An Overdue Visit to Knoxville

The occasion of my 50-year high school reunion gave me a reason to return to Knoxville, Tennessee, the town I grew up in. I hadn't visited since 2012, when my mother passed away, and I hadn't seen the downtown for even longer. 

When we checked into the Crowne Plaza, Joan and I asked for an upper floor to avoid street noise, and they gave us a tenth-floor room with a view to the north, away from downtown.

We shared dinner at the hotel with George and Beth Norris. George was a Young High School buddy and a hydrogen balloon co-conspirator, along with Steve Blazier. Joan and I hadn't seen George and Beth since 1986, when their three sons were small and we were on a bicycle tour. The meal went by very quickly!

We also shared breakfast the next morning, but afterwards George and Beth set off to look up family. Joan and I participated in a Knoxville Walking Tours stroll, this one about historic Knoxville (up to the Civil War). We met our guide, Laura Still, at the Museum of East Tennessee History after passing through the Market Square, which on this Saturday was filled with booths for the Farmer's Market. Here's a photo of the north end of the square the next day, without the market crowds.

Gentle rain drifted through in waves that morning, but not enough to interfere with the walk. Joan and I were the only guests! Even having grown up in Knoxville, most of what I saw and heard was either new to me or long forgotten. The tour began with the graveyard at First Presbyterian Church, including the symbolism of the turnip on the graveyard gate. If you're wondering, let me say that the walk wasn't strenuous. Here you can see Laura and Joan.

Farmer's Market in the background.

This was an excellent activity, and TripAdvisor seems to agree.

Afterwards Joan and I returned to the market and discovered two independent Knoxville-based chocolate makers: Lirio and Unrefined Chocolate. We walked away with four bars from each, and after another circuit of the market, had lunch at the French Market Crêperie.

My savory buckwheat crêpe.

Then we strolled around downtown on our own.

Below is the side of the historic Bijou Theatre. It was a divey place when I was a growing up, but now it's a classy establishment hosting traveling performers.

The view from partway across the Gay Street bridge over the Tennessee River.

Across the way is the Henley Street bridge.

All that new development on the far shore replaced South Baptist Hospital, where I was born. The hospital was demolished in 2014. The Gay Street bridge has an Ohio connection:

The intermittent showers became a deluge as Joan and I walked back towards the hotel.  We stopped at the Art Gallery Market, an artists cooperative, and parked our sopping umbrellas as recommended. With a wide range of artists represented, some works were intriguing, some were cute, and some were mystifying. We also ducked into the Mast General Store and checked out its offerings. The rain diminished as we made our way back to the hotel to prepare for the reunion. (Knoxville is already 12" above normal precipitation for the year!) 

It was a short drive to the get-together. Alumni of both Young and Doyle high schools and their partners began to fill the space, and I was glad for the innovation at check-in: expanded portraits from the 1969 yearbooks glued onto sticks. No more peering at name tags!

Photo credit: Larry Ridinger

Another novelty was separate group photos for each elementary school that had contributed students to Young or Doyle. This image is for my school, Mooreland Heights.

Photo credit: Larry Ridinger

Outside, the rain held off and photos were staged for Young and for Doyle. Here's our Young lineup -- click on the image to enlarge.

Photo credit: Larry Ridinger

I met the people I'd expected to see, and some that I hadn't. The only downsides were that the music was loud, and that there wasn't enough time to enjoy sitting with everyone I would have wished. Still, contacts were renewed.

Joan and I stayed in Knoxville for another day. There were more heavy showers but that didn't dampen the day for us. We visited Rosemary, one of my mother's dear friends, and her husband Clyde. My brother Mark drove "over the mountain" from North Carolina to join us, and we five were together for about six hours, including a 1:00 birthday lunch for Rosemary at O'Connors. That evening, back at the hotel, the landscape began to dry out and we were treated to a peek-a-boo sunset from the the tenth floor.

The next day we drove back to Columbus, but Joan and I will now return to Knoxville more often than every seven years!

A-C-B: On to Purmamarca

On October 24th Carlos, Joan, and I traveled through several climatic zones. The long drive north began by crossing the dam outside Coronel Moldes, where I declined the chance to participate in bungee jumping from the edge of the dam. For some reason I neglected my photo-taking duties today until much later in the drive; my apologies.

We drove around the western edge of the city of Salta, a city of just over half a million people, and continued north on the old tourist road between Salta and Jujuy, a city of about 350,000, rather than the new highway.  In the vicinity of La Caldera, a curious name because there is no volcano in the vicinity, Carlos pulled over for a birding stop. La Caldera is at the bottom of this map:

The trees, still wet from yesterday's rain, would let loose an occasional drop tinted yellow from sap. Two policemen drove by and chatted briefly. Eventually we left -- I have little to report in the birdwatching department -- and the road turned away from the valley and into the heights.

The excursion through the mountains was slow but scenic. The route was well forested due to the moist air from the southeast. Being an old road, the track was narrow; signs warned that the width was no more than 4 meters / 13 feet. Some switchbacks were marked as only 3 meters wide. Fortunately trucks no longer take the picturesque way, just cars and motorcycles. We wiggled and wound, and the road reminded me of the lateral road in Bhutan, except that the pavement was in better shape here. We made a second birding stop, hoping to spot a cuckoo, but no luck today. At the crest of the range was the border between Salta province and Carlos' home province, Jujuy.

As we dropped into the next valley we decided it was lunchtime. At the Dique La Cienaga (see map above) we pulled into a lakeside club, the Club De Pescadores (Fishermen's Club), where I had trout and Joan tried the pacu, a white-fleshed fresh-water fish described by Theodore Roosevelt as "delicious."

From there we continued on to Jujuy city, where we picked up more gasoline and, off the road north of town, made our third and final bird stop of the day.

Again, no photos, but a few colorful toco toucans did fly by, the largest toucan species.

We bore north following the valley of the Rio Grande, gaining altitude. The river's name is due to the width of the riverbed, not the water.

The channel may shift during the wet season.

A closer look ahead.

The terrain slowly lost vegetation as we ascended; the moist southeastern air drops its water as it rises, eventually drying out, and no moisture arrives from the west over the Andes mountains. The average annual precipitation at Purnamarca, today's destination, is 14.3 inches / 364 mm. By comparison, Columbus, Ohio receives on average 38.1 inches / 968 mm, although in 2018 it was 55.2 inches / 1403 mm, a new record.

Along the way we could see the beginnings of the effort to restore the narrow-gauge railway between Jujuy and the Bolivian border. Originally the lifeline of the valley, the railway faded as the automobile took over; demoted to a tourist attraction, the last run was in 1993. The reconstruction began in 2016 but much work needs to be done to accomplish the needed rerouting in spots, and installing rails and signals. Here's a map of the rail network at its maximum in the 1950s.

The green circle is the area of interest. Click on the image to enlarge.

The town of Purmamarca is just off the main north/south highway. Our hotel, La Comarca de Purmamarca, was closer to the far side of town than Carlos expected. We shot by it the first time but located it after turning around.

Our home for the next two nights.