The weather was absolutely gorgeous. You know the type, sunny and warm in the middle of November. How did that happen? This is East Tennessee, it supposed to be cold, wet and miserably dreary out until at least April.
Anyway, it was indeed a beautiful Saturday afternoon and we (Tim, Robin, Kiddo, and the Beene) were itching to get out of the house as usual. I know what you're thinking, Saturday, November, East Tennessee, shouldn't we be somewhere watching the UT game? We say "Game Hell". Of course we had some tasks that needed to be accomplished, but they were taken care of in no time flat.
We finally headed out some time in the early afternoon in search of Hemlock Bluffs TVA Small Wild Area.You see, Tim came across this area earlier in the week while searching for someplace to hike. Considering it was close to home and we hadn't heard of it before, we figured why the heck not.
In our search, we ended up in Loyston Point Recreation Area. We thought we would stop by the lake and let the photog snap a few pictures. No sooner than we stopped Big Billy Bob Mr. Manager of the area comes driving up like he owns the place or something. Wants to know if we are planning on camping or something and proceeds to tell us to make sure we keep our dog on a leash. Needless to say, we didn't stick around and found it hard not to stop at his trailer and throw eggs at it. Of course we had no eggs so on we went with the sneaking suspicion that we would never grace the recreation area with our presence again.
We still hadn't found the Hemlock Bluffs and though for sure we are on the right track before we ended up at the recreation area. So back out to the end of the road we were on we went. We came back out to the road we turned off of to get to the bluffs and decided to go in another direction. This time we found ourselves at a dead end with a gate that lead to some Outdoors Club of Fountain City of some such other. So we turned it around and headed back towards Loyston Point Rd.
Instead of turning back onto Loyston Point Rd. we went straight and stop in front of a little church with a light house to gain our bearings. We saw a road that went back to a Boy Scout camp and that struck Robin's fancy so we decided to check it out. We found a troop back there spending the weekend camping and all the things boy scout troops do. We talked with a couple of the parents to see if they knew how to get to the area we were looking for. After consulting our map, their map and a GPS, they determined that we had been on the right track but didn't know for certain where it was.
It was then we had a suspicion that one of the gated roads had to be the way to the Small Wild. Back up Loyston Point Road we traveled and came to the gated road and looking on Tim's crackberry, we knew then that was the road. So we parked the car and started walking down the jeep road. Within a few hundred feet, we were certain we were in the right direction as we came upon a trail sign reading, well something like Hemlock Bl*ff Tr__l. You see the signs had holes in them. The are is a designated safe area, but a quarter mile back on Loyston Point Road there is a sign saying as much. Past that it is free range to hunters.
Needless to say, we weren't certain how safe it was to be back there but we didn't see anyone parked at the gate and only heard the sound of hunting rifle way off in the distance towards the hunting areas. We probably hiked the jeep road a good mile or more before we stopped and decided it was getting to late to venture any further and turned around and headed back out.
We never did make it to the designated wild area, however we have a pretty good idea, for the most part, how to get back to it. You know in Tim's researching, he didn't find much of anything on the place. On our way out we come to the conclusion, like we have so many times before that Robin has the better relationship with her boyfriend Google than does Tim. We also decided that we would come back some other time better equipped and much earlier so we could really explore the place. So stay tuned as there will be more on the Hemlock Bluffs TVA Small Wild Area.
Oh and one more thing, Robin consulted her boyfriend Google that evening and found that the trail is the Hemlock Bluff Recreational Trail and it's a 7 mile loop that starts in the Loyston Point Recreation Area, D'oh. I guess we might be back there after all.
Happy Trails,
Tim and Robin
“Sweet is the breath of vernal shower, The bee’s collected treasures sweet, 
You may or may not have noticed a new link at the top of our favorite links list over there on the top right of the page. You may or may not have noticed the photographs on this blog, but then again if you are like us, you look for visually appealing photos on blogs, because let's face it, a bunch of text and no eye candy is just plain boring. Yes, we know there are a few posts on here that do not have any images/photos but we digress.
Back to the subject at hand. The top link in our link list is to r.e.bird photography. The wonderful photographer in our group has finally opened up shop. If you love the photos on the blog, then you will want to check out Robin's work on her site. You may even be interested in setting up a shoot for portraits. How about purchasing some beautiful nature prints as well. Of course, there isn't a mechanism for buying nature prints online yet, but you can still contact her through the website if there are any prints you are interested in.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous. You know the type, sunny and warm in the middle of November. How did that happen? This is East Tennessee, it supposed to be cold, wet and miserably dreary out until at least April.
In our search, we ended up in Loyston Point Recreation Area. We thought we would stop by the lake and let the photog snap a few pictures. No sooner than we stopped Big Billy Bob Mr. Manager of the area comes driving up like he owns the place or something. Wants to know if we are planning on camping or something and proceeds to tell us to make sure we keep our dog on a leash. Needless to say, we didn't stick around and found it hard not to stop at his trailer and throw eggs at it. Of course we had no eggs so on we went with the sneaking suspicion that we would never grace the recreation area with our presence again.
Oh and one more thing, Robin consulted her boyfriend Google that evening and found that the trail is the Hemlock Bluff Recreational Trail and it's a 7 mile loop that starts in the Loyston Point Recreation Area, D'oh. I guess we might be back there after all.
If you plan to go out and take in the show, here's a star chart that we retrieved from Astronomy.com that you can use to locate the viewing area for the shower: 
It's a Sunday evening, you've been to the grocery store, the pet store, and you've finished all your errands. You don't want to spend anymore money and you really don't feel like leaving the house again, yet you want to be outside. In this predicament, what else can you do? The answer was simple, we headed out back to have a fire and play with night photography.
We still have lots of maple wood left over from dad's tree that was cut down but a couple of months ago. We've been slowly doing away with it for him. This evening it was chilly, homemade potato soup was on the stove for supper, and we thought a nice hot fire would be a good way to warm the body and the soul. Even though it had rained just a bit earlier in the day, it wasn't enough to prevent us from having the fire.
After supping on simple homemade potato soup by the fire (because foods eaten outside from bowls are the best foods!) we got the camera out and started playing. Of course this was after the girls went and picked up cousin Jodi.
P.S. Check it out! We picked some of our sugar snap peas yesterday. We have a couple dozen out on the vines now. Our hamster, Q, will be the happy benefactor of our first small harvest.
Some of the current projects we have completed or are in the middle of include building a woodshed out of wooden pallets, clearing some land to plant blueberries, and raising winter crops. So far our crops are doing well. We have only 2 small kitchen gardens and a garden box at this time. The kitchen gardens are roughly 4'x8' and contain spinach, lettuce, parsnips, and sugar snap peas. The garden box stands between the two kitchen gardens at about 3 foot tall with the dimensions roughly 3'x2'. In it we have some carrots growing wonderfully. Over the last couple of weeks we winterized our gardens complete with hoop houses and hay. It's a good thing too, as we've had some frosty mornings this week. If we hadn't got that done when we did, we wouldn't have peas ready for picking now.
We also have half of the little pasture cleared for blueberries. We still have to clear the rest of it and remove all the little tree stumps before we can even begin to think about planting.
We hope our friends, Janet and John, won't mind us using their café’s catch phrase as the title for this post. It seems rather fitting. We’re pretty sure they will be fine with it.
So what’s a family to do when it’s the first real chilly day in autumn? What else? We ran errands. Garbage had to be run to the dump. Sinuses needed taken care of, (all the Claritn-D was gone; that stuff is like gold around here). A few other odds and ends needed to be picked up as well, and we needed a small gift for Janet and John’s grand opening of their “Groovy Dawg Café”. We also had to make a side trip to pick up Jodi, as the kiddo wanted some company this evening ('cause at 14, we just aren’t as cool as we used to be). 
It was great to see Janet and John again. The last time we saw them was at one of the Secret City Sounds concerts at Bissell Park in Oak Ridge. They had one of the “Groovy Dawg” hot dog carts at the show. Their café is just a natural progression from the carts, and is absolutely wonderful. The “dawgs” are quite delectable, too. 
