Wallowa Lake, Oregon

Pigeon Forge, TN and Asheville, NC

 This is the old mill in Pigeon Forge. We visited the pottery shop across the street and had a snack at a very nice restaurant next to the pottery shop. Lots of shopping in Pigeon Forge and beautiful mountains.

 This was taken in the garden area of the entrance hall of the Baltimore Estate. Not the greatest picture, but what a house! The largest house in the United States!

 The house itself covers about 4 acres and is 5 stories tall! There are 101 bedrooms and 43 bathrooms inside. The dining room was so big that the 4 elk heads and 1 moose head mounted on the wall looked really small!

 We climbed over 400 steps to get to the top! The view was beautiful. This is close to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 This was the view from where we had lunch after the climb. The barbecue was excellent, the restaurant very quaint.

 We drove south on the Parkway the first day. The Parkway was closed just north of Asheville and about 20 miles south of Asheville. It was a beautiful drive!

 This bridge is a mile high and joins the two peaks on Grandfather Mountain. We had to drive on I-40 a bit then cut over to the Parkway, but it was worth the drive!

You can't see it really well, but the top picture is of the viaduct. That's where the road is suspended around the base of Grandfather Mountain. This tree caught our eye as we were driving to the Parkway and I had to get a picture of it. The trees and bushes have been beautiful!

Grand Ol Opry

We got to go to the Opry twice this week. Tonight Little Jimmy Dickens was on. He's been I'll so this is his first appearance this year. He's 92 years young! What a great night and a great line up! We're having a great time on Nashville!!!

The General Jackson

We got to take a dinner cruise on the General Jackson last night. We cruised on the Cumberland River and we got to see downtown Nashville at night. They had a really great show highlighting the distinct music from each of the three areas in Tennessee. There were music students from two high schools in Pennsylvania in the audience and the teacher's and some of the students got to get up and demonstrate the Gunky Cjicken . We thought of John!! Tonight we're going to the Opry again. It's a really cool experience.

Tuscumbia, Alabama

We got to visit Helen Keller's birthplace in Tuscumbia last week. Pretty cool to see the actual dining room where Annie locked Helen in, the fountain where she said her first words and the house she was born in and lived with Annie in (Howard's standing out front.) Pretty cool visit. I got a nice new winter coat while we were in the area and we had lunch at a "good oil' down home restaurant where the owner can to our table and visited with us for quite a while. The coat has come in very handy. We about froze for a few days in Nashville! There are some hardy folks here though--there were three tents set up when we got here. Very brave souls!!