🚗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.

2017 July 22, Events of the W. C. Handy Festival Saturday

I went to the Visitor Center to listen to Tom McDonald talk about three of the books that he wrote and had for sale. 

1. Promises to Keep

2. Dirt Road Memories 

3. When Memories Come Calling

I should have bought one. 

I stopped to talk to Tom for a few minutes about growing up in East Florence. 

Tom said that he grew up on Sweetwater Avenue.

I live in East Florence, but our paths never crossed. 

Tom went to Brandon School from the first to the sixth grades.

When we moved to Florence, I had already passed the sixth grade.

Tom's family moved to the Central area around the time we moved to East Florence. 

We talked about Sweet Water Creek and walking along the old railroad tracks down by the canal on the bank of the Tennessee River. 

When we lived in East Florence, my sisters and I would walk to McFarland Park to swim in the Tennessee River.

We also swam in the canal, which was not far from our home. 

Tom said once that he had tried floating down the Sweet Water Creek in a washtub and that he had hoped to make it to the Tennessee River in that tub, but it turned over, and he never made it. 

What sweet childhood memories we both could recall.

Then I went to Florence Library to read Watermelon Wine, the Poetry of American Music. 

Where I listened to Anne E DeChant, sing and play on her guitar some of her storytelling songs (she was very good)

 I left the library and rode to Jack's for lunch. There, I ordered a kids' Chicken Finger Meal, which consisted of two Chicken fingers, green beans, Rice Kirby, and Diet Coke. I also ordered an Apple Pie. 
I still had time to kill before returning to the Visitor Center, so I went back to the Library.
There was a car show that was about to end, so I stopped to take a few pictures. It was going to be long with walking, so I just took several long-distance pictures. I walked back through the Library and saw Anne DeChant and Frye Gilard standing at the counter in the Library, so I walked up to them.
I told Anne DeChant that I loved her singing and playing and that her music reminded me of the storyteller and singer Tom T. Hall. 
She thanked me and said she appreciated the compliment. 
They were getting directions to Legends, where they were going to eat lunch. I said they have good food. 

 Then, back to the visitors center for Swampfest Songwriter showcase series #2 to listen to Buzz Cason and Russell Medford sing and play. 
The audience sang along with Buzz in a couple of his songs. "Hank Williams Christian songs. One way I saw the light. Russell talked about meeting a couple of songwriters at Killen Diner (which has since burnt down) to write a song. 
The fun show ended around 3:30PM.

I rode to Taco Bell to get supper, and there was a line of cars all the way to the stop sign. 
When I got up to the window, I said, you have been busy today. The girl at the window said we have been like this since 11AM today because we had four people to call in. What a bummer!!

After my busy day, all I wanted to do was eat my Taco Salad,  prop my feet up, and watch TV.

🚗2017 July 11, Tuesday, Day Trip to Hopkinsville, Kentucky

Ate a waffle topped with cool whip, blackberries, and walnuts for breakfast. Hubby put syrup on his waffle.
We stopped in Loretta for lottery tickets before beginning our journey to Hopkinsville, KY.
We were traveling I-24 past the Nissan Stadium, Home of the Tennessee Titans, around a quarter till eleven.

Nissan Stadium, Home of the Tennessee Titans 

We arrived at the Rest Area in Oak Grove, Kentucky, around 11:30AM. We always have to stop and check out the rest area/Visitor Center in every state. Mississippi has some of the best rest areas that I have seen.
Kentucky is known for its thoroughbred racing tracks and Kentucky Bourbon Trails, and we saw a little of both here.

Horse Racing and Kentucky Bourbon

We were seated at Logan's Roadhouse in Hopkinsville, KY, at 11:57AM. Hubby ordered the Logan's Roadhouse hamburger, and I ordered the Cod Fish with homemade chips.
The girl who waited for us was very busy, and it seemed to take quite a while to get our food.

The fish I ordered was undercooked and not very good, and hubby said his hamburger had no taste.

Cod Fish with chips, coleslaw, and tater sauce
The fish was tough, and the breading was not done on the inside, but it did look good.
When cooked right, it is delicious.

The real American Roadhouse Hopkinsville, Ky

Pennyroyal Area Museum on Ninth Street.

Former United States Post Office Building, now PennyRoyal Museum 

We were greeted by the curator, who was eating her lunch. We paid the small admission price, and the curator gave us a short history of the PennyRoyal Museum.  
She said the museum was a former Post Office, and it still had windows where people would send packages and purchase stamps.
She also said that we could send a postcard to someone or to ourselves, put it in the mailbox on the table, and they would stamp it. 

Don't forget to send a postcard and put it in the mailbox here.

Upstairs in the PennyRoyal Museum, we saw a display about the early life of a Pioneer in Hopkinsville. 

Pioneer Life in Hopkinsville

Behind the loom was a quilt telling the history of Hopkinsville
25th Annual Quilt Show
Hopkinsville Heritage Quilt
Quiltmakers
Designed by Dixie Thomas
pieced by Kathy Croft
Quilted by Edna Baker, Linnie Wallis, Kathy Croft, Nell Young & Betty Young 

Downstairs, we saw a York Square Grand Piano 1870 made by Weaver Piano and Organ Company and a Winton Upright Piano, 1920 made in Chicago, Il.
We saw local notables such as Billy Boley, the Ventriloquist. 
We saw Robin Penn Warren, the National Poet, and several displays about Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.
We saw The Mechanical Wonder Horse, ridden by three generations of children from 1907 to 1994.
We saw a display of the Brook Memorial Hospital and Doctor Phillip C. Brooks.
We saw a hand-carved wooden display about the Trail of Tears by George Barrette Floyd.

 Wooden Carved replica of the Trail of Tears

Display about Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet

http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/the-life-and-times-of-edgar-cayce.aspx 

The Kelly Encounter (Little Green Men)
The Kelly–Hopkinsville encounter was a claimed close encounter with extraterrestrial beings in 1955 near Kelly and Hopkinsville in Christian County, Kentucky, United States. 
UFOlogists regard it as one of the most significant and well-documented cases in the history of UFO incidents, while skeptics say the reports were due to "the effects of excitement" and misidentification of natural phenomena such as meteors and owls. Psychologists have used the alleged incident as an academic example of pseudoscience to help students distinguish truth from fiction.

The Tobacco War 1904-1911
http://www.nkyviews.com/Other/text/text_night_rider_movement.html

There is a story behind each display that could be told. 
I bought three postcards, and we paid $2 each to visit the Transportation Museum.

The Transportation Museum was located across the street from the Pennyroyal Museum. It was once a Fire Station. 

There was a crew of men working on the roof, and they were repairing the Clocktower. (Many years ago, the Captain's room caught fire and burned the first clock tower, which was larger than the one now on top of the firehouse.)
The firehouse was built before automobiles, and the first fire truck was pulled by horses.

The curator said
We have the first (Auto) fire truck ever used by the fire department
It was bought by a former firefighter, and he restored it to its glory days.
He gave the town the firetruck when he found out the town was opening a Transportation Museum inside the old firehouse.

We saw a couple of Dalmatian dogs, a couple of fire trucks, a carriage, Firemen's boots, caps, and the original fire pole the firemen used. We saw a couple of miniature train displays, benches from a train depot, a sleigh, and three different Gasoline tanks: the Shell, Gulf, & DX.

First Gasoline-powered Fire Truck and Dalmatian 

The Clock Tower is being repaired.

Firemen's hats

Miniature Train Display and another fire truck.

Our next stop was the Casey Jones Distillery.

The Casey Jones Distillery

 Grape, Peach, and Apple Casey's Cut
Casey's Moonshine, Barrel Cut, and Total Eclipse Moonshine.
Lights Out

At the distillery, we sampled the Casey's cut Eclipse-A-Rita, the Peach, and Apple.
We were shown how the Moonshine was made and how it was bottled.
There was a wedding later that day at the distillery.

Many different events happen here, including the upcoming Total Eclipse on August 21, 2017.
The weekend of August 18 in Hopkinsville is the place to be for the greatest view of the total eclipse.
There will be music, vendors, hot air balloon rides, and much more.

Our next stop was the Commemorative Trail of Tears Park.
Inside the small cabin, we meet a Cherokee Indian Woman.
She told us how this very spot was a chosen way to stop for the Indians on the Trail of Tears.

The nine flags representing the states of the Trail of Tears
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
The removal of the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole

https://www.britannica.com/event/Trail-of-Tears

Commemorative Trail of Tears Cabin

Statues at the Trail of Tears

We stopped at Chick-fil-A in Hopkinsville, where we ordered Lemonade, Peach Milkshake, and some chicken fingers.

Chick-fil-a Hopkinsville KY 

Peach Milkshake (my favorite), Chicken strips, and Lemonade

Our next stop was the Fort Campbell Memorial Park. 

As we traveled through Nashville, we encountered work traffic.

The sunset on the clouds as we encountered our last mile home
around 8PM