Day Two, June 30

Chris Alston wins the t-shirt with his answer of a calf weaner. Some people may cry foul - he's married to a vet, but I say he wins. The quiz question for the day: what is the crop Jimmy is looking at?

By 10:00 a.m. we were in Lexington, Kentucky - home of famous horses and horse farms. One of the famous horses is immortalized with street names and such - you'll see a photo. While in Lexington we played 18 holes of Mini Bible Golf. They have three courses - Old Testament, New Testament, and Miracles. We played the Old Testament course - total score of Pee Wee and Danny vs. Jimmy and me. They should have played the Miracle course because Danny and Pee Wee would have needed one to beat us. But they did beat us on table hockey afterwards.
Then we kind of floundered in our travels. We tried Ashland and the Henry Clay Estate - closed on Mondays. Then to the Daniel Boone Station historic site. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Then lunch in Lexington where Pee Wee lost his keys (Danny found them in the restaurant after about 20 minutes of searching).
But finally we struck it rich at the Cane Ridge Meeting House. The famous preacher Barton Stone founded the church in the late 1790s - it branched off a few times to the Christian Church and then the Church of Christ. The meeting house was famous for the Cane Ridge Revival in 1801 where close to 20,000 Kentuckians attended which served as a springboard for the Christian church.
Betty was our tour guide - a lovely lady in her eighties who loves this blue grass area of Kentucky.
Betty made one mistake though - she left the four of us alone in the old church. Pee Wee led us in a fire and brimstone sermon and then we lifted the rafters with our rendition of Amazing Grace.
After the Cane Ridge House we tried the Blue Licks, Kentucky battlefield - one of the states last conflicts with Indians ... closed on Mondays. Then we split up - Pee Wee and Danny wanted to visit Cincinnati and Jimmy and I wanted to stay away from big cities and experience more of this region's back roads. And we're glad we did - we saw some beautiful Ohio countryside. We're spending the night in Lancaster, Ohio while those two are in Cincinnati. We plan to meet sometime tomorrow - possibly in Canton, OH at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
My buddy Dan Lukacs said we have to eat at a Big Boy Restaurant while in Ohio, so we complied. The Baymont Inn manager where we're staying suggested a milk shake for dessert - she said she loves them. So after our meal we surprised her with a chocolate shake and two good deed doers cards. Her face lit up - she's a very nice lady with a kind face and a great smile that got bigger and bigger. We asked her to use the second card to do a good deed of her own - I bet she does. Earlier we had given a very hot construction worker a water bottle - you can see Jimmy leaning out the window to hand it to him.
Danny called me from Cincinnati tonight with a good deed by Pee Wee. They were waiting outside a restaurant near some girls and of course Pee Wee struck up a conversation. The girl had started on her degree in education but is going through a down period in her life. Pee Wee spent over 30 minutes talking with her, counseling her and encouraging her, and now she actually has a better outlook.
So three good deeds today on a day that fell short of yesterday's experiences.
At least I can go to sleep with an off key performance of Amazing Grace ringing in my ears. Oh, and take a look at the town name we came across in rural southern Ohio - try not to hurt yourself when saying it.

Day One - Sunday, June 29

Our plan was to go our separate ways when hitting the Tennessee border but we were having so much fun that we ended up following each other and staying together all day. We'll see about future days later - maybe we'll split up, maybe we won't - it's great to have no real plans for these trips.
Our first stop was in Oak Ridge, Tennessee - not to see the famous "Boys" but to visit the Museum of Science and Energy where the Manhattan Project took place. (You'll see a picture from the sign in registry from 1963 - see if you see a familiar name). This is where all the plutonium and U-235 isotopes were worked on in the "Secret City" to make the Atomic Bomb that ended WWII.
We enjoyed the history of the place, but we felt much dumber upon leaving after viewing way too many exhibits with way too many seven or eight syllable scientific terms. Our favorite parts were the hands on kids activities, at least until we realized we were struggling to decipher them as well.
Our next stop was the Lenoir Museum near Norris Dam not too far from Oak Ridge. We also made the drive to Norris Dam for some Dam pictures. This dam was made in the 1930s and brought electricity to what was at that time a very primitive part of our country. Before our Dam trip we had our highlight of the day at the Lenoir Museum.
The small museum has hundreds of artifacts from Appalachia. One of them is in a photo - the first person who can tell me what it was used for will receive a t-shirt from one of the places we visit over the next week. But the highlight was the Blue Grass concert going on in the building the entire time we were there. Every Sunday "pickers" show up and play their banjos and guitars and play and sing the most country blue grass music you'll ever hear. We even heard "Chicken Man." He's a skinny old guy with a distinctive voice ranging from base to falsetto. He's been on the Jay Leno show a couple of times and won a national blue grass singers contest. His trademark song I tried to attach to this blog - I'm not great at this so I'm not sure if you'll see it. I hope it works because it's bizarre. I asked him if I could buy a CD from him and he walked with me out to his car where I bought his last one. I'll leave it in the car for GiGi - she'll love it.
We left Chicken Man and ended up in Corbin, Kentucky, where we ate at the first ever Colonel Sanders KFC. There's a little museum as part of the restaurant. It's amazing the places you bump into if you just start wandering.

 

We're spending our first night here - a good day of exploring has ended that also produced three good deeds. First - at an exit somewhere in Tennessee we saw a man holding a sign at the end of the exit ramp. It said he had just gotten out of a VA hospital and was trying to come up with rent money for his family. After a decent donation from the Good Deed Doers as well as a sandwich, we hope his outlook is a little brighter. Then at the viewing area at Norris Dam, we saw a landscape area that was riddled with weeds. But not anymore - we good deeders got rid of the Dam weeds. Then while I've been writing this blog at 9:00 p.m. my three buddies went to the Walmart and K Mart parking lots and helped the cart guys with what they say were over 100 shopping carts. I say they exaggerate, they say no. Still a good deed, exaggeration or not.

So Day one is over - I swear I see some green and yellow in Pee Wee's beard and Jimmy Football's hair, and Danny's ears seem to be growing. Maybe the trip to the Oak Ridge nuclear facility wasn't a good idea after all.

 

 

 

 

Trip #6 - Travels with Pee Wee and ...

We're leaving tomorrow morning, June 29 on our 6th random journey to parts unknown in our country. But this year it's not just Pee Wee and me. Our friend Adam Pitt has been dealing with brain cancer, and after he asked if he could come and then we included him, we thought it might be good to add others. So we invited Jimmy Chupp - a longtime football coach at GAC, Danny Sinnott - the new head wrestling coach at my old stomping grounds - Collins Hill, and Rich Schumacher - one of my former assistants who is now the head wrestling coach at Meadowcreek. All three were gung ho about coming, so we thought we would be going in two cars of three, but due to some last minute health issues, it will be two cars of two. Adam isn't able to come due to treatment he's undergoing, and Schu (Rich) is in the hospital recovering from complications related to diabetes. We'll miss those two and will continue to pray for their recoveries.

We plan to leave from Atlanta and head north in two cars. Danny will start with me and Jimmy will ride with Pee Wee. We will go our separate random ways and then rendezvous every two or three days, compare videos of places seen, people met, and good deeds carried out. Then we'll switch the people around so that Pee Wee's odors won't cause bad side effects. We haven't toured areas like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and parts of Pennsylvannia, Indiana, and Illinois, so we might wander in those directions.

The trip is once again a fundraiser for a very worthy ministry in Lawrenceville that helps people in need with emergency food, medicine, and utility assistance. Anyone who would like to donate any dollar amount per good deed we carry out (we have a goal of three per day), please send a check to:

Lawrenceville Cooperative Ministry, Inc.

176 Church Street

Lawrenceville, GA 30046

 

Even if you can't donate, please follow our blog and post some comments. We like comments. Time for bed - day 1 of season #6 starts at 7:00 a.m.