Linden, TN. Between 2-Great Rivers! Part 2 of 3-Articles

**Fishing in jet propelled shallow water river boats with the Mayor Wess Ward, and Sheriff Nick Weems of Linden, and Perry County, two men that knew where the lum-lunkers lurked, was a blast!!**

**Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems, took time to show me the action on the Buffalo River!!**

American Press Travel News-July 4th, Eastern, TN.– “Bob and Barb On the Road Again.” Part 2 of our adventure in Linden, TN.–when we met Michael Dumont and his wife, Kathy, we knew were in a special place. Not to over dramatize our visit, but we felt more confident that in Linden, we could relax and experience a bit of the historical aspects of this region, east of Memphis and about two hours west of Nashville.

Michael took us for a tour of Perry County area. A fabulous rural area, rife with fabulous water, valley and mountain vistas as well as all manner of wildlife! We visited and drove along the Tennessee River, to the Mousetail Landing state Park, with RV facilities including 5 different levels of fitness trails, and views that are sensational. We toured the Lindens riverside nature of the Buffalo River, and Michael introduced us to a new Bed and Breakfast, he had completely rehabbed close to the TN. River, in a nearby, small hamlet of Clifton, “Tennessee’s best preserved river landing town.”

**Yours truly, enjoyed the bassin’ on the Buffalo River.**

In Clifton, we visited the T.S. Stribling Home & Museum. Thomas Sigismund Stribling was the first Pulitzer prize winning author of 14-novels, plays and short stories in Tennessee. A great stopover and visit during our stay, and well worth visiting. The museum is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Go: www.cityofclifton.com or call (931) 676-3370 for tours information. Lots to marvel at.

**Great country cooking in Linden! Real Southern cooking at 1991 prices.**

**The Commodore Hotel is framed from the past into the future!**

**Next door to the Hotel Commodore, you can find Buffalo River Artisans. Mellissa Goodwin teaches Barb how to create a neat piece of art. Great hands-on for young and old!!!**

The town of Linden in Perry County, Tennessee 1819-2019 had this nice hotel building, but according to Michael Dumont, “the town had seen better days.” The hotel was basically shuttered and needed everything! But getting to know him and his wife Kathy, I saw what they saw, and felt that with their drive and entrepreneurship, that they certainly made a huge difference in bringing a large spurt for economic revival to this town and county. They went to work with enthusiastic support from several towns folk in bringing back a huge measure of curbside appeal to Linden. They pushed getting rid of all the crisscrossing powerlines, that opened up the towns look, and feel that it wasn’t a hodge-podge anymore, of neglect. Like many towns, the rural roads were once the main roads, but as in this case for Linden, when I-40, the east-west interstate cutting through the state, was completed, traffic on the once, main route, 100 decreased to mainly local traffic and businesses soon to be gone, on Main Street. So the businesses, and well-kept stately buildings became just old, non maintained, and almost all abandoned. from the car dealership, vehicle repair shops and retail stores, and the bus stations that once serviced travelers from Memphis to Nashville, virtually ended. Sufficient to say when the Dumonts came to Linden in 2007, the little town showed 14 vacant storefronts. Michael says now there are no vacant stores. Perry Chamber of Commerce lists that in 2009, unemployment was 28.9-percent. Today, its between 2-3-percent. and now Linden is not a pass-through, according to Mitchell Rhodes, Chairman of the Perry County Chamber of Commerce, Linden is a destination with a proper hotel again, restaurants and the “Bloomin Arts Festival along with music, music, music! Go: Commodorehotellinden.com and call (931) 589-3224 for a visit. Note* next post will detail many more amenities and businesses in and around the town of Linden!!

Knoxville Tennessee

American Press Travel News–Feb. 28th, Crossville, TN. “Bob and Barb On The Road Again.”–An hour’s drive on I-40, from Crossville, sitting on the shores of the Tennessee River, and surrounded by some of the most scenic lands and lakes that Middle Southern America has to offer, Knoxville, Tennessee is as gracious a host as you’ll find anywhere. Stop anyone and ask them about Knoxville, and then be prepared to listen up and smile. “People are very friendly. We like “friendly.”

Several main highways bisect, or are very close to the city. I-75 from S.W. Florida through Atlanta and Chattanooga, I-81 that links the northeast with the southeast, and I-40 that cuts across from Memphis west to the eastern corridor to Asheville, and links up with I-95, the eastern seaboards main highway from the Florida Keys all the way to N.Y., and the north east.

With world class museums, antique shops, and quaint boutique shops that you can shake a credit card at, great accommodations, and really fine cuisine, Knoxville offers something for everyone, and on everyone’s budget too.

Sounds like a Chamber of Commerce ad, huh? Well, no not from me, I call it as I experience it!

Bet you didn’t know that Knoxville is and was home to the Blues phenomenon. Music does take center stage here.

We checked in to the excellent Disney-like, pyramid Hotel Knoxville, with soaring floors open to a courtyard grand space, and a restaurant. The hotel was so conveniently located, that many of the great restaurants and locations (such as the Basketball Hall of Fame) and the Sun sphere left over from the Knoxville, Worlds Fair we visited, were in walking distance.

For a walking tour, we found Paula. Paula A. Johnson created her own business: “Knoxville Food Tours.” Her tour incorporates the history food and fun that Knoxville has to offer for a very reasonable fee. She took us for tastings (yes, its always lunch time for Paula’s guests) to Oliver Royale, Bistro at the Bijou, Dazzo’s, Coolato Gelato, and a for great juice bar on the square. She gave a us a running history of these, and other restaurants, as well as a fine taste of what Knoxville was, and is today in the arts, music, craft beer and food scene.

Paula also has published “The Lost Restaurants of Knoxville.” A great historical read! For reservations, go: www.knoxvillefoodtours.com and give Paula a call at (865) 201-7270. Paula A. Johnson is a great personality, adding to the terrific personality of Knoxville. She helped make our visit “excellent.”
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The next day we attended a early dinner aboard the big Star of Knoxville, on Neyland Drive. This paddle boat is the queen of the Tennessee Riverboat Company, docked at the Volunteer Landing on the Tennessee River. We and other visitors were serenely and quietly paddled past great landscapes, and architectural glimpses of the Knoxville area. We enjoyed a nice meal, great local company, and views of a green land that just wouldn’t quit. www.TNriverboat.com (865) 525-7827

Becky Hancock, Executive Director, toured us through the restored Tennessee Bijou Theatre, the official state theatre of Tennessee. $23-million was spent in the restoration of this former 1928 Spanish-Moorish style early movie palace. They even did over a mighty Wurlitzer organ, and some the interior details included Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers, and Asian influenced carpets and drapery patterns that hung over and around Italian terrazzo floors in the Grand Lobby. Give a call for information: 865-684-1200 www.tennesseetheatre.com

The Knoxville Museum of the Arts was especially delightful. Their permanent collection exhibits could keep one enthralled for an entire day, all by themselves.
On Gay Street, we stopped in to The Blue Plate Special; a daily live traditional music performance that was broadcast on historic WDVX Radio. The live broadcasts allow everyone to just come in, sit down during the broadcast, a local and tourist treat since it started in 2005. We enjoyed several sets of great country and bluegrass from well-seasoned musicians.

Today, there’s a place for you genealogical minded folks-the Calvin H. McClung Historical Collection at the Museum of the same name. It is an affiliate of the Family History Library in Salt lake City, Utah, and one of the south’s best genealogy research facilities, as well as the Knox County Archives established in 1792 and virtually intact. This museum is also a Smithsonian affiliate, and it emphasizes archeological research in the Tennessee Valley Region with an award-winning permanent exhibit “Archeology and The Native Peoples of Tennessee.

We visited the Ijams Nature Center on 2915 Island Home Ave. (865-577-4717) For a 108 years, the Nature Center is a renowned bird sanctuary on 275-acres, and it has played an important role in the environmental education and outdoor movement in East Tennessee. The Ijams legacy is largely untold in a historical perspective, but it includes Girl Scouting, horticulture, ornithology and hiking-all encouraged by the Ijam’s by example and design. The Center has a Lost Species Exhibition exhibit, and is well worth visiting. Remember, we all live downstream and “A day going down stream puts your head firmly into upstream of life!

Discovering a Secret City

**Japan suffered greatly for being the aggressor in a war they mightily regretted**.

**And a cousin was in the middle of it all!**

American Press Travel News-Bob and Barb “On The Road Again-this time in Oak Ridge, TN–Secret City No Longer a Secret

“Shhh, don’t ask and don’t tell was the official mantra of, and for anyone living and working in Oak Ridge, Tennessee over 7-decades ago.

Barb and I jumped at the opportunity to check out a terrific area that offers museums, fishing, great restaurants, and even bird watching, not necessarily in that order.”

Imagine visiting a city that wasn’t even on the map until the late 40’s. People who lived in that city had no address and phone available to the outside world. Their street addresses were in coded names. It was as if they lived on an island, did everything together on a social basis with what turned out to be an extended family of some 75,000 people. These were specialists, and their families in unique scientific fields in physics, chemistry electrical and chemical engineering, boiler making, construction specialists, metallurgists, and heavy construction development where K-25, a mile long was the largest building under cover of roof, at 44-acres was constructed at that time.

In1941, just after Pearl Harbor was bombed, most all of these folks were brought to a place that they couldn’t write home about, or have their friends and family visit.

They were on a mission, an incredible mission to assist in ending the war in the Pacific and what they wrought, the Atom Bomb did just that, after this hellish bomb was unleashed on Japan, it helped save hundreds of thousands of our service men and women, who would have had to storm the beaches of Japan, and those people that would assist them.

Oak Ridge is the city that allowed teams of physicists and brain stormer’s like Einstein and Teller to name just a very few, to help make this deed a reality. Today, about 8-decades later, there is still tight security for much of the business end of the city that is devoted to developing modern technological advances in nuclear medicine, nuclear power and various other technologies, with some of them absolutely top secret even today.

Some facts about early Oak Ridge are in order here: The Oak Ridge Reservation encompassed 59,000 acres in 1940s, Oak Ridge used one-seventh of the electricity produced in the U.S. during full production, the average age in Oak Ridge at the time was 27, Oak Ridge didn’t appear on a map until 1949, it was not incorporated as a city until 1959. Because of the secrecy demands of the Manhattan project, the Oak Ridge High School football team was only allowed to play away games, and the opposing team was not given the team roster of the players, they were only known by numbers. Every person over the age of 12 had to wear an identification badge at all times during the 40’s.

Visiting the American Museum of Science & Energy we passed by a large image of
Einstein who had penned a letter to President Roosevelt that helped convince him to initiate the development of the “bomb” before Nazi Germany could do it. This letter helped kick off the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge. The entire story is now in plain sight for visitors to this museum and it’s a terrific place to bring the family. Any age range can learn much from the hands-on displays and mind games that challenge with their simple and complex games designed to broaden the mind and enlighten the curious. Oak Ridge continues to earn the U.S. the title of “Super Power.” Live demonstrations, audiovisuals, machines, and devices will definitely keep you and the children entertained and delighted. We also visited John Rice Erwin’s open-air museum called “the most authentic and complete replica of pioneer Appalachian life in the world.” The museum contains over 250,000 pioneer relics including 30 log structures from pioneer times, a chapel, a schoolhouse, cabins and barns replete with actual relics of those times. Outstanding!

. We went fly-fishing with guide Clayton Gist (865) 806-7803 and yes, got braggin’ rights! Gist explained that the Clinch River is probably the premier trout river in Tennessee. We headed for Big Ed’s Pizza at Broadway in Oak Ridge, terrific on our way home.

Cataloochee Guest Ranch, Maggie Valley- A Mountain Afar, But Close To So Many Hearts

American Press Travel News- June 27th,-Maggie Valley, Haywood County, North Carolina—Cataloochee Guest Ranch was opened in 1934 by Mr. Tom and Miss Judy Alexander. It was moved to its present location in 1938. The Ranch is still run by the third generation descendants of Mr. Tom and Miss Judy. As their brochure rightly proclaims “The Ranch is “where the march of time slows down to a walk.” the high mountains here really do have deep roots! Barb and I relaxed, enjoyed country buffet cookouts for dinner of steaks and taters along with all the country fixin’s you’d also love. We also sampled their country breakfast which included their wonderful homemade syrups, jams and biscuits. that you will savor in your mouth and on your mind for a very long time.

This is a wonderful place for your whole family. We watched a small boy catch his first fish in their stocked pond, which the ranch then cooked for his dinner. They have all sorts of planned activities for children as well for adults. There are so many outdoor recreational opportunities in and around this 5000 foot elevation, cool, over 1000 acre ranch. We hiked, found and identified numerous edible mushrooms, plants and trees with a professional field guide. Their garden, becomes your garden each and every meal! Every day you can take take trail rides. When you arrive you feel like you are a member of their family with their rich local heritage. Every night their local admiring neighbors, were scheduled to come and meet the guests. We listened to local musicians and were even able to pet a real friendly wolf.

Perhaps due to the history of several generations of the Tom and Judy Alexander family, there was a feeling here that we were home, really at home again! It’s really hard to say just how comfortable we were at this ranch. It was very hard to leave and we actually stayed a bit longer than usual before we left the cool mountain air, the friendliness of our hosts and the truly serene nature of this fine resort. So, I guess one way to say it was, we had a very hard time saying goodbye!

Call 1 (800) 868-1401 119 or local 828-926-1401 cataloocheeranch.com located on Ranch Road., Maggie Valley, NC 28751 Cataloochee Ranch.com

Also, we will review so many fine restaurants in the coming days on aptravelnews.com. We will be posting these and many more opportunities for visitors in the next day or so. We took part in visiting the Cataloochee Valley area full of transplanted elk. The bulls were bugling their dominancy over their herd of cows-quite a display! The people we met, the dinner with the Mayor of Waynesville and his wife, the fine other folks we learned so much about them and from them, their Agri-tourism lifestyle and businesses offerings, and their goals, as well as their already fruitful successes will be portrayed as well.