Trip to Jonesborough, Tennessee for National Storytelling Festival

On October 1, we boarded an airplane in Medford (first time out of the Medford Airport - we'll surely do it more often when prices permit) to fly to Knoxville, TN, and thence to the National Storytelling Festival. We flew to San Francisco, then to Chicago, and eventually to Knoxville. Long trip. I got a few pictures on the San Francisco-Chicago leg. This one showing clouds and the shadow of the horizontal stabilizer on the wing of our 777 was the most interesting.

On October 2 we took a little drive into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cades Cove was the most interesting part we saw. There are a number of old buildings in the park, including this house and this cantilever barn.

In the afternoon we went to see my niece Leah and her family in Knoxville. We had a great visit with Randy, Leah, Miriam, and Emily.

The National Storytelling Festival was October 4 to 6 in Jonesborough, TN. Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee, they say. Here is a shot of main street (Amelia at left center). It is a pretty town, and it was all decorated out in Fall decor, as you can see we were happy about. The Festival Headquarters was in this old log building on main street. Something on the order of 12,000 to 15,000 people attended the festival. The storytelling took place in six large tents, this one shown between performances (of course, only official photography was allowed during a performance). There was always something to do between performances . We had a fantastic time with three days of storytelling by some of the masters, such as Bill Lepp, Kathryn Windham, and others too numerous to mention (but see the link above). Near Jonesborough we were tempted by the long manicured lawns, but not too much. As you can see, all is green and pretty in the early fall. Wonder if they have much rain? We actually had only a little - from Lili - while we were there.

On October 7 we had a day to "kill", and after some consideration, decided to first take a look around Elizabethton, where we stayed (too far from the festival, actually). It has a nice downtown, but much is fast food city. They have an old covered bridge that dates from 1882, when it was constructed for $3000 plus $300 for the approaches. An aside: Here is an interesting set of road signs we came upon in our travels. After Elizabethton, we took off for a little tour of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Here is a sequence of shots demonstrating that the Mountains are aptly named.

The next morning our paths crossed with Air Force One (guess who won?), shown here landing at Knoxville Airport while we cooled our heels on the taxiway. We were only slightly delayed. I got a lot of shots on the trip, and of which I offer quite a few. Here is a convoluted river somewhere between Knoxville and Chicago (in Kentucky, I'm guessing). We saw another muddy convoluted river about 1.5 hours out of San Francisco (Nevada, Utah?). About 45 minutes out of San Francisco I saw this open pit mine, surely in Nevada, but not sure where. We came in over the south San Francisco Bay, and saw the evaporation ponds. Finally, some shots from San Francisco to Medford. Just out of the airport we went over Benicia with the mothball fleet in the Suisun Bay. Later we passed to the west of Shasta Lake, showing the shores outlined by the 80 foot drop in water level. The dam is at the lower right part of the picture. Soon after we saw Mount Shasta, almost devoid of snow. Last, we saw Mount McLaughlin as we came in to land.

It was a great trip, and we had a lot of fun.

Richard Franke