🚗2017 July 18, Tuesday, Day Trip to Discovery Park of America Union City, Tennessee

We took Highway 20, crossing into Tennessee at Highway 69 through Savannah, turning on hwy 22 to Lexington, Parkers Crossing, Clarksburg, Huntingdon, McKenzie, Dresden, and Martin to Union City, TN.

Lexington, Tn

Clarksburg, TN 

Huntington, TN

McKenzie, TN

Gleason, TN 

House in Dresden, TN

We made a quick stop at Parker's Crossing to take some pictures of the Civil War Site.

(Need to return to visit here)

The Battle of Parker's Crossroads 

We purchased our tickets at Discovery Park of America around 11AM.

We walked inside an earthquake simulator where we experienced the recreation of Reelfoot Lake.

The Legend of Reelfoot Lake

The lake is named for a clubfooted Indian Chief of the Chickasaw Tribe. The chief is blamed in the legend for the earthquake that caused the lake. Chief Reelfoot was in love with an Indian maiden who lived further south along the Mississippi River. She repulsed his offer of marriage because of Reelfoot's clubfoot. In revenge, he set out with some of his braves in canoes, raided her father's camp at night, and kidnapped the girl. 

Medicine men bitterly disapproved of Reelfoot's act and predicted it would bring disaster to his people. Their predictions were fulfilled, the legend says, by the earthquake that wiped out the tribe and formed the lake.

We spent 40 minutes in the Starship Theater, where we journeyed through space. It was an interactive movie where people in the audience could participate as engineers, scientists, or pilots.

We enjoyed a nice lunch in the Cafe, where I ordered chicken fingers, chips, and a drink.

Hubby ordered a dressed hamburger, tater tots, and a drink.

After lunch, we rode the elevator up to the Tower. The tower is an observation deck where you can see both sides of the park and miles around Union City, TN.

Children's Exploration, Energy, Enlightenment, Military, Native Americans, Natural History, Regional History Science, Space & Technology, Transportation, and Made in Tennessee

It also has a glass floor, which I am not fond of.

Natural History 

Made in Tennessee

Car Museum

Science, Space, & Technology

Energy

Children's Exploration Slide

We only visited one side of the park, where we saw Freedom Square, The Chapel, The Depot, and Stem Landing.

The Chapel and Depot 

Freedom Square

Stem Landing

We took a different route home.

We traveled through Newburn, Dyersburg, Friendship, Alamo, Bells, Jackson, Finger, Savannah, and Walnut Grove, TN.

Construction Union City, TN 

Savannah, TN 

Walnut Grove, TN 

Henderson, TN

We stopped at Catfish Cabin in Jackson, TN, for dinner.

We split a seafood platter and fried green tomatoes.

The trip took about three and a half hours. We spent about five hours at the museum and another three and a half hours at home. We were home around 8:30 p.m.

We will have to go another day to see the rest of the park, visit Reelfoot Lake, and stop at the Tennessee Safari Bells, TN.  

The end of another day trip.

Catastrophic Events

The sermon today was about taking the path less traveled.  

Our minister quoted the last line in the Robert Frost poem. 

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel to both
And be one traveler, long I stood
I looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then, took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and I wanted to wear it;
As for the passing, there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It got me thinking about the places we had visited the last few weeks and the strange events that have happened and are about to happen.
We ran across such things as the Black Patch Tobacco War of West Kentucky & Tennessee, Edgar Casey's "The Sleeping Prophet," The Sinkhole @ Corvette Museum Bowling Green, Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake Union City, Ky., Total Eclipse Hopkinsville, Ky & Sighting of Little Green Men Kelly, Ky IMPACT CRATER Cape Charles, Va.

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/Moments13RS/web/legislative%20moment%2016.pdf
Black Patch Tobacco War 1904-1909
Before the Civil War, Kentucky was one of the richest states in the union after the war, it was one of the poorest. Big business came to Kentucky, eliminating competition, manipulating prices, and undermining control. The price for dark tobacco was instigated by extremely depressed prices for tobacco crops.

Night Riders destroyed tobacco plant beds, barns, and equipment, as well as whipped and sometimes murdered the opposition farmers. 
Night Riders also attacked agents and destroyed the property of the ATC, setting fire to tobacco warehouses in Trenton, Princeton, and Hopkinsville. 
Not even a dispatch of troops by Gov. A.E. Willson was able to subdue the acts of violent intimidation.

https://www.edgarcayce.org/edgar-cayce/his-life/
Edgar Casey "The Sleeping Prophet" 1877-1945 
Born 1877 in Christian County Hopkinsville, Ky
Died 1945 Virginia Beach, Va
The majority of Casey's readings deal with holistic health and the treatment of illness. 
Casey dealt with these five categories: Health-related information, Philosophy and reincarnation, dreams and dream interpretation, ESP and psychic Phenomena and Spiritual Growth, Meditation, and prayer.
Casey was a very spiritual man, and Casey vowed to read the Bible every year of his life when he died in 1945, he had accomplished this task.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sinkhole-swallow-eight-cars-in-national-corvette-museum-in-kentucky/
The Sinkhole at Corvette Museum Bowling Green, Ky
February 10, 2016
Eight vintage Corvettes dropped into the abyss, Six owned by the Museum.
Two on loan(1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil)
The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette.

Bowling Green sits amid the state's largest karst region - the Western Pennyroyal area, where many of Kentucky's longest and deepest caves run underground. Karst displays distinctive surface features, including sinkholes.

https://rootsrated.com/stories/the-fascinating-story-behind-reelfoot-lake
Earthquakes that created Reelfoot Lake Union City, Ky. 1811-1812
When earthquakes shot across the American Southeast in late 1811 and the spring of 1812, the landscape along the New Madrid Fault (which runs parallel to the Mississippi River Valley) changed dramatically. These tremors could be felt as far away as Washington, D.C., and even, according to some reports, Quebec City—nearly 1,400 miles away. This area of western Tennessee was still the frontier, so few settlers lived there to serve as eyewitnesses to the change of scenery.
What we do know, though, is that huge swaths of land slid, and rivers literally changed course as a result of the seismic activity. Fallen trees formed massive logjams, sandbars shifted, and islands were created and subsequently demolished. Among the more significant changes, the quakes opened a great hole in the ground that would be the basin of Reelfoot Lake. After the earthquakes, the Mississippi River backed up on itself, filling in Reelfoot Lake and flooding the once-dense stands of bald cypress trees.

https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/kentucky/

Total solar eclipse over Kentucky 

August 21, 2017

Kentucky experiences about the longest eclipse duration, just over 2 minutes and 41 seconds. The civic boosters in the Hopkinsville area are advertising this spot as the very best place in America to see the eclipse. On this very day of August 21st, the town of Hopkinsville whimsically celebrates a purported alien encounter with a Little Green Men festival, so the world of solar eclipses and alien encounters will conflate in Hopkinsville on this day.

THE POINT WHERE THE SUN, MOON, AND EARTH LINE UP MOST PERFECTLY DURING THE ECLIPSE IS NEAR HOPKINSVILLE. THIS IS CALLED "THE POINT OF GREATEST ECLIPSE," AND THE ECLIPSE DURATION HERE IS WITHIN 0.2 SECONDS OF THE MAXIMUM IN ILLINOIS.

Siege of ‘Little Green Men: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident

August 21, 1955

The Sutton farmhouse family encountered humanoid-like creatures. 

At about seven PM, Bill Ray Taylor(visiting the Sutton family) was drawing water from the well when he saw a bright streak in the sky that disappeared beyond the tree line. About an hour later, Taylor reported seeing a flying saucer. 

The family spotted a creature and ran inside, got the shotgun, and started firing the shotgun at the creature. They shot one creature that was on the roof and one in a tree, and both floated to the ground. 

Either the creatures were impervious to gun blasts, or the men's aim was poor since no creature was killed. The family piled into the car and drove to town, but no sign of the creatures or spaceship was found. 

The next day, the US Air Force was involved, and the case was listed as unidentified (Clark 1998)

This being said, We are safe in no place on this earth. The path less taken will be the path I take.

The path of least resistance is generally the one taken.

Chesapeake Bay impact crater

The Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide that impacted the eastern shore of North America about 35.5 ± 0.3 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch. It is one of the best-preserved "wet-target" or marine impact craters and the largest known impact crater in the U.S.

Continued slumping of sediments over the rubble of the crater has helped shape the Chesapeake Bay.

Until 1983, no one suspected the existence of a large impact crater buried beneath the lower part of the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding peninsulas. The first hint was a 20 cm (8 in)-thick layer of ejecta that turned up in a drilling core taken off Atlantic City, New Jersey, far to the north. The layer contained fused glass beads called tektites and shocked quartz grains that are unmistakable signs of a bolide impact.

In 1993, data from oil exploration revealed the extent of the crater.