With the sparkling farmlands washed clean, we headed East under a clear blue sky to Jackson, Tennessee where we left highway 70 to explore. Our first find was a State Farmer's Market where folks had set up their home grown bounty for sale. Squash, beans, okra, tomatoes (Green and ripe), peppers, egg plant (black and white), onions, corn, blue berries, plums, and black berries all created displays rivaling art. We enjoyed chatting with the sellers and Klep left, eating a bag full of black berries, fresh and sweet.
Our next stop is one of the top ten tourists destinations in Tennessee, The Casey Jones Museum and Ole Country Store. We both love trains, so this was a hit with us. The movie filled us in on the facts of who Casey Jones was and what had really happened to him. The exhibits were another good history lesson. The video of the reenactment of the hearings following his death was a reminder that spin is not a new concept. The replica of old engine number 382 brought back memories of the pre-diesel trains. We enjoyed climbing up into it and looking around and imagining what it would have been like to ride up there, speeding down from Memphis to New Orleans.
The house that Jones lived in has been preserved and is on the site.
We finished our morning at the Old Country Store which is actually old and has several food options for lunch. We are avoiding buffets, so we opted for the hot line where Klep chose a vegetable plate and I had some fried chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Their food was good, Southern fare. They had fresh fried peach pies, one of which we shared.
We left, still humming Casey Jones, in the noon heat and headed up the road listening to a m radio to Milan to find the West Tennessee Agricultural Museum that our friend Judy had told us about. The museum has just about every agricultural tool on display that was used to change the wilderness into farmland and then farm it through two centuries. An old log cabin, complete with furnishings and an honest to goodness outhouse, complete with corn cobs, sit next to the museum building. We were the only people in the building which we explored for an hour or so. The farm wife's tools were there, too and we enjoyed looking at the old ice boxes, quilts, and other things.
We reconnected with highway 70 for our next stop in Huntingdon, where we explored The Dixie. We watched a children's pottery class and were allowed to go in the museum dedicated to Dixie Carter and Hal Holbrook which is in the basement of the building housing the performance center. We found more classes going on here with one area dedicated to summer programs in creative writing.
The square around the courthouse in Huntingdon was beautiful and busy. It looked like a good place to live and raise a family. We left and headed toward Camden which was sprawling and full of the usual fast food restaurants and other things we find common. Huge clouds were building by this time and a place to stop was on our mind. The winds picked up as we headed toward Waverly and the drops were falling when we started looking for a B & B which we did not find. We settled for a motel on the western side of Waverly, checked in, and watched the storm play out.
After the rain, we headed down Highway 13 in the Hurricane Creek area which was heavily wooded and beautifully rolling. I could tell my Tennessee boy was starting to enjoy the curves. We found an unremarkable restaurant geared to the tourists who come to this area for the Loretta Lynn Ranch. We had an unremarkable supper where Klep enjoyed another bowl of beans, onions, and cornbread, and headed back to call it a night.
Today we head into Nashville for the weekend.
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