At home south of Tennessee, we had been thinking about our trip to East Tennessee for weeks when the time finally arrived to attend my annual high school class reunion in Maynardville.
We normally take I-285 over to I-75 then northward to Knoxville but a close friend of mine suggested using State Route 411 to bypass the interstate.
Later, I regretted not following his advice because I discovered that a huge interstate interchange was being constructed connecting I-75 and I-24. So, it’s best to use 411 around Chattanooga for a more scenic route with less truck traffic.
One of my reasons for traveling I-75 was so that I could visit McKay’s, a giant used bookstore just north of Chattanooga on Old Dixie Highway just a block or so off I-75, a necessary stop for a lover of southern history like me.
We decided to leave a day early so that we could visit Middlesboro, Kentucky, the only city in the nation built entirely within an ancient meteor crater.
We visited the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park visitor center, which has a wonderful exhibition of native wildlife of the area and a 30-minute film, “Daniel Boone and the Westward Movement,” that runs continuously. Be sure to see it—it takes you back to earlier times when the woods were full of deer, turkey, bears and Indians.
On our way back into Tennessee we stopped at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate which has an extensive Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum.
Then we continued on our return on Highway 33, also named “Thunder Road,” after the moonshine running route in the Prohibition Days when this was a way of life.
We crossed TVA’s Norris Lake on the new 4-lane bridge on our way back to the Hampton Inn in Knoxville.
Knoxville is the largest city in Appalachia and my nearby hometown of Maynardville, known as the “Cradle of Country Music,” is where stars like Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins and Kenny Chesney were born.
My mother went to grammar school with Chet Atkins. Kenny Chesney’s father Dave Chesney attended the reunion and is on the far right in the group shot I made. It was a thrill seeing all of my old friends. We had lunch at Li’l Jo’s Bar-B-Que which had the best catfish that I had ever eaten.
We drove to the top of Sharp’s Ridge for a great skyline panoramic shot of Knoxville and the blue mountains snuggled in the background. Sharp’s Ridge is to Knoxville as Lookout Mountain is to Chattanooga and Stone Mountain is to Atlanta.
Sharp’s Ridge is named after my early ancestors, the Sharp brothers, who came from Scotland in a two-mast schooner in 1786, a cargo vessel which was before the time of passenger ships. They were later ambushed by the Indians and one was killed but the other ran away and escaped—otherwise I would not be writing this story today!