"Onward, Ho! Through The States We Go!"

Beatutiful purple flowers surrounded a Smoking Gazebo just outside The Ramsey hotel in Pigeon Forge. The haze from the Great Smokey Mountains was in the background.  

In Tennessee they require smokers to be 25 feet from entrances, hence the accomodation of a place to sit and smoke, the gazebo.  It was very pretty with strands of light wound up and down the support posts.  This is our fist official stop halfway to Savannah, Georgia, a 12 hour drive.  It was early morning about 5 a.m. still dark out.    

I love that time of day, traffic has calmed, people are not around, unseen birds are singing up the sun, nothing needs immediate attention.

Nikki had disappeared.  When I went back to our room, she was gone, so I assumed she purchased another room because we all snored.  I took an investigative walk, talked to the cashier, went looking in the foyer, explored the pool area, and the business/computer room.  Checked the breakfast room and went outside to the Smoking Gazebo.  Back at the room to see if she had returned, John had disappeared!  Is Ian next?  Will I disappear, too?  Aliens!  I tell ya, I felt like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone where everyone disappears and I'm left to myself, LOL.

Come to find out, John'd noticed I was gone and went searching for me, and Nikki had gone to sleep in her car.

***

Three hours into our trip, crossing the border into Ohio, The Buckeye State, and then into Kentucky, The Bluegrass State, I find I'm meloncholy about leaving behind Indiana, Home of the Hoosier.

Soon, I know, Tennessee, The Volunteer State, will be our over-night stop.  Tennessee is called The Volunteer State because they sent 1,500 volunteers to fight in the War of 1812.  That's an amazing number of men for that time period.

The rolling green hills of Kentucky evoke feelings and produce memories that come crashing in on me like a bombardment of water balloons, "Wham!  Gotcha!"

The memories are numerous, they're heavy, they run the gamut from car trips of children games to entertain us, to historical sight seeings like Lincoln's birthplace, to grandma's house below Cincinnati, to every Kentucky state park vacations, to losses first of grandpa, then of grandma, and then back to my own family at home where I'm not, but where all is known, where the future is blooming in my kids and grandkids.

This sinking feeling sucking old memories through my mind is a thorough surprise.

Pushing them back, and figuratively, opening my eyes to the cloudy day, the sun is  finding holes and nudging breaks in the white fluff to shine through.  There's pine tree clothed hills, limestone carved to allow interstate building, a tunnel in which to honk, and old weathered barns that used to dry leaves of tobacco, a past livelihood staple. 

John, ever the uplifter, exclaims, "Look!  A bear!"  We all quickly turned our heads to see that he's pointing at a black and yellow caution sign, "It might eat me!"  What a goose.

Now, we're getting hungry.  

To Texas Roadhouse we go.

Through the Foothills Parkway, and beyond.  

"Onward, ho!"  

But first, this lookout oversees a deep valley of green, nothing but up and down mountains.  How can they call these foothills?  

"Stop! Let me take a picture."

Kentucky Foothills