A Sunday Afternoon Drive

I can remember as a child taking Sunday afternoon drives with the family. Sometimes it was a fun drive, depending where we wound up. Regardless, I always enjoyed them, well most of the time.

My three older brothers and I were usually jammed into the back seat or one of us up front in between mom and dad, depending on who the trouble maker was that day. We would ride for hours, always where ever my dad wanted to venture out to. We would spend many hours sometimes sitting out in the country while dad did a bit of catching up with an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. He would stop to do a bit of haggling with someone over an old car they had out for sale or to stop at a roadside produce stand to pick up a watermelon. We just never really knew what a Sunday afternoon drive could bring. As a kid, our biggest expectation from the afternoon was at some point, we would stop at a filling station and we would be treated to a grape soda, a small bag of penny candy, or a Popsicle. It was the treat that maybe made the afternoon drive worthwhile. Sometimes we would pop into a state park for a leg stretch and some fresh air. In the photo above are my brothers and I, in front of the falls in the Tellico Plains area. I am not sure if this was an afternoon drive or when we actually went camping over there. I was kind of small then.

I can remember many times while on these Sunday afternoon adventures, I would see rolling hills and scenery that would just speak to my little heart. I would beg my mom and dad to buy the land. "Just write a check for it" I would say. I had no idea that there needed to be plenty of money to cover that check. I am sure my momma remembers this well. 

I do believe those Sunday drives are where my adventurous spirit came from.  I never seem to hesitate a minute to turn down an old country dirt road just to see where it leads to. Sometimes, I do have to turn around and go back the way that I came. Many times, I find new back roads and sights I would have never seen, if I had a moment to think twice about the direction I was headed.  I have been on old logging roads all over the mountains in east Tennessee and parts of North Carolina too. Those trips have been so neat. I have run across so many little one room log cabins, old churches and hunting camps too.

 

 I love the scenery an old country road offers. I think I will never tire of seeing old barns still standing strong or those with the lean that will never be straightened again. I love seeing all the old country churches and being in Tennessee, there’s an old country church within a mile of just about anyone, sometimes even two or three and that isn’t an exaggeration either.

I'm forever stunned by just how beautiful folk’s gardens can be this time of the year. Folks can come up with some ingenious trellis' for pole runners or cucumber vines. You just never know what someone can use to run beans on. I love seeing the cornstalk covered fields with sunflower edging. Summer time in the country has a charm that is hard to explain. Even the fields covered in chigger weed and other wild flowers, I think is a beautiful sight.

This past Sunday, Papaw and I set out for a drive. We stopped for lunch at the Riverstone restaurant and lodge in Towensend, before heading on into the Great Smoky Mountain National park. If you are ever in Townsend Tennessee, pop in and grab a bite to eat at the Riverstone. If you can make it in time for breakfast, which we can’t cause Papaw likes to sleep in on the weekends. But if you can make it early enough for breakfast, you’ll be glad you did. They have breakfast choices to please anyone and I guarantee, you’ll be stuffed when you leave.  They also have great lunch and dinner choices. Personally, I like their catfish. Yum!

We ventured on across the mountain toward Cherokee, North Carolina. Right before going into Cherokee, there is a visitor’s center for the national park called Oconaluflee. They have an old homestead mountain farm museum there and it is amazing.  There are a collection of old log and stone buildings, cabins and corn cribs there as well as, an old barn. They have brought some of the old buildings from other locations from the Appalachians and reconstructed them there. If you are ever in that area, do stop in. It is free to walk through the old farm museum. Also too, while we were there, we were told that this year’s Old Homestead Weekend will be the third Saturday of September. I do think we will be stopping in then. They said, there will be folks cooking, iron smith’s shoeing up horses and many other demonstrations taking place.  Below are a few more photos from around the old mountain homestead.

This little lady was working on a quilt. She told us about an old saying she had always been told by her mamma about sewing on Sunday. She said she was always told "with every stitch she made on Sunday, that God would take a stitch in her tongue." I tried to research this old saying but couldn't come up with where it came from. I wished I could have. I did run across another version of this that went, " "Every stitch you put in on a Sunday, you will have to pick out with your NOSE when you get to heaven."  Since I love sewing, I love hearing all the old sayings about sewing. I also ran across one that said, "never start a sewing project on a Friday or it will never get finished."

We really enjoyed seeing all the old buildings and spending a bit of time just trying to imagine what it would have been like to live in those days. I am sure life must have been hard. I have been blessed in my life to have known both sets of my grandparents into adult hood. I have heard so many stories of how hard life was in those days. I feel blessed to have had those years to hear all the stories and tales of their life and the hours spent trying to imagine what it must have been like.   

The homestead museum is a wonderful place to take a break and step back in to the past for a short time. Have a picnic along the creek or stop into the visitor's center for brochures, maps and souvenirs. I think Oconalufee is one of the absolute best visitor's centers that the Great Smoky Mountains park has. The park is one of my favorite national parks but I may be a bit bias because I grew up in this park. Many of our outings as a child were coming to the Smokies.

If you would like to see more of the photos from this area, you can see them in this album.

Hope you are enjoying your summer. Blessings to you all!