WE'RE HOME !!!!!

After leaving Pigeon Forge, we had a great visit with my brother and sister in law George and Lyn in Seneca South Carolina, we arrived back home in Tavares last night. We want to thank George and Lyn for their hospitality. They have a beautiful home on the lake, they took us out for a boat ride around the lake and Lyn  fixed us a great meal and we had great fellowship during our visit.
 When we got up the following morning we had thoughts to make one more stop in Georgia but after looking at our gps and realising that home was around 480 miles, we decided to see how well things went, and ended up going the whole way home arriving at 6:30 that evening.
 As a recap we drove approximately  6800 miles on our trip in our motorhome and an additional 3000 miles in the Honda toad for a total of almost 10,000 miles.  Other than the initial electrical problem with the motor home and Jeri being sick for the first 2 weeks we had a great trip and a ton of pictures and memories to remember our trip by.  We will definitely do it again some time as there are so many more beautiful sites to explore and see in this great country of ours.
 We want to thank all of you who followed us and thank you for all your great comments even though it took me until almost the end of the trip to figure out the settings that allowed all of you to post.
 We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Love,
Ton and Jeri

SMOKEY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

The last couple of days we  spent visiting the Smokey Mountain National Park.  We camped in a very nice, but small park just outside Pigeon Forge, only 5 miles from the park entrance.  We did 3 of the auto trails and stopped several times to do small foot trails to waterfalls and to some of the original churches and buildings such as a working grist mill.  We where amazed at the beauty of the park.  
We visited Clingmans Dome,  the highest mountain in Tennessee and I took the foot trail an additional  0.7 mile 300 ft climb to the outlook tower on top.
  On 2 of our outings we ran into black bears, today we spotted a mother with her cub leisurely crossing the road before us.  We will post some pics from the visit.

 The haze over the Smokies

 

Walkway to Clingmanns Dome Observation Tower

 Relaxing with my King of the Mountain

Beautiful horses in the meadow

 3 beautiful bridesmaids for the wedding

taking place in this old Baptist Church in the Smokies



 Working Grist  Mill

Our 1st bear on Cades Cove Road

Out for an afternoon stroll with Jr.

Mom and Cub on Roaring Fork Road

Great ending to a perfect day!





J.PERCY PRIEST LAKE C.O.E. PARK NASHVILLE TN.

We have spent the last 2 days at this army corps of engineer park close by Nashville and today we visited Nashville and went to see Grand Ole Opry hotel and as was put forward in Tom & Carolyn's blog it is an very impressive place.  We also visited the Parthenon in Centennial park and learned quite a few interesting facts about the original  in Greece, as well as the Nashville identical replica.  No column is straight and they all lean to the center of the building and no to columns are spaced the same distance in between them.  The 42 ft statue of Athena inside is the focus the same as in Athens. 
Following are some pics from our last 2 days.  Also a few pictures of some beautiful sunsets at Jonesburo Craighead County park.

Sunsets taken from our campsite in Jonesboro, MS

 Great New Campsite near Nashville, TN

 Our View from the front of our campsite

 Waterfall in the Gardens at Grand Ole Opry Hotel

Flowers in the garden

 The Gardens upper level

 Murials of Tennessee in this beautiful hallway

Waterfall in the Cascades area

Jeri's new home

 42 ft tall Althea in 23.75 ct. overlay

 Her Shield

Her protector!?