Miscellaneous Sights Along the Way

The following photos are taken from a couple different drives around East Tennessee.  The buildings, sights or scenery shown are not listed in the National Register of Historic Places…but we thought they were visually appealing or interesting enough to photograph.

This classic structure is the Presbyterian Church in Lancing Tennessee.  It’s located at 204 Shady Grove Road and it was built in 1887.  Phone: 423-346-6471. 

Lancing is an unincorporated community or village located on State Rte. 62 in Morgan County Tennessee.  The town has existed as a village since sometime in the 1860’s.  The town was called ‘Kismet’ until 1894.  Much of the town’s recent focus has been on saving the local post office.  There’s not much doubt in my mind that once the post office is gone, most small towns just wither away… As per some fairly recent data, about 26% of the local population is of German heritage.

This classic old house is also on Shady Grove Road, just down the street from the Presbyterian Church in Lancing. I love the look of this place!

What brought us to Lancing on this drive was information I’d pulled off the Internet that suggested that an old Southern Railroad depot was still standing in town.  Sadly, we couldn’t find anything that looked like a depot.  The first train came through town in 1879.

Laurie and I should have kept driving down Shady Grove Road… It turns out that Shady Grove Farms was located just a bit up the road from town.  This organic farm and custom sawmill is a well-known provider of grass fed beef and lamb, as well as free range chickens.  For more information, you can go to: http://www.shadygrovefarms.net/.

This is one of two similar trees growing at the entrance to the grounds of the Episcopal Church in Rugby Tennessee.  We both loved the patterns in the bark and how the surface of the tree seemed to twist and turn as it has grown.

Our guide in Rugby told us that this was really a shrub that has grown into a tree-size proposition!  She thought that it was an Arbor Vitae…and it is an evergreen.  Still, we’ve never seen an Arbor Vitae that looks like this tree.  In any case, the pair of trees provided an interesting and decorative entryway to the church property. 

As we ended this particular Saturday driving excursion, we turned back to the east along TN State Rte. 297 on the Cumberland Plateau in northeastern Tennessee. This particular highway cuts through the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.  This national treasure encompasses 98,000 acres in Tennessee and another 27,000 contiguous acres in Kentucky.  It’s divided by the Eastern and Central Time Zones… 

We didn’t have much time left in our day…if we were going to get home before dark.  Consequently, we just drove through the Big South Fork NRRA, stopping only to take a couple of photos.  Laurie took this photo of the river from a bridge not long after we entered the ‘park’. 

Big South Fork is rated as an international mountain biking destination.  It’s also one of the southeastern United States’ top locations for whitewater paddlers…and…most interestingly for Laurie, it is among the top settings in the eastern USA for horse lovers…with plenty of trails, equestrian facilities…even resorts for horses and their owners.

Among other activities enjoyed at Big South Fork, there is hiking, rappelling, camping, fishing and hunting.  Boar/wild hogs are a nuisance in the area and there is an extended hunting season for them…

Due to time limitations, we also missed an unusual Park Concessionaire…the Big South Fork Scenic Railroad.  The railroad is located in Stearns Kentucky, just a little north of the Tennessee line.  Its tourist trains run along the rails from Stearns into the Big South Fork NRRA, where passengers layover for a while at the old Blue Heron Mine.  For more on the railroad, go to http://bsfsry.com/.

To learn more about the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, you can go to the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service’s website at http://www.nps.gov/biso/index.htm.

Returning home one day, Laurie and I came across this little ‘dust up’ on US 321 just east of Lenoir City Tennessee.  We’d noted police cars blowing by us headed somewhere…and this was it! 



A closer look revealed that one of the cars involved had flipped over… Several people were sitting on the grass holding their heads or their necks.  This stretch of highway is undergoing a major construction effort.  A second 2-lane bridge is being built alongside the one you can see in the distance.  These structures bridge the channel between Fort Loudoun Lake and Tellico Lake in the TVA system.  A brand new 4-lane bridge is also under construction over the Tennessee River a hundred yards or less in the opposite direction.  We’re guessing that the ‘temporary’, (2+ years), exit from US 321 to TN Hwy. 444 was somehow involved in this accident scenario.

That’s about it for our ‘miscellaneous’ photos that really didn’t fit into any of my previous blogs… Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Just click on any photo to enlarge it…

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave