Scenes from my Spring Break Trip

My first stop after leaving Nashville was to visit Nathanael and Kimberly in Asheville, North Carolina. We ate out twice during the short time I visited with them, but I got caught up on their latest adventures.

This is a picture of Kim by Nat which had been hanging at the restaurant she works out. He sold other works but he kept Kim! And he framed her in the back of an old broken down chair!! Now that is recycling.

Another block print which has nothing to do with my spring break but it fits in with this subject. Nathanael's self portrait and cover of the newspaper he works for in Asheville, the Mountain Xpress.

After taking pictures of the spring flowers in Oklahoma and Tennessee, I found some in Mom's back yard.

There were beautiful crocuses.

And inside at Chanda's house are some lilies of the valley on a quilted wall hanging she was working on.

Chanda and I accompanied Mom and Dad to the southern part of the county. While they visited and played cards with Jim and Mim Ream, Chanda and I went to Bird-in-Hand Market and visited Cindy, their daughter, and bought some of the candy she sells.

We also visited Uncle Robert and Ella in Gap. And in our travels I took some pictures.
We saw this little girl running down the driveway after the wagon.

"Wait! Wait! Don't leave without me!"

An Amish farm with the farmer plowing the fields using mules or horses. Click on the picture to enlarge it and then use the back arrow at the top left to return to this blog.

Another farmer and his horses doing the spring plowing.

Saturday night, March 27, the Youth Group of St. Paul Penryn had a spaghetti dinner and auction. Do you recognize the auctioneer? (Notice Cynthia in the lower left)

"I have 15, who will give me 20?"

Sunday afternoon was very spring-like, nice and warm, until...

a cold front came with lots of hail and rain and wind. Was I back in Oklahoma?

When I was at Chanda's house at Christmas time there was an earthquake.
This time there was a tornado! Not in Penryn but in Clay Township.

This is along the Middle Creek.

An Ace hardware store in Lincoln with tornado damage. D & E was working to restore electricity up the street and all over the area. They were out retrieving their lawn furniture from various fields. Notice the stop sign broken off and down in the grass. This is a good picture to click on to see the details.

This is where there were 8 trailer homes destroyed and fortunately no injuries.

A farm just across the creek and meadow lost parts of the roofs of 3 buildings. Many volunteers were there the next day repairing them and cleaning up. Another good one to click on and see details.

I finally have taken a decent picture of the apple basket water tower. This is along I-81 in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.



After enjoying a few days in Nashville I headed west to Oklahoma through Arkansas. The clerk at the motel suggested this park when I asked for something I could stop and see not far off the interstate and west of Conroy. This is a beautiful park and worth a return visit. Petit Jean State Park has an interesting history and is the first and best park in Arkansas. It was a beautiful spring day too. These pictures were taken from an overlook of the Arkansas River. And before I had taken very many pictures my camera's battery was dead. There are beautiful views from the bluff as the river wends it way around.

My camera never made it to the right side. But my cell phone has a camera and had a charge so I took a few more pictures with that. This is a waterfalls in the park. I walked to an overlook from a parking lot but there is also a trail where you can go to the bottom and walk around by the river and the falls.

The dark area on the left is shadow and the water hits some rocks and then goes into a small river, the Petit Jean River.

Around Nashville in the Spring

On March 19th, as I was leaving Nashville to drive to Pennsylvania, I stopped to look around a plantation named Travellers' Rest. Most of the land is now the train yards at Nashville. The first house here was built in 1799 and the owner with 2 other men went on to found Memphis.









This is a gate at the side of the house. The front is to the left and it goes on and on behind that. The grounds have a lot of magnolia trees.

This is the interior of a separate red brick house in the back.

When I returned from Pennsylvania I took a Gray Line tour of the city on this trolley on April 2nd.

The most scenic part was in Centennial Park. They had a lot of red bud trees. (FYI: Oklahoma's state tree)

The spring flowers were blooming.

Dogwood trees were mixed in with the red buds.

And there were also some maples with pretty pink samaras,or "maple keys."

The guide said that for Tennessee's Centennial they had built several Greek buildings but the Parthenon is the only one they didn't remove after the centennial.

The capital of country music also has a Hard Rock Cafe. Guitars are everywhere in Tennessee and especially in Nashville. There are also a lot of recording studios here but although we saw them on the tour they really aren't very interesting photographically. The guide told us that 95% of the songwriters in the world live in Nashville. And they don't know what is wrong with the other 5%! The bridge in the back ground crosses the Cumberland River which goes right by downtown.

This guy is painted on the wall at the Hard Rock Cafe. Don't know why...

No explanation needed.




This is the Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School where Dinah Shore graduated. The guide said Oprah Winfrey graduated from here also. She started her career working on a TV station there in Nashville. And her father still has his barber shop in East Nashville. I will have to check that out the next trip!

I took this picture on my first trip through Nashville on March 18th. This is at a state park near Percy Priest Lake. There was not very much water in the lake. I think that means that the fish would be easier to catch since they didn't have as much room to get away! But I didn't stay long enough to see if these 2 guys caught any.

Mary Alice's Doll House

On March 28 Chanda and I visited Mary Alice and Henry for a few rousing games of Sequence. We stopped by the Astorbilt house to see how things were going. The Christmas decorations were put away and summer hadn't arrived yet. All of these pictures can be clicked on and enlarged. When you are finished use the back arrow in the upper left to return to the blog.

In the room under the rafters they were still prepared for some indoor activities, music and some reading, maybe a little dressmaking. Seth plays the bass and Gracie plays the banjo, but who plays the harp? Also in the room next door to this they have a pool table which can be seen in the previous picture if you click on it.

And in the bedroom Papa was still wearing his long johns and they needed a fire in the stove at night.

The parlor was comfy and the drapes were pulled at night to keep out the chill; they have a fire in the fireplace. I suppose Mary Alice plays the organ and sings while Henry reads the Bible and drinks wine...or is the other way around?

And the bathroom...Well it doesn't really change with the seasons. Just don't forget to flush when you are finished.

This is the neighborhood store. Not a lot of activity there.

It is time now to put away the sleds and get out the scooters. In the summer I hope to get some scenes of the outside and the porch. The Astorbilts enjoy the outdoors and spend a lot of time on the porch and gardening.