beautiful speciman is named Cigar, a 1990's horse who was unbeatable, now retired and living the good life here. He was purchased for $15,000 and won over 9 million for his owners in prize money and was sold again for $25 million for stud and charged $75,000 a pop only to find out he was sterile and no insurance!

Kentucky is also known for it's bourbon and we can attest to the quality of Maker's Mark, Woodsen and Buffalo Trace to be high quality bourbons, all having a different take on how to make their whiskey. All use 50-80% corn and some use wheat, some use rye, all use malted barley during the distilling process and they all have different opinions about where to store, how long to store, what toast or char to use in the barrels and whether or not to blend. The distilled spirits are aged in 53 gallon barrels to produce color and flavor and sometimes end up producing only 6 gallons of finished whiskey(the small barrels in this photo are trial sizes). After visting 3 distillaries, housekeeping chores and a golf day..................the journey continues

Lexington Kentucky Horse Park 9/9/10

The Kentucky Horse Park is the venue for the first ever on US soil International Equistrian Championships. This park is 1200 acres of everything "horse" including a jumping complex, hall of champions, carriage barn, breeds barn, international museum of the horse, steeplechase course, race track, tack and farrier shop, draft barn, (not beer), american saddlebred museum and you name it, it's here all spruced up for the expected crowd of 300,000.

We watched a show at the breeds barn which started out with our colors and the Star Spangled Banner proudly displayed and sung. A display of various horses and what those breeds are known for.

What absolutely blew us away was these two young Aussie men who trained two horses in four months to work together in unison without halters, ropes, saddles or being restrained at any stage of their demonstration. These pictures tell their story. There were many other tricks displayed but these were the most unusual. This horse let Dan stand on it's chest while it played dead!

See the whips in both hands of the rider, these are cracking over and around the horses heads and bodies and they don't even flinch. This is a very vulnerable position for the horse lying down and the standing horse has side stepped over it and Dan mounted it and then side stepped away.