Tennessee Friends

When we were in Mammoth Cave, I looked up our route to Great Smoky Mountains and checked to see if there were any Costcos on the route to get our shopping done. Turns out there was one, right on our route, in Knoxville. And then I checked my address book, because an old roomie lives in Tennessee, but I couldn't remember where. Turns out, she's in Knoxville!!! A quick email and a day later, we scheduled a time to get together.

Mark, Miki, me, Bill

I was so psyched to get to go to their house for dinner. Miki designed their house, long time ago, and I've never seen it in person. So we took the long tour. It is so stinkin' gorgeous. I need her to work with me on plans for our house when we re-enter the home ownership market. We had a great evening of food and talk, it was wonderful catching up. We hadn't seen each other since we moved to CO in 2008, so it was a great treat to spend an entire evening with each other. She even invited us back for Trunk or Treat on Sunday at her church, so that even solved our problem of how to have a Halloween celebration. Friends are the best!

Before we headed over to her place, which is about an hour from our campsite, we hit the Muse. It's another science museum that we could get into using our ASTC reciprocity. What a gift that has been this year! It was a little young for most of our guys, but we only stayed about an hour.

NS and J Completing Circuits

Before the Muse, we hit Bush's Beans for a tour of their welcome/visitor's center. What a fantastic recommendation from our camp host! They show a 20 minute video on the history of Bush's Beans, and have a walk-through museum. As a souvenir, we got a picture of us with Duke the dog. We had a great time. The cafe was jam-packed when we were there, so we didn't get to eat there, but we did get a whole pecan pie to take to Miki and Mark's....it's made with baked beans.....yum!