Start Planning Your Tennessee Vacation

Looking ahead to spring and summer? 

There’s no better time to start planning your Tennessee vacation!

If you’ve never visited the Volunteer State or you’re a resident who hasn’t fully explored the many glories of Tennessee, you’ll be surprised and thrilled with all there is to discover here.  From  the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the banks of the Mississippi River, our western border, Tennessee truly holds something for everyone!

We Tennesseans are proud of our state and it’s breathtaking scenery, unique heritage and destinations, and many contributions to popular music and culture. 

For lovers of the great outdoors, Tennessee State Parks  are second to none.  Scattered across the state, these jewels preserve our natural beauty and archaeological legacy while offering visitors the best in hiking, camping, boating or fishing. Urban explorers will be rewarded for visits to Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, or any of our smaller towns and cities, as well.

Throughout the year The Tennessee Traveler will do our part to point you toward worthy destinations and events across the state. 

Tourists and visitors will also find the Tennessee Department of Tourism has all the resources to to help plan a fun-filled vacation for the entire family here. Plans for your Tennessee adventure should start at the official website, Tennessee Vacation. There you can order or download the official 2016 Tennessee Vacation Guide. 

Anyone driving through our state should take advantage of our Discover Tennessee Trails and Byways program.  Currently this state-wide network features 16 different road trips, each devoted to a theme. Plans are underway to link all trails with a special “musical heritage” trail later this year. The roots of rock and roll, the blues, country, gospel and rhythm and blues all run deep in Tennessee!

Entirely self guided, you can start downone of these trails wherever you are, wherever you’re headed in Tennessee. Each trail map includes recommended stops along your way: historical sites, popular attractions, small towns, natural landmarks, great restaurants and venues!

It’s never too early to start planning a great vacation in Tennessee, and the  maps  and apps to make it easy are easily avaialble!

Y’all come...

Family Fun On Shores of The Mississippi: Memphis’ Bass Pro Shops At The Pyramid

If you’ve shopped any of Bass Pro Shop’s superstores, you know the unique experience they offer. Part store, part amusement park in retail space stocked with anything and everything you could want in sporting goods. All set among dazzling displays celebrating hunting, fishing and the great outdoors.

The company has topped them all with the adventures awaiting shoppers of all ages in Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid in Memphis. Hopefully, with this incarnation, the architectural landmark on the eastern shores of the Mississippi River will find the permanence and purpose it so richly deserves. Hats off to Memphis and the folks at Bass Pro Shops.

Step through the massive entrance at the base of the silver, gleaming pyramid and you’re first struck by the cypress trees towering from the sales floor. Then, as the eyes adjust, you start to take in the your surroundings. Two levels of an unparalleled selection of sports equipment and sportswear await discovery. 

As you move from department to department you meander paths through cypress ponds stocked with giant catfish and gar, among others. There’s also a jumbo freshwater aquarium, alligator pool with live alligators, and faux cliffs teeming with bear, deer and mountain goat. Family members can dine and bowl in the store’s Uncle Buck’s Fishbowl on the ground floor, The lanes are set in an ocean-themed bowling alley, while an adjacent bar submerges shoppers in the remains of a sunken ship. For snackers there’s also a fudge/candy shop nearby.

Across the way, The Big Cypress Lodge, a hotel within this store, welcomes overnight guests. In keeping with the surroundings, they can choose from rustic rooms or treehouse cabins above the cypress swamp.

Then there’s the Sky High Ride. At the center of the expansive sales floor, America’s tallest freestanding elevator invites the adventurous to soar 28 stories up for breathtaking views of the Tennessee landscape, Memphis and the Mississippi River. Another restaurant here, The Lookout, offers an opportunity to dine or drink, immersed in these vistas. 

Most will prefer to simply step outside to take in the scenery on the glass floored platforms set into the sides of the Pyramid, 300 feet in the air. The Sky High Ride costs $10 for adults, $5 for children before 4 pm, and is definitely worth it.

The Mississippi, looking north from The Pyramid .

         Whether you’re an avid outdoors lover, casual shopper, or parents with children, enjoyable adventures await all at Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid.  It’s a store, and so much more, and should be on the list of must-see attractions for every visitor to Memphis, from here forward.

Smithville's Old Time Fiddler's Jamboree and Crafts Festival next weekend!

It’s Jamboree season once again in DeKalb County! 

This time of year Smithville,  our county seat, invites everyone in for the Fiddler’s Jamboree and Crafts Festival. This is the 44th year for the event, the biggest thing that happens in these parts. It draws tens of thousands from all over the world for two days of fun and food.

Young cloggers take the stage to dance to some good old time music

at the The Smithville Fiddler's Jamboree and Crafts Festival.

This year's event will be held next Friday and Saturday, July 3rd and 4th, in and around the town square in Smithville, in DeKalb County.
The main stage, where competions are held, sits on the courthouse steps.

Some of the  Jamboree's best music can be heard offstage, though, where musicians gather in the shade for impromptu jams on old time favorites. If you're up for a stroll, there's plenty to see in the many booths which line the square and streets surrounding it. Some celebrate traditional Southern crafts, some more modern renditions of varied arts.

The Jamboree was our first introduction to the area way back in 1977. We’ve been here that long. A third of a century.

Over those years I developed a real fondness for and understanding of  the music the Jamboree celebrates: old time bluegrass and mountain music still popular throughout the South. All acoustic: guitar, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, dobro, dulcimer, and the fiddle of course. 

I now know many of the old time standards contestants play during the various events. Can even strum a few myself on the guitar. One of the joys of country living is to sitting on the front porch in the evening, watching the hills and hollows slip into darkness, strumming some chords on the guitar.

There was a time when that was the only regular entertainment folks in these parts could enjoy, after a long hard day’s work. The Jamboree helps keep those traditions alive. If you're ever in these parts the weekend nearest the Fourth of July it’s worth the trip to Smithville. And if you don’t know what clogging is, well, y’all come.

Snows Hill Battlefied in DeKalb County

Last Friday marked the 152nd anniversary of the Battle of Snows Hill. The Civil War skirmish took place along our road the morning of April 3, 1863, involving several thousand troops. I have a copy of the New York Times from later that month with a front page headline and account of the battle.

The story is based on dispatches from a correspondent traveling with the Union Army of the Cumberland. As much an anecdotal account of the battle and its aftermath as the actual skirmish. Looking out at these hills, it’s hard to imagine soldiers racing through here, ducking minie and cannon balls.

Over the years I’ve done a lot of research on the battle, also combed the fields and hollers with a metal detector. Found shards of cannon balls, used and unused lead shot, remnants of breastworks and fox holes. A friend once found a complete parrot shell that had drilled into the road embankment, deep into dirt where its fuse was extinguished. When we found it was cracked half open, exposing the grape shot and powder.

Our luckiest find was made by my son Marcus. He was 11 or 12, walking through the woods near our house, metal detector under arm, when he found a union boot spur sticking up out of ground.

Season for Cider....and some pests

With the abundance harvest of apples, a friend retrieved a cider mill from 12 years in storage, and hired my son as his accomplice The novice “cidermeisters” spent a couple of days mashing and pressing bushels of apples into gallons of fresh juice. I’ve never tasted better, and have a bucket of apple mash fermenting in a half hearted attempt to make some jack.

They’ve had to shut down the cider mill for a while with arrival of what has become one of the autumn’s most unwelcome events: invasion of the Asian ladybugs. Now out in full force as buzzing swarms in the afternoon sun. When they rest, they trail an orange stench along windows and doors, and on your hands should you try to brush one off. Were just one to fall into the vat get pressed with the cider, they fear the batch would be ruined.

I read these ladybugs were first brought to the U.S. in a government effort to control aphids. But without any natural controls in place, the Asian variety proliferated, becoming a seasonal nuisance all the way north. That’s what I heard, anyway.....another well intended government cure.

Off The Beaten Path

As a writer, I’ve worked with a group of local artists to promote their activities and annual fall tour, the Off The Beaten Path Studio Tour held the last full weekend of October in and around DeKalb County.Aptly named, it also describes the lifestyles they and we have chosen here in rural Tennessee. To some, our deep woods, hills and hollows, creeks and dirt roads may sound idyllic. It’s a way of life, like any other with its own challenge and rewards.

There’s something we all draw from these surroundings, an abiding peace away from the chaos which too often defines modern life. Sure, it can intrude this far, but there’s the landscape, and buckets of stars at nigh,t to re-orient our personal compass.

We chose to be here, accepted the good and bad of rural life. And though we all aspire to the financial rewards success in our respective arts may bring, there’s a success we already enjoy in choosing our way and making a life on our terms. That’s the draw and reward for those bold enough to wander “off the beaten path.”

Fall's Colors Coming On

Fall is long and warm in the hills this year. Though some were predicting a dearth of colors,the season has again come on in all its glory. I’m looking out now at a landscape ablaze with reds and orange, yellows and fading greens.

What’s most noteworthy about this fall, however, is the bountiful harvest of nuts and fruits. The limbs of apple and pear trees in the area seem overburdened. I’ve never seen as many walnuts on the black walnut in our yard. I’ve already raked a regular season’s worth and as many, if not more, still cling to the branches.

There’s differing theories about this. Some say the bountiful harvest is nature’s way of protecting itself against a pending harsh winter. By spring we’ll know if there’s truth to that. 

The other notion proposes an alternative strategy. Dry years put a lot of stress on trees. Several long-standing hickories and oaks succumbed to the lack of water by late August. Under such conditions, proponents hold, trees go into overproduction of seeds as a way of ensuring survival, come spring

Whatever the cause, the harvest is ours to enjoy.