Peckish Travels

Bob and I had a lovely drive through the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina yesterday afternoon on our way from Chattanooga to Boiling Springs, North Carolina. Below are some scenes from the car and the North Carolina Welcome Center that we stopped at. The Welcome Center was unwelcomingly closed, but they did have some brochures outside to pick up.

We arrived in Boiling Springs at our housesit house just before 5:00 pm. Note: This is our first housesit in North Carolina, and we have only done one sit in South Carolina, each in the town of Boiling Springs. What are the odds?

Boiling Springs, North Carolina, is a small town of about 4,700 people, located in Cleveland County about 50 miles from Charlotte. It is home to Gardner-Webb University and was named for springs, now located on the university campus, that no longer boil.

It also has a great YMCA that we hope to use and a small library and a very good Mexican restaurant. Most importantly though, it is home to Linda, the homeowner on her way to Italy to teach English for four months, and her adorable dog Cooper. More to come on our record-setting housesit here.

Bob and I had a beautiful day for a art-filled walkabout around Chattanooga. After temps at or below freezing this early morning , the temps climbed into the low 60s by the time we made our way back to the hotel.

Today, we walked away from the river and into the central city and then out again to explore the City Center, Southside, and University Districts. We walked 6 plus miles, which is the longest stretch Bob has gone on his new hip. The hip did great, but he was pretty tired by the end of our excursion.

Tomorrow we head to Boiling Springs, North Carolina, to meet our new homeowner, her dog, and her neighbor, who is our local resource. It will be a 4.5 hour drive to the house, and Bob will drive the homeowner to the Charlotte, North Carolina, airport on Thursday.

Bob and I have spent a great day and a half in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A city of about 182,000 just across the border from Georgia and made famous by Glenn Miller’s 1941 song, Chattanooga Choo Choo. We have found it to be a fun, artsy, growing city with a lovely 15+ mile path along the Tennessee River.

Bob and I are staying in a Residence Inn in the Riverfront District. We explored the Riverfront District yesterday after our mid-afternoon arrival. We lost an hour in our travel from Montgomery due to crossing a time zone.

Bob and I left Austin on Saturday. Rather than a direct route, we mapped a slower route to North Carolina as we have a few days before meeting up with our next homeowner. Saturday, we drove about 6 hours (our preferred driving maximum) to Scott (basically, Lafayette), Louisiana. We got there late afternoon in time to pick up some food (a couple items Cajun based!) at the local grocery for dinner and chill in the room.

Yesterday, Sunday, we drove in and out of rain for another 6 hour journey to Montgomery, Alabama, but we started out a little before 7am as we had timed entry tickets for 3:00 pm for the Legacy Museum and we hoped to walk around Montgomery a bit before heading to the museum.

I had purchased tickets for us online for the National Peace and Justice Memorial and it also came with tickets to the Legacy Museum. At the time of purchase I hadn’t noticed that the 2 sites were a 20 minute walk apart. I didn’t actually learn that until we got into our room in Montgomery yesterday to try to plan our time. We decided then that we needed to head right to the memorial in order to make our timed entry at the museum which closed at 5 and wouldn’t reopen again until Wednesday.

We headed off to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. This is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to capturing the impact of the enslavement and lynchings of Black people throughout the United States. It opened in 2018 and provides an impactful depiction of the lives lost through lynching and names the individuals killed, mostly but exclusively in the South, and the county in which the murder occurred.

The memorial and museum offer a free shuttle between the two sites since they are a 20 minute walk apart. Normally, we would have preferred to walk but with the rain and wanting to maximize time at both places, we took advantage of the service. The Legacy Museum was just as impressive as the memorial. It’s a multi-media experience covering the everything from the abduction and transportation from Africa through enslavement, emancipation, Jim Crow laws and segregation to Civil Rights Movement into today. It begins by providing an immersive experience of the dangerous cross Atlantic journey which resulted in 2 million Africans dying at sea and being thrown into the Atlantic.

We only have one photo from the museum, however, as no photos or videos are permitted once you enter. It is obviously not a light subject, but Bob and I would both recommend it.

After the museum, we walked back towards our hotel. It was raining harder, but it made for a great photo.

Happy 2023!! We’ve had three awesome sits in Austin and taken care of my (Bob’s) immediate medical concerns. I feel (almost) like a new man, and definitely ready for the new year.

Tomorrow, we start our leisurely drive to Boiling Springs, North Carolina, with stops in Lafayette, Louisiana, Montgomery, Alabama, and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Once we get to Boiling Springs, we’ll be there for four months.

Our current sit ending tomorrow (number 116), has been in a beautiful home with a dog (Mango), cat (Luna), guinea pig (Biscuit) and a teeny, tiny fish.

We’ll, forgot to post this, but here’s some old news if you’re not busy.

As I write this, I am sitting near Bob with his post-cataract surgery eye shield on. His surgery was at 8:30 this morning, and we were back by 11:30. The procedure went fine, although we’ll know more about the results tomorrow at his follow-up appointment.

Since the weather has improved considerably (high of 60 F), I was antsy to see more of our area so yesterday I drove a couple miles down to Common Ford Ranch Park to walk some of the trails there. The following are some photos from my visit.

How can it possibly be the end of 2022 already?! It’s been an event filled year for us and one for which we are so grateful to have been able to revisit friends in Scotland, make new friends in Cambridge, France, Canada, and the US, host my mom’s 80th birthday extravaganza, and see lots of other relatives in the Midwest and good friends in Austin, Denver, and Tucson. We are blessed!!

We are currently hunkered down for a few days while a serious cold front impacts Austin and many other parts of the central US. While we have it much better than areas farther north (We’re still on the right side of 0 degrees F), we noticed that our homeowners who are visiting family in Canada are currently having warmer weather than we are here (32 vs 15 degrees F when we checked this morning).

We continued the medical focus of our visit this week with a consult for Bob regarding his cataract surgery for next week, a 2-week follow-up on his hip surgery, and a mammogram for me. I won’t get my results for a week or so but was happy to learn that the results of an ultrasound that I had last week came back fine. No use to worrying about these things, but my sister’s death from cancer has taken away my former assuredness about my health status.

Bob got a great review from the orthopedic surgeon, as he is very mobile already, having ditched both the walker and cane. He is mostly pain free except on inclines and if he pushes himself too much. His gait isn’t quite back to normal, but we’re trying not to expect everything all at once. We’re just hoping the eye surgery is as effective.

In the meantime, we had a lovely meet up with another couple that we’ve known forever. She was one of Bob’s co-workers at his first job in Austin and is also from Iowa.

We have also been enjoying the aptly named Hollywood, who loves to be the center of attention and is quite the ball/toy fetcher, enjoys her walks and treats (She rolls over for cheese.), and stays close. She does not, however, approve of her winter jacket as we learned this morning.

Bob got an early Christmas present at our current house when he noticed a sculpture out by the pool. Yep, he’s added to his big head photo collection.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a happy, healthy 2023!

The University of Texas Women’s Volleyball team won the National Championship last night, beating the University of Louisville in 3 straight sets (best out of five). Since the game was played on a Saturday night, and we’re a football country, it was on a channel that we couldn’t get in our inn in Comfort. We didn’t hold out much hope of finding a place that would show it, so we monitored their progress online. Probably just as well, as we were pretty nervous. They won the championship in 2012, but also had two years in a row of winning the first two sets only to lose the match.

This morning we left Comfort about 8ish to get to our new housesit by 10. We didn’t see the home owners, as we had done a walk through with them a couple of weeks ago. We are in a home in a subdivision in the western part of the city and are caring for one small dog, Hollywood, while her people folks are in Canada visiting family.

The homeowners are both artists, and their home is decorated super cute. We’re excited to experience a different part of Austin while fitting in some more doc appointments as well as care for our young little diva, who can roll over for treats and loves to play with her toys but sleep too.

Today was our last day in Comfort. The day started in the high 30s at running time (about 5:30ish) but warmed to a brilliant, sunny 60, which made for a lovely day out.

We traveled by car today as we ventured further afield. We started with a quick photo of a cool Comfort sign before moving onto a war memorial unique to this community.

The Treue der Union Memorial is a limestone obelisk that was dedicated to the German (mostly) Free Thinkers who were loyal to the Union during the Civil War and who died in battle in 1862. In 1865, friends of the slain union loyalists recovered remains and buried them at the site of the memorial. Much props to Comfort for honoring these men, as much of Texas still doesn’t appear to like the Union.

After the memorial, we did an inexpensive driving and photo tour of the three wineries closest to Comfort. No drinking was involved, which made it easier on the wallet as well as the driving on the narrow, windy roads. First stop was Sister Creek Vineyards in nearby Sisterdale, Texas. We had been to this winery before so just snapped a couple of quick pics outside.

Then we headed back past Comfort about 5 miles to a much newer winery, Singing Waters, founded in 1997. The drive was beautiful among the rolling hills, and the winery wasn’t hard on the eyes either. This stop combined both wine and war, as the owner is a veteran, and they have lots of service stories and memorabilia on the walls of the tasting room.

Finally, we headed towards Bending Branch Winery, owned by the same person who owns California-based Ursa Winery with the Comfort tasting room that we visited last night. We learned from an employee in the tasting room that they lost their entire crop in 2014 due to a grape disease. They now have 56 acres of grapes planted in a number of different areas across the state.

Just a side note for future reference, the price per person for a tasting at the last two wineries was $30, and it was $18 or more to buy a glass of wine to drink on site.

First, the University of Texas volleyball team beat San Diego to head to the championship game against Louisville tomorrow night!! I would hate for you not to know that. Fingers and toes crossed for tomorrow. Not sure we’ll be able to watch the game as it’s on ESPN 2, but we’ll at least follow online on the iPad.

Back to Comfort. As we learned from our walkabout today, Comfort was one of a few communities in the Texas Hill Country settled by a group of German Freethinkers . Freethinkers we’re predominantly German intellectuals who advocated reason and democracy over religious and political autocracy. They were sympathetic to the Union during the American Civil War, so many chose to leave for other areas in the US or back to Germany during that time.

After my run and some online work this am, we ambled along High Street to peruse some really cute stores.