Hunkering Down Update & Graham County NC

As the Yoshino Cherry blossoms fade, the Kwanzan's are in full bloom and Romeo loves to help me mow.

We have now completed our first 10 days of staying put and we are only interfacing regularly with our close neighbors but we have had two carefully controlled visitors from the outside.  We are getting some things done around the place including fertilizing the lawn and planting some new grass.  According to the reaction of my new hip muscles, I overdid it one day pushing the lawn spreader around, but I was happy to be able to do it – obviously continued home therapy is in order.

As you can tell from my recent posts, we have been eating well and can continue to do so for many more weeks so we’re okay with the new federal guidelines to stay put another month even though we will run out of some things.  A recent meal, enjoyed on the patio, of grilled salmon and steak for SIL, Pat (not a salmon eater) along with fresh hot homemade bread.

Several of you have posted shots of your well organized pantries and that will be one of my upcoming projects.

Our local county now has 8 reported Covid-19 cases and the nearest counties to our house have 28 & 8 cases respectively while the further away but still adjacent Knox County has 78 cases.

Serious About Containing Covid-19
One of the North Carolina counties just across the border from us has gotten very serious about controlling the spread of the virus in their county.  Graham county with a population of around 9000 and no hospital has implemented strict control of movement in and out of the county and, so far, has no reported cases of Covid-19.  It will be interesting to see how this works for them to see if this was the way the whole county should have behaved.

“According to a press release sent on March 21, the following highways will be closed or have restricted access in order to control traffic into Graham County:

Cherohala Skyway is closed to all traffic.

Highways US 129 and NC 28 at Deals Gap will be restricted to local resident traffic and commercial traffic.

US 129 at Topton will be restricted to pass through detour traffic and local resident traffic only. Once the US 74 detour is ended then US 129 will be restricted to local traffic and commercial traffic only.

NC Highway 28 going east from Stecoah will be restricted to local and detour traffic only and commercial traffic. Once the detour is ended NC 28 will be restricted to local and commercial traffic only.”

We hope you are making it fine through this very difficult time for America and I’m so glad we don’t live in a large city.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

4/2/20 event date

Almost Heaven South & Mobile Photos

Kathy and her three daughters are here from Texas for their annual visit and she decided to take some photos to show her friends back home where she goes every year, so I decided to put them on here as well.

This first shot is while she is laying in bed in the downstairs sun room which is the bottom left of the second shot.

Than she walked around the yard and got some of the house and plant life.

She went up on the neighbors hill and shot this one of the whole place then the second one through the trees at the road.

One of the things she wanted the Texans to see was what real trees look like - of course the folks from California Redwood Country might say the same thing about ours.

This shot is of the Mobile Almost Heaven South - it's being prepped for our upcoming trip.  So far it has gotten a power surge protector, an upgraded fan in the bathroom and several little odds and ends items fixed on the coach and the front end was aligned.  What remains is having the chassis and generator serviced this week then start packing up.

As you can see by the tracks in the rocks, the driveway is not quite wide enough.

And finally, she got this shot of our cove and wished she had a ski boat to tackle the glassy water.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

6/28/15 event date

Thanks For Asking

A couple of folks have asked if all is well with us since I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks and the answer is yes.  We just haven’t done or eaten anything interesting enough to post about and I’ve not been inspired to go find something.  So we’re just hanging around Almost Heaven South and Bev is getting ready for the annual trip to Sint Maarten with her sister.  Thanks blogger friends for checking in on us.

Larry

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

We normally only include our annual newsletter with our Christmas Cards, but this year it's pretty short so I decided to post it here as well.

Holiday greetings to our family and friends, we hope you’ve had a great year and here’s a little info about ours.  Things continue to plug along here at the ranch and we’ve had no especially big events since our last newsletter, which we believe is a good thing.

We used the motorhome to spend our first ever wintertime away from home as we stayed in Florida for six weeks in early 2014.  We were originally planning to stay for only a month, but every time we got ready to come home, it snowed here.  We enjoyed this experience as well as the three weeks we spent in Charleston, SC in May, where we also hosted a week long RV rally for our club.  On the way home we experienced an engine failure that, after a tow to Knoxville behind one of those giant wreckers and six weeks in the shop, resulted in a nearly new engine being installed to the tune of $21,000, all covered by warranty, thank goodness.

The coach spent the rest of the year parked for a couple of reasons – we had too much to do over the summer months and Madison decided to go back to regular school (from on-line) which tied us to the school breaks beginning in mid-August.  We now have a Madison/house sitter that will give us more flexibility so we’re planning another winter trip.  An additional reason for not traveling might be Larry's fear of heading out on the road and experiencing another calamity, as we’ve had more than our fair share.

There have been a couple of changes with our kids beginning with Rhett retiring from the army after 23 years and taking a job with a bearing manufacturer in Sumter, SC.  The other change is the move of Eric and Ann to Napierville, IL where Eric is the new chaplain at North Central College and Ann can continue at her same job but work from home.  All of the grandkids are growing like weeds and doing well in school and other activities.  Madison’s move back to regular school is so-far-so-good as she is making new friends and doing well academically.

After another year of trying to survive living with a teenaged girl, I will repeat this from last year - now I remember why young folks raise kids.

We continue to be blessed with decent health and the ability to do many of the things we enjoy, although Larry’s knees continue to give him problems and he keeps putting off doing something about them – replacement required, pain involved, procrastination likely.

That’s all to report from Almost Heaven South and our wish for you is a Very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year. 

Beverly & Larry Doolittle

A Cabin In The Mountains – Final Day - Model RR

We awoke Sunday morning to a cold rainy day, instead of the snow I was hoping for but we had a good plan for part of the day.  We waited until late morning to eat and headed over to LaCosta MexicanRestaurant for lunch.  They are rated well on the web and it’s obvious the place is popular as it soon filled up with the after church crowd.  It’s located in a strip mall and decorated very tastefully.

Bev ordered one of the usual combo meals and I had a craving for fajita’s but we started with the normal chips and salsa and a very good margarita.

This is shot of my fajita plate and the lighting made the steak look like chicken – I also had another plate with rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole, and salad.

We both thought our meals were very good and the service was excellent – we would definitely go there again.  With the two retirement/tourist communites, the state park, and other tourist draws, Crossville seems to have many more restaurants than most towns it's size.

After eating, we headed over to the Crossville Outlet Mall where Bev shopped a little and I visited the Crossville Model Railroad Club’s display located in the same building.  As a child in the 50’s who grew up with toy trains with a best friend who's father was a RR engineer, I became a model railroader and railfan in general.  I was very impressed with what this 50 member club had accomplished.  

They had a layout in each of the Z, N, HO, O, and G scales.  This is a shot (from the web) of the various sizes.  From the left, they are Z, N, HO, S (American Flyer), O (Lionel) and G scale (gauge).  O scale at 1:22 of real life and ten times larger than Z scale at 1:220 of real life.  You train enthusiasts will recognize the paint scheme as the Santa Fe Railroad's War Bonnet.

Of the clubs five layouts, the HO one is very large and the following shots are of it.  The first one is the total four section layout and the next two are of section two and three.  The layout is computer controlled to the point that they can run the trains with their cell phones. 

These are some shots of the sections I thought were interesting.

I gave all of my model RR stuff to my grandson last year in hopes that he and his dad might take up the hobby – hint, hint.

We once again ate our lunch leftovers for supper and decided with the yucky weather and uncomfortable bed and couch in the cabin, we would cut our stay a day short and head back down into the valley.  While the rustic cabin was pretty much what I was expected, I was disappointed in the condition of the furnishings and the general cleanliness of it.  While I might give one of their more modern cabins a try, I would not recommend the rustic ones at Cumberland Mountain State Park.

However, it was nice to get away with just my honey and the little trip did help de-stress us some.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

11/16/14 event date

Leftovers Breakfast - Garage - A Senior Moment

BREAKFAST
Perhaps the best part of our Wine Club party food was a bunch of the practice biscuits still in the freezer and gravy left over from the party to which we added a couple of scrambled eggs, and picked-that-morning tomatoes with cottage cheese.  I'm pretty sure tomato and cottage cheese did not originate locally, but it still seemed like a delicious southern breakfast to me.

GARAGE
I've been on somewhat of a mission to clean up this dump and get rid of stuff we don't need.  Usually that means starting in the most downstream location and working backwards so I began in the upstairs garage.  I'm not sure if I'll get the house done in my lifetime, but for the first time in a few years, both cars are in the garage.  The garage is still a work in progress.

SENIOR MOMENT
I hate to tell this on myself but it was just too funny to pass up.  I got up at my normal time and busied myself doing the normal morning activities eventually in anticipation of the noon broadcast of the UT-Florida football game.  Finally the appointed time rolled around, I went over to the SEC Network and found a show about coaches wives to be on, so I assumed the guide/programming was not updating as Bev had mentioned the other day or the game was on the alternate channel.  

When it wasn't either place or any of the local channels, I decided an urgent call to Direct TV was in order.  After a few minute wait, I explained my problem to the nice young lady who answered and she said the game was supposed to be on the regular SEC Network channel but the guide was showing a different show - to which I said "that is the problem I'm having."  After a little more conversation, she said she would put me on hold and see what she could find out.  She came back shortly to assure me the game would be on the normal SEC channel on Saturday to which I replied err, ugh, I thought it was Saturday.

In spite of driving Madison to school just 4 hours earlier and watching the normal weekday shows on TV, at some point during the morning my brain decided it was Saturday.  After my profuse apologies for wasting her time she said not to worry as she thought it was Thursday.  I guess it could have been worse, at least I knew it was October.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/30/14 meal date