"Home, Sweet Home to Me!"

I was hooked on East Tennessee when we turned on 11 W and slowly climbed and wound our way to Hawkins County in the spring of 1968 when Klep took me to the hill to meet his parents.  When we returned that October, two months after our wedding, I first experienced the glory of the hills in full color.  Since then, I have loved that part of the world.  Some days I get just a little homesick for the place we lovingly refer to as "the holler" which has become our second home.  Today was one of those days.

We have just recently returned from a week traveling around the Caribbean enjoying the warm air, the soft breezes, and being totally pampered aboard a cruise ship.  After several slothful days of ignoring the pile of laundry and the Christmas things which needed to be dealt with, I finally got moving.  I bought some detergent, dragged out the storage boxes, and got it done.

While I worked, I thought longingly of Tennessee.  The hills would be bare now, the air cool.  I thought of the people who have become so much a part of our lives:  the cousins, the friends at Music Junction, the fellowship of Shady Grove Baptist Church, and the people we see as we go about our lives while we are there.  And, yes, I missed them all.

As I worked my way through the stack of laundry, the music of Larry and Ernie, and Vance and Phil and Hugh Kyle and Sheila and all the others filled my kitchen and carried me the five hundred miles plus to Rogersville.  I sang along to "Rocky Top" and other songs until the job was finished.

  Eleven or so weeks will pass quickly and once again, as the red buds burst with color, the bank blooms yellow with daffodils, and the violets emerge in the meadow, we will once again wind our way up the narrow, crooked road to Winegar Hollow.  I can hardly wait.

Cruising the Caribbean

As I stood on the veranda the sun broke through just before we eased into Fort Lauderdale port Friday morning, January 4, 2013.  The Zuiderdam maneuvered slowly through the channel as the world woke around us.  I enjoyed the last few minutes of movement through the water, knowing that I would soon be disembarking and headed home, rested, a little tanned, and with a few extra cruise pounds to shed in the coming days!  I thought back on the week we had spent on board ship.

We had sailed on December 28.  After our lifeboat drill, we enjoyed our first evening aboard getting unpacked, acclimated, and having out dinner before movie trivia and the evening show.  The next day was a day at sea. After a good walk around the deck with Traci, I enjoyed the sun and sea view on the veranda while Klep enjoyed a talk on the places we would visit.  After all, part of the reason we were cruising at this time of the year was to enjoy the warmth, to relax, and for me to recuperate further from my recent surgery.  I really don't need much excuse to sit and read with the sound of the water as we headed toward Grand Turk.

While we were on board, we thoroughly enjoyed afternoon tea.  What isn't to like about tiny sandwiched, scones with cream and jam, and iced cakes?  We also enjoyed our gourmet dinners every night although I did decide to forgo the bread!

Sunday morning the sun was just up when we slid into dock at Grand Turk.  Rob and Traci had a morning of swimming and snorkeling.  I had a morning of delightful slothfulness before I went to an early afternoon movie matinee of "People Like Us" before tea.  Our trivia team, the Klep Kats, was in place for the afternoon competition along with a room full of other teams.  Although we never won the general trivia contest, we did well enough to not be embarrassed!  Klep and I went to the interdenominational service before dinner and the evening show featuring James Cielan, an illusionist who made doves appear and disappear and who had two quite cute poodles which he fortunately did not make disappear.

Monday was a full day with glorious lolling in the morning followed by docking at San Juan, Puerto Rico, a tour around the old and new city, tromping up and down ramps of the old fort (begun in 1539), wading in the ocean, and more luscious lolling before we donned our dress up duds for New Year's Eve.  We had had a good historical experience at the old fort, and after all that exercise, we were ready for dinner and the comedy show following.

Tuesday's dawn revealed the beautiful hills of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands.  Since we had not excursions scheduled, we took our time leaving the boat in the warm tropical air and under clear blue skies. 

The color of the water was deep turquoise; the hills lush with vegetation and tropical blooms.  After going ashore, we found a tour taxi to take us around the island and up to the highest point where we got a view of the town, inlets, celebrity houses, and harbor below. 

Words are inadequate to describe the beauty of the water.  By four p.m., we were watching the last passengers make a dash toward the ship, the last two arriving in a police cruiser which delivered them to the gangway shortly after we were scheduled to leave.  The policewoman stood outside her cruiser and accepted the applause and cheers of those of us on board waiting for the late arrivals.

Tuesday night was my favorite cruise entertainment:  Island Magic, a steel band which played classical and favorites from musicals. 

Wednesday we had a busy day swimming, reading, napping, going to seminars, having tea, and climaxing with our team win at Famous Faces Trivia.  We proudly wore our prizes, Holland America pens, to dinner.

After some fairly rough seas Wednesday evening which rocked me to sleep, we were anchored at Half Moon Cay soon after dawn Thursday morning.  By mid morning, we were on a tender headed to the beach to enjoy a morning in the sun, on the sugary sand, and in the blue, blue water swimming.  What isn't wonderful about swimming the first week of January!

Thursday afternoon we enjoyed a movie, our last trivia, ate a delicious dinner, and watched the stars from our veranda before settling down to a good night's sleep knowing we would awake to reality.

For us, cruising is as much about enjoying the experiences aboard the ship as it is the places we go.  It is the fun of towel animals at night, the service of the stewards and the dining staff, the good food, and the people we meet.I always enjoy a trip through the galley where the 134 person staff prepares the dinners for the 1950 guests and the almost 800 crew members.  Klep always finds some good computer ideas.  We all enjoy the trivia games, the movies, and the good food.  Most of all, I enjoy the view of the ocean, the fish we see, the birds, the moon over the water, the sunrises and the sunsets.  Our trip this year made some good memories.

  Friday morning, we gathered our bags , passed through immigration, collected our car and slowly returned to cooler weather and home.

Merry Christmas from Barbara & Klep

With the Christmas cards flooding in and December slowly disappearing from my calendar, I am reminded that, once again, it is time for Klep and I to send forth our annual Christmas wishes to all of you scattered around the globe who mean so very much to us! 2012 has less than seven days left in it and it has been a year full of all life has to offer, both sad and happy. This will be forever the year that we bade my mother good-by in September.


It will also be the year we felt the love and comfort of loved ones and our Heavenly Father as we all went through this time of loss.



It will be the year that our oldest grand daughter Ava Grace became a first grader and little sister Leila Kate started preschool. It will be the year I spent more time than I wanted to in the hospital and Klep spent more time than he wanted to playing nurse!

2012 was also a year when we enjoyed our sojourns to Tennessee in April and October and the other months here in Jennings; the year we road tripped Kentucky; the year we discovered more fried pies than we needed to; watched some good sunrises on the beach; and shared a lot of good old fashioned lazy days at home.

                                2012 will be the year we got together more with our cousins and bid our dear cousin Annie B. good-bye.



Thanksgiving 2012 will always be the first one without Grandma, but will go down as a joyful celebration of those of us who remember her. The day can be summed up in Leila’s little song she sang as she made play dough cookies, “Happy, happy! Happy, happy!”

Christmas Season 2012 will be the one which was scheduled around my second surgery of the year. We had open house where we celebrated the season with carols and food and about sixty-five friends. Our church cantata on the 9th was beautiful as we joined voices with a neighboring church to sing our musical, “Silent Night, Holy Night”

We had hoped to squeeze in a trip to South Carolina to share Christmas with our Karolina Kleppers, but the bug laid us both low and we have delayed that until early in the new year. Now, we look forward to a quiet day at home spent with Rob and Traci.
John, Pam, Daniel, and Matthew have visited this Christmas Eve along with our friends Phillip and Judy.

And we look forward to closing out 2012 with a cruise to the eastern Caribbean along with Rob and Traci.




May your Christmas be bright and joyful! May you be surrounded by love and feel the hope and peace that Our Savior promised us. And, may the New Year, 2013, bring us all closer together.

                                     Love,

                                     Barbara & Klep

Traffic, Barbecue, Home: Ending of a Good Trip

We awoke near Calhoun, Georgia this morning near interstate 75.  We were headed toward Atlanta not long after nine listening to a book on CD.  Atlanta traffic was Atlanta traffic, but it was moving well.  Fortunately traffic south of the city was lighter than usual.

We lunched at JL Barbecue just off 475 in Macon and deemed it adequate but not spectacular.  We have eaten there several times before and we are afraid that the quality has gone down.  Neither the ribs or the sliced pork really had that cooked over wood taste that we look for.  I asked Klep if it had really gotten worse or if we had gotten more discriminating and he decided it was a little of both!

We finished the book long before arriving in Valdosta, changing over to Sirius Radio's Classic radio station.  We love the simplistic way the old time radio stories got the story told in thirty minutes with time out for commercials.

Our next adventure was Publix.  It was either stop or go shopping tomorrow.  We opted for doing it on the way home.  We stocked up on good nutritious veggies, fish, chicken, and lean meat.  There will be no more fried pies for awhile.  Both of us are dreading the scales in the morning!

We pulled into the driveway at 4:02 p.m.  Our place is living up to its name.  The rains have come quite regularly which is great for the flowers, but the mosquitoes are in full bloom, too!

We now declare Road Trip 2012 done!

Falls,Train,Museum: Tennessee Line at 2:58pm
After a breakfast of our leftover fried apple pies, we took a quick second look at Cumberland Falls, marveling at how much the river had risen in a week and a half with the rains.  We had picked up a sandwich to have for lunch and headed to our next destination, the Big South Fork Scenic Railway in an old coal mining town, Stearns, Kentucky.

The Kentucky and Tennessee Railway was built between 1902 and 1904 to haul timber and coal, to carry passengers, and to take workers and supplies to the camps along its line.

Now the train is run by the McCreary County Heritage Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization which was created to preserve, protect and interpret the history of one of the few remaining company towns in Kentucky.

We rode about 8 miles into Boone National Forest, dropping six hundred feet in elevation before we arrived at Blue Heron Mine area where we stopped to enjoy the exhibits and the old coal mining artifacts.  We arrived in a driving rain and sat for awhile on the train, enjoying our club sandwich.

On the way to the noon stop, we passed an old mining camp at Barthell, saw Canadian geese on the mill pond, passed through an old tunnel, and road by sheer drops and steep cliffs, black from the seams of coal running through them.  We saw some sumac leaves starting to change color, ferns growing in fissures of rocks, and blooming daisies by the tracks.

After our return trip (clipping on at an average of eleven miles an hour), we walked over to the McCreary County Museum which is housed in the Old Stearns Office Building which was built in 1907.  Stearns was the coal company which basically built and owned the town and the railroad.

The building housed artifacts from the old coal mine, old tools, and old household items from the early part of the twentieth century.  It also had a particularly nice moonshine still on display.

We walked past the business part of town, housed in a large block of wooden buildings and saw the damage from a recent fire which shut the restaurant and several more of the businesses  down.  Workers are already starting with the repairs.


We found our car in the parking lot, set the GPS for home and headed south, crossing the state line into Tennessee at 2:58 p.m . We visited and/or transited 30 counties and drove over 1400 miles in the state. We feel that we have a much better understanding and appreciation of Kentucky than we did two weeks ago.

Now, it is time to start considering what state to choose for next year's trip!

Sky Lift, Fried Apple Pies, Berea, and the Colonel:  A Full Day in Kentucky
The light fog was back when we awoke, but by the time we were on our way to the state park, the skies were blue with the promise of another beautiful day.  After our short visit to the ubiquitous gift shop, we watched the sky lift  operator check over the equipment which would take us to the top of the bluff where we would stand on Kentucky's Natural Bridge.  We were the first to get on the sky lift and it slowly took us up over the rocks, grass, streams, and trees until we got to a sheer face of rock and we lifted up to the exit platform.  The view was wonderful as we looked at the scenes below.  We took the short walk to the bridge that we walked across before deciding that we didn't really want to walk down the path to be underneath the bridge although we would have liked to get a picture of it.



 


About this time, three neatly dressed freshly scrubbed (although a little sweaty around the edges!)  young people came up from the bridge.  They had walked up from the very bottom.  We all fell into conversation and found that they were visiting from Illinois.  Mary Huffman volunteered to take Klep's camera back down and get photos of the bridge for us.  John and Stephen, her two brothers, stayed and talked to us while they waited for their parents to ride up on the skylift.  After Mary got back up, we all walked back to the skylift and we waved good-by to them and got back on the lift as their parents were getting off.

Our next destination was a little country store in St. Helen's in search of fried pies.  Last night we had shared our search for them with the cashier (lovely Kentucky Appalachian accent!) at the lodge restaurant and she had told us about this little place that makes really good pies.  She had told us go go to Beattyville (home of the Woolly Worm Festival) and turn left toward Jackson.  We found Sue's Pantry, a little wooden store with a gas pump out front and all sorts of groceries on the shelves, much like one run by my Uncle Drew and Aunt Ola.  Over in one corner was the stove and a counter to order food.  There was one table where a man was eating.  We were saddened to find that the cook had not made pies today because cooked apples were on the lunch menu.  We shared our story, and Jane, the cook, agreed to make us some pies!  I enjoyed watching her mix us the dough and cook the pies while I talked to the locals coming in for late breakfast, early lunch, and pop.  That's what this part of the country calls soft drinks.  The pop of choice in St. Helens is Ale 8 1 which was invented in the 1920's by a Kentucky man and is produced only in Kentucky.  The name is said like "A late one," which indicated that it was a new drink.  A large pot of chicken and dumplings were bubbling on the stove to go with the cooked apples.

Jane finished the pies after she gave me a bite of the one she used as a test and it was good.  In fact is was more than good.  She introduced me to all the other women working in the little store/cafe, boxed up my pies, and I paid and we were back on the road getting cinnamon sugar all over ourselves while we rode.  This was an experience I will never forget.

We drove on through the Kentucky country side, passing more old barns with quilt squares, pie plate hibiscus of all colors, up and down hills and sweeping curves passing places with names like "Stone Coal Cemetery," "Big Hill," and "Rock Castle," beautiful vegetable gardens, finally climbing to an altitude of over 1300 feet before arriving in Berea, the home of Berea College which was founded in 1855 by abolitionist John G. Fee and Cassius M. Clay as an interracial and coeducational school, both unheard of concepts in the 1800's.  The college runs Boone Tavern, a historic Inn and restaurant where we had planned to have a late lunch.  We arrived too late to eat there, however and chose a little cafe down the street where we had some ciabatta sandwiches.  We also visited the Kentucky Artisan Center where Klep was fascinated with some of the art objects and I did a little shopping.

Our last tourist stop for the day was in Corbin, Kentucky to visit the original Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and museum.  It was a trip just to read the old prices for a bucket of fried chicken.  I had not realized that the original cafe was next to Sander's motor lodge and gas station!

As we left Corbin, we spotted a drive-in - the Brown Cow.  Klep pulled in, and before we could get out of the car, the carhop was there to get our orders!  We did not know that there were any such places left on this earth!  Klep got his milkshake; I got my "blizzie" and we headed off to the lodge for the evening happy people!

The Bridges of Fleming County, Yoder's Country Store, and The Red River Gorge:  A Day of Contrasts in Kentucky
I awoke before seven, dressed, and went for my morning walk around the grounds of the lodge, enjoying the views of the treeline along the Licking River shrouded in heavy fog.  By the time Klep was up and enjoying his coffee on the deck, the fog had lifted, leaving us a cool blue morning filled with the sound of birdsong.

On our way to the first covered bridge of the day, we stopped at an Amish store, Yoder's Country Market, just knowing they would have fried pies.  They were all sold out, so we got a couple of sandwiches made with bread baked there, slices of country ham with Swiss cheese and fresh Kentucky tomatoes to have for our picnic. 

The first bridge was Goddard Bridge southeast of Flemingsburg which is a favorite of photographers because from the east, the bridge frames a little church, Goddard United Methodist.  Large pegs are used in this bridge to secure the trusses.  This 60 foot bridge can be driven though to cross Sand Lick Creek.  The date of construction is not known but it was built using an 1820 patent design.  The trusses are a lattice design and this is the only
one like this remaining in Kentucky.

We backtracked to find the road to our next two bridges.  Grange City Covered Bridge is several miles south of Hillsboro.  Eighty-six feet long, the design of this one is "multiple king post truss", a design where the bracing is done with a series of upright timbers all inclined toward the center post.

We drove though rolling hills carpeted with green soy beans to find our last covered bridge of the day, Ringo's Mill Bridge which had the same design as the Grange City.  It was 89 feet long and was named after a grist mill that was located on the creek. Although it is closed to traffic, we could walk through it.  This is where we ate our lunch sitting on a shady bench under a big hickory tree with the sound of cicadas.

Our terrain changed drastically between morning and mid afternoon when we arrived at the Red River Gorge Loop Road that runs through the Red River Gorge, a canyon system on the Red River of east-central Kentucky.  Most of the gorge is inside the Daniel Boone National Forest and it is a National Natural Landmark which gives it protection from development or major change.  It features sandstone cliffs, rock shelters, waterfalls, and natural bridges.  More than 100 natural stone arches are found in the Gorge, worn by nature and time.  Kentucky's Natural Bridge, a state park, is one of the largest in the gorge.

We entered the loop on Kentucky 77 and the views were spectacular even before we got to Nada Tunnel.  The tunnel, built between 1910 and 1912 by loggers, is 900 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 13 feet high.  Needless to say, it is one way.  The driver just has to be sure no one else is in the tunnel when he enters.

We paralleled the Red River for miles through sheer cliffs and massive trees before we came to the Gladie Historical Site where we found a log cabin from the early 1800's and exhibits in the Visitors'  Center.  U.S. Forest Ranger Wetherington (originally from Dublin, Georgia) was extremely helpful, pointing out a road that would take us to a short hike where we could see an arch up close.  He also showed us a short movie that gave some of the history and geological information of the Gorge.  I was amazed at the cross section of a chestnut tree (now all gone from this region due to a disease that came from the Orient by way of New York) that was 187 years old when it died.

After the center, we wound our way to a smaller road that went up to 1100 feet where we walked to the Princess Arch which spans approximately 40 feet.  Our walk took us through a narrow trail with rhododendrons and mountain laurel.  It would be beautiful in the late spring!  We were serenaded with the sound of thunder walking into the site and some of the raindrops got through the tree cover as we walked back.

The loop road continued about three more miles before we left the National Forest.  We found our motel, Lil Abner, checked in, and went in search of food which we found at the Natural Bridge State Resort Park.  The pizza place looked full, Rosie's was closed, and the state park was the other choice!  Fortunately, the state runs a good restaurant!

We have done our planning for tomorrow and feel that we can call it a day!