Travel Adventures

Like many major cities Knoxville has a special night each month when they encourage people to come downtown and participate in various activities. For Knoxville it’s “First Friday”. They have street performances, sidewalk food vendors, art galleries open late and generally a good atmosphere for people to stay connected with the city center.

Our Friday visit was intended to help us get familiar with the Market Square area. We also wanted to catch a free fiddle concert by a local traditionalist called Ferd Moyce. Every First Friday at WDVX is “Ferd’s Friday” and he puts on a very unique concert of old mountain music. A good YouTube video of him and a friend can be found HERE.

We shopped, walked, ate at The Tomato Head and then worked our way into a good sidewalk spot to view the Christmas parade. The day had been near 60 degrees but by 7:00pm it was down in the upper 30’s so it did feel a bit like Christmas even though there was no snow.

It was a nice sunny day today so we drove up to Knoxville to attend a free noon-time concert in the Knoxville Visitor Center. This is not your standard visitor center where you just pick up a map. It has a specialty coffee bar that also sells some lunch-type food. It is also the home of East Tennessee’s own WDVX radio studio. Monday through Saturday they host a free live concert at noon called The Blue Plate Special with their infamous DJ Red Hickey (for real).

The style of music provided is probably something like “alternative” country…or …country “fusion” where they play music you will don’t usually hear on traditional radio stations.

The first act was Cassie Peterson – she is the primary song writer and Doug Mosher played various instruments. They were very good and obviously have talent.

The second group was a strange “fusion” group called Tennessee Schmaltz – a group of Jewish guys who played Klezmer music. Apparently this is a form of Yiddish country music. They were very good and a lot of fun.

We’re coming back tomorrow night to see the Knoxville Christmas parade.

We are staying for 2 months just outside of the Smoky Mountains during November and December. Our plan is to drive our car back to Indiana for Christmas then break camp and leave for Florida.

The weather is excellent and there are still a lot of color left in the trees.

Here are a few pictures of some of the places we got a chance to see.

We pulled our rig about 35 miles south of our old home for our first camping experience. We are learning how to work everything and also letting the grandkids come to visit and stay all night at least once before we head off toward warmer climates.

Indiana does not have a lot of great RV parks but this one is a real gem – Timberline Valley RV Resort. The new owners (Steve and Terri) have made a lot of improvements and have a dream to expand and handle many more of the large rigs. They were full-timers themselves for 5 years and know what travelers want and need.