Drove on south into Kentucky, where we drove into Lexington and had dinner at a place called Ramsey's Diner. Yum! They had a veggie plate, which thrilled Steve, with things like fried okra, fried green tomatoes and yellow squash with onions. Definitely worth a stop if you ever find yourself there.
We turned in early at about 11 p.m. but still wound up sleeping late Sunday morning. We drove into Knoxville, TN and visited with Steve's nephew Matt and his wife Karen and their two great kids. That was really fun. They have a beautiful garden in their backyard and a beautiful two story home on a cul-de-sac. We were thrilled to see they are so happy and doing well.
From there we decided to drive through Great Smoky Mountain National Park to visit with my cousin Patsy and her daughter Ruth, who have a home in Cherokee, North Carolina. They're putting it up for rent, so if you know anyone ... They surprised us by fixing a great lunch, even though they were hard at work packing things up. It was the best meal of the trip, with roast beef, rice, squash, fried okra and sliced tomatoes. Double yum!!
On the trip over, we saw the weirdest phenomena. There were all of these swallowtail butterflies swarming everywhere. They were sitting in the dirt, flying over the road. It was crazy. There must have been thousands.
We decided to leave Cherokee and go ahead and head for home so we'd be home earlier Monday, but once we got on the road, we wound up driving straight through. We stopped twice at rest areas to nap and arrived home about 10:30 and fell into bed.
Lots to unpack and clean up but overall great to be home. Trip was truly wonderful and we're so blessed everything went so smoothly.
This butterfly is a Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor)
1 comment:
Absolutely loved reading the blog updates!! Glad you made it home safely!
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