Family, Friends and Food…Plus

Another miscellaneous blog posting coming your way… This time it’s almost all about family, friends, some food, plus a little scenery as well as a minor personal concession on my part.

This is Laurie’s middle sister Karole and Karole’s middle son Marc.  They live in the St. Louis area.  Karole has spent a lot of time over the past several years taking care of her grandchildren while Marc and his wife Tammy either take a break or when they’re working.  She treasures a little personal time with Marc, that’s for sure.   This was a truly special day…Mother’s Day! Marc is in the disaster recovery business…

In a previous post, I introduced readers to our new neighbors, Mike and Sherry.  On a beautiful day here in East Tennessee, Laurie and Sherry went to Bald River Falls via Tellico Plains Tennessee plus they had a nice lunch at Tellico Grains Bakery.

Here’s Sherry posing by the falls.  It’s a great setting and it’s a place where we always take first time visitors and new folks in our neighborhood.

Why not a photo of the falls themselves in all their glory!  The Bald River is a rather short river that flows through steep terrain in the Unicoi Mountains and it’s regularly refreshed by frequent mountain rains.  

Just below the falls, this tributary flows into the Tellico River, and then the Little Tennessee River before merging with the Tennessee River itself.  The Bald River and 3,721 acres of its watershed are part of the Bald River Gorge Wilderness Area as designated by the U.S. Forest Service.

A few pretty birds always brighten one’s day.  Laurie captured this photo of a Purple House Finch, a Goldfinch and a Bluebird visiting our bird feeder at the same time…

More family… Recently, Laurie’s nephew and godson Kyle joined us for dinner at Hot Rod 50’s in Alcoa Tennessee.  He’d been attending a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation seminar in Sevierville and took the opportunity to join us for dinner.

At Hot Rod 50’s, we started out with an order of Fried Pickle Chips…one of Laurie’s favorites! ($6.49) We didn’t take a photo because we’ve done it before.  But Laurie ordered a ‘small’ Club Salad ($7.99), and we’d never featured a salad here previously.  It was quite large, loaded with goodies and very fresh.  Laurie liked it a lot!

While Kyle went for a standard cheeseburger, I decided to stray a little from the norm.  I ordered the 11 oz. Reuben Burger with cottage cheese as my side. ($11.99) This large burger was topped with hot corned beef, Swiss cheese and grilled sauerkraut.  Instead of the usual Thousand Island dressing, I went with a spicy mustard.  This sandwich was much better tasting than the photo might indicate!

FYI…Hot Rod 50’s website can be found at http://www.hotrods50sdiner.com/index.html. 

Following our meal, we headed on over to The Casual Pint in Maryville Tennessee to meet up with friends Norm and Linda.  Kyle is a craft beer lover…perhaps even a gourmet…and he liked what he saw.  The photo is of one of Kyle’s favorite craft brews that he got for his Aunt Laurie to try…  Website: https://maryville.thecasualpint.com/.

Then there was my ‘concession’... Laurie loves open houses.  I don’t like dealing with real estate folks unless I have to.  Insurance sales persons would be my biggest phobia, followed by car sales people and then real estate sales people!  Laurie is always frustrated by my unwillingness to go to open houses.  But, when I saw this flyer and noted that these were builder’s open houses, I saw an opportunity to earn a few ‘brownie points’.  The homes were nicely done, my better half was happy and there wasn’t any pressure from the builders on site.  This was a winner!

That’s about it for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave