The Trail's Our Thing

Kathy, Kelly and Charley (December 2008). Kelly is now 15 years old.

I thought I would write about my life and career today and how it has changed since we went on our long trip in 2004-2005. Part of this is an unposted piece I wrote for my blog about a year ago.

It has been almost 3-1/2 years since our family returned from our 14 month "Grand Tour of Europe." Our family's life has settled into a new and very different pattern from the way we lived before the trip, especially for me. For 27 years I had responsible corporate jobs, leaving early in the morning and getting home just in time for dinner at 7 pm or occasionally later. I worked on weekends a lot, and my work involved overnight travel a couple times a month, in the last few years to not-so-interesting places. I had three weeks of vacation a year, and I worried about work part of the time I was away. I made pretty good money-- and was good at spending it too.

Our long trip was a good way for me to make a break from the company where I'd worked for ten years. But I thought when we got home, I'd look for a similar job as another company's head of Human Resources, probably here in Knoxville. This wasn't something I worried about while we were away. I had decided I didn't want to think about my career very much at all while we were in Europe. I wanted to focus on enjoying that experience-- not work on my resume, look at on-line job postings, and network with possible contacts. We had enough money that I could take six months when we got home to figure out my next career step. I was actually pretty excited about the idea of having time off at home. Other than my eight-week maternity leave (when I did work part time), I'd never just been at home without a job.

Sophie and Kelly at dinner tonight

Our friend Sophie arrived today to spend several days with us. Sophie is the assistant manager of the B&B where we stay in Provence and has become a very good friend. Last spring she invited us to be her guests and stay in an apartment on the lower level of her parents farmhouse in Bonnieux, and biw we are happy to have her as our guest. Sophie speaks English fluently after living in Glasgow for a few years when she was younger. She loves visiting America.

On this month-long trip she's seeing a lot of our country, mostly visiting with American friends she's met through the B&B. Before coming to see us, she stayed with a friend in Princeton, New Jersey. During that time, she went into New York City on her own for four nights. (She found a budget accommodation near Penn Station where she paid only $200 total for the four nights!) She spent yesterday in Philadelphia before flying from there this morning. After leaving us, she'll fly to Chicago and take a bus to Buffalo and Niagra Falls (apparently a place she's always wanted to see), and from there will fly to Santa Fe to stay with another friend. She got a wonderful fare for all these flights in the USA.

I drove to Chattanooga this morning to pick Sophie up at the airport there. Originally she planned to take a Greyhound bus from New Jersey to Knoxville, an idea that had us a little concerned. The airfare to Knoxville was just very expensive. I posted about this on Slow Travel, and got some great input as usual and some other ideas for her travel. It turned out that a ticket to Chattanooga (an hour and a half away) was much cheaper, and we told Sophie that we would pick her up there. It is an easy drive down I-75 to Chattanooga. I've never been to the Chattanooga airport before, but it's north of the city, five minutes off the interstate, a small airport with parking just outside the door. Her flight from Charlotte was ten minutes early and Sophie was already at the top of the stairs as I was getting off the escalator. Her bag arrived in baggage claim in maybe five minutes. I didn't even have to pay for parking, since my car was in the parking lot for less than 15 minutes.

We have had a little excitement in Knoxville this week-- snow!

It doesn't take much snow to create excitement here. In 1993, while I was pregnant with Kelly, we had about 14 inches of snow in mid-March. We already had tulips blooming in our yard! Now that was exciting-- a blizzard! But most years it doesn't snow at all. We've never had enough snow here for Kelly to build a snowman. Most people don't know how to drive in snow. They stock up on bread and milk, stay out of work, and hunker down at home. People here don't own snow tires or chains, snow shovels or sleds. The city doesn't have much snow removing equipment and can really only take care of the main roads. It's also very hilly here, with lots of small shady back roads, where snow doesn't melt quickly.

Half-an-inch of snow can shut the city down for several days... which has what happened this week.

Monday started normally. Kelly went off to school and I was getting organized to leave for the university. Then it started to snow, actually quite hard. The University of Tennessee is one of those places that never closes, so I headed off in the snow to prepare for my morning class. Kelly's school was closed mid-morning and Charley brought her home for the rest of the day. A snow day! Every kid's dream. It snowed until mid-afternoon, and maybe we had an inch of snow on the ground, not much on the roads. I got about 15 messages from students asking if I was cancelling my afternoon and night class or telling me they couldn't make it to campus. About 20 of the 40 students missed my 3:40 class, and about ten students missed the 5:45 pm class.

Kelly watched the television all Monday night, hoping for the announcement that her school would be cancelled again on Tuesday. Most of the schools in the area made their announcement on Monday night, but her school (a private school) didn't decide until early Tuesday. Lucky Kelly got to sleep in. The main issue on Tuesday was ice. This was the day I drove to Chattanooga. There was some ice in our neighborhood, but all the rest of the roads were cleared. It seemed funny that schools would be closed.

Amazingly, most of the schools in the area (including our country public schools) were closed again today. No more snow, but it is very cold with a major wind chill. I guess the buses can't get back into the more rural areas of the county, where ice continues to be a problem. Kelly's school was not cancelled. She likes school, but she reported that no one at school wanted to be there today. "It isn't fair that everyone else got off and we didn't."

I wish I had a photo to post, but there really isn't enough snow to show!

I did run outside this morning to take a photo of our house in the snow. This looks like we had a LOT of snow in Knoxville, but the front of our house is in the shade in the winter for most of the day, and it takes a long time for any snow to melt! We seem to have more snow in our little neighborhood than any other area around! It is supposed to be sunny and in the 60's this weekend.

We live in a condominium development of attached homes in West Knoxville. There are 46 homes arranged around two sweeping cul-de-sacs with a "glen" in between the two ends of the development. We share a swimming pool. There are lots of very mature trees, and in the summertime when the leaves fill in, you almost feel like you're living in the mountains. Our house backs onto the glen, and in the summer we can't see the houses on the other side. It's almost like living in a little European village.

I was an original homeowner here in 1987. I bought a brand new unit when I was single (32 years old). In 1992 Charley and I got married and he moved in with me. Then we had Kelly in 1993. The house that had seemed too large for a single woman with two dogs (1850 square feet) all of a sudden seemed too small. In 1994 we bought a house right across the street! It's actually the same basic floor plan (slightly modified) but with an above-ground basement and 1000 square feet more than my other house. Later Charley turned the screened-in porch into a new room, a small family room where we read and watch tv and movies together. Our house has a huge great room, three really big bedrooms, three full baths, and Charley and I each have an office. I'm not all that crazy about West Knoxville-suburbia, but I like our little neighborhood and I love our home. We also have nice neighbors, several of whom have also been here since the beginning.

We are also less than two minutes from Kelly's school-- an enormous plus for us. And our house is almost paid for!

It is after midnight, but I'm determined to post before I go to bed. I don't want to get behind on my February blogging commitment.

Today was Sophie's last day with us in Knoxville. Tomorrow we are driving to Nashville and staying overnight there. We have tickets to the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night. We'll have most of Sunday to explore Nashville, and we'll drop Sophie at the Nashville airport on our way back to Knoxville Sunday evening.

Tonight we had a dinner party in Sophie's honor. I invited four couples from Knoxville who have been on our trips the last couple of years and stayed at Le Clos du Buis, the B&B where Sophie works. Two of the couples had been together the same week on our trip, though they didn't know each other before the trip. The other two couples were with us at different times. Sophie has met so many guests at the B&B, she wasn't totally sure if she remembered any of the people. But of course to them she was a big part of their vacation memories.

Despite the fact that most of the people didn't know each other, the group was amazingly compatible! I think that people who enjoy travel end up having a lot of other similar interests. Everyone arrived at 6:30 pm, and left about 11:15 pm. I don't think anyone realized that it was that late! Perhaps they wouldn't have left even then, but Kelly was at a friends house and called to check on when we could pick her up. All of a sudden everyone realized how late it was and took about ten minutes to say final goodbyes.

Here was my menu:

Appetizers: Smoked salmon with crackers, capers, onions, eggs, mustard, dill spread. Alouette cheese spread. Little cheese crackers from France. Marsha brought crabmeat appetizers.

Salad: Dorothy brought a really good spinach salad with mandarin oranges.

Main course: Beef burgundy with mushrooms and carrots. Wild rice. French bread.

Dessert: Chocolate mousse cheesecake garnished with strawberries. Coffee.

The beef burgundy cooked in the oven at a very low temperature for over four hours. The recipe that our family loves is a bit of a "semi-home-made" dish, as is the chocolate mousse cheesecake. I do love to cook, but I also believe in shortcuts.

Several people brought wine, and Charley said we drank six bottles of wine. Sophie doesn't drink wine (!!), and I didn't drink much tonight.

I started cooking at 2:00 pm. (We went to downtown Knoxville to look around, do a little shopping, and have lunch.) Sophie helped me set the table. I used my Provencal dishes, and it really looked nice. I forgot to take photos of my beef burgundy or my dessert, the beautiful table, or the whole group. I don't usually take photos at home like I do when we're traveling, and I was just too busy with the meals and visiting with our friends. (I did take a couple pictures of the group after dinner, but I just looked at them and they aren't good enough to post.)

Two couples brought photo albums of their trips to France. It was fun to see how people photographed the week differently. Everyone really seems to have such positive memories of their trips, and that's a very rewarding feeling for me.

Sophie helped with the some of the clean-up and Charley has the dishwasher going. With eleven people and several courses, we used a LOT of dished, glasses, and silverware. I normally handle the cooking and he takes care of clean-up-- I'm relieved not to have to do much with the clean-up this time. Charley said he'll finish cleaning up tomorrow morning. We plan to leave for Nashville at 10:30 am.

We left Knoxville a little after 10:15 to drive to Nashville. Our plan was to stop drive a while down I-40 and then stop for a late breakfast. We told Sophie we wanted her to experience a real Tennessee breakfast, and so we stopped at one of our favorite places-- Cracker Barrel.

Cracker Barrel is a restaurant chain that started in Lebanon, Tennessee (just east of Nashville) in 1969. Their 16th restaurant was located at our exit on I-40, and I can remember eating there with my parents when they came to visit for the 1982 World's Fair. Today there are 592 Cracker Barrel restaurants in 41 US states, almost all of them at interstate exits.

Charley and I really got to like Cracker Barrels when Kelly was young. We liked stopping there on long trips for a good meal, and the restrooms had those fold-out diaper changing tables. We also used their rent-an-audio-book program; you could rent a book for $3 a week and return it to any Cracker Barrel restaurant.

Cracker Barrel serves country-type food that's typical in Tennessee, big portions, and at a very reasonable price. The service is usually friendly and efficient. You can order breakfast at any time of the day, which is what we often do. In winter there's a big blazing fire. I like the shop too and do occasionally find something to buy. Christmas decorations are especially economical. Charley and Kelly like the candy store.

Cracker Barrel trivia: They use 35 million little bottles of maple syrup a year, 6% of the world's pure maple syrup supply. They use 151 million eggs a year. (!!!) And they use 70,000 lbs of flour every day to make their biscuits and dumplings. (Their biscuits are GOOOODDD!) You can read more about Cracker Barrel's history here.

We wanted Sophie to experience another aspect of Tennessee, so we stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Harriman, Tennessee. (This is not far from the big TVA fly-ash spill that happened not long ago.) Although we were only about 40 minutes from Knoxville, we were very much in rural Tennessee.

Charley had an Old Timers breakfast: Scrambled eggs, sausage, hashed-brown casserole, grits, biscuits and gravy. Sophie had a Smokehouse breakfast, all of the above, but without the hashed-browns. I had pecan pancakes with bacon, and Kelly had blueberry pancakes with country ham. I traded Charley some of my pancakes to get one of his biscuits with gravy.

My high-calorie, high-cholesterol, wonderful Cracker Barrel breakfast

Sophie was impressed that we got endless refills of coffee and diet cokes-- something that doesn't happen in France. She is a tiny woman, but she ate everything, including the biscuits and gravy. She put some of Kelly's blueberry syrup on her grits and then ate them all. And she even had chocolate cobbler for dessert!

While we waited for our food, Kelly showed Sophie how to play the little peg game that's on every table. After we ate, she taught Sophie how to play checkers. They sat in rocking chairs near the remnants of the morning fire to play on a board set up on a big barrel. Kelly won, but Sophie did very well for her first game.

Sophie and Kelly at Cracker Barrel

Then onward to Nashville!