Not Quite Nashville

It’s called the Lane Museum and I had wanted to visit since we were here last year but it was closed. Above their oldest car from 1909 and their newest from 2014 to give you an idea. My buddy Gary and his wife Barbara made sure we didn’t miss it this visit because they are kind friends. 

It wasn’t his first visit so Gary showed me Jeff Lane’s first restoration when the museum owner was a teenager and the resurrected MG was the vehicle he used to qualify for his license. This place is extremely intimate and personal and thus fascinating. 

My youth was on display and I found myself sitting in a Citroen for the first time in decades. Me, my dog Sandy, my Benelli 650 and my Citroen back around 1980:

I don’t want to be a bore but the museum was a walk down memory lane for me, cars from my childhood up to my own last car that I owned before I emigrated, a Fiat X1/9 sports car convertible: 

The museum asks visitors not to touch, except that one varying car, in  my case the Citroen I was sitting in, that is on display for visitors to enjoy by actually sitting in. The other vehicles have their windows open so you can stick your noggin in for an up close look. 

The bubble car was my first car crash when my sister missed a turn and we literally rolled down an English hill, unhurt. Bobby the dog escaped and ran yelping all the way home. The museum says all the cars in the collection, more than 500 are in running order and they antique license plates to prove it. 

Weekends they open the downstairs level where the workshop operates and keeps the vehicles in order. Outside they have a giant amphibious car carrier with the remains of a car they used as a victim of the monster. 

They had a video showing the car getting crushed. Very weird. 

It’s on the outskirts of Nashville and well worth a visit. 

Below the Peel 50 from the Isle of Man so small it has no reverse gear. 

You pick it up by the handle and walk it backwards…

The cats are set far enough sleet they are easily driven onto the streets of Nashville and apparently it is not uncommon for the cats to be seen around town. My kind of museum. 

Dinner was barbecue of course. 

Including Ho Cakes, pancakes made of corn, my first. 

And there we are, away from deserts and mountains, moochdocking outside cities and there we are finding ourselves in green forests. So much variety. 

Gary has a fully equipped workshop and he leant me a hand by cutting down a piece of metal for me. I use the pole to ground faulty Mexican campground plugs and I’ve been hauling around three feet of unnecessary metal. Not anymore. 

We never did get into Nashville proper. But it was fun, all fun just hanging out and getting stuff done. Useful stuff. 

Moochdocking Tennessee

In less than three weeks I hope we will find ourselves crossing the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo on the Columbia bridge into the state of Nuevo León in the United States of Mexico. Right now we are parked in the middle of the Volunteer State about as far from a Mexican state of mind as it’s possible to be.  

Variety is the spice of life right? Well here it is about as various and spiced as it can be. Here today, in a friend’s driveway and there tomorrow, in a Pemex truck stop in the highlands of the Sierra Madre. Golly, I hope we are ready. 

GANNET2 is as ready as possible though Rusty is greatly enjoying Barbara’s sewing room for some peace and quiet.  This morning he saw off a full sized white tailed deer though with much caution as they are twice as large as the Key deer he was used to. 

As usual he refused to pose for a picture so I cursed him for seven generations and then gave him a chicken strip, his favorite treat and not found in Costco Mexico so you can imagine what he thinks of Latin America.

While I was having lunch with Webb in Chicago Layne left rusty at home with her cousin for a couple of hours. Apparently he howled, inconsolable the entire time. So as Layne puts it he likes being in a home but he’d rather be on the road with us. 

I of course enjoyed the drive down the mountains to I-40 towards Knoxville and then west over the Blue Ridge mountains past Asheville and even though the boss decreed we take the freeway and not the Maggie Valley backroads the scenery was still splendid. 

There were quantities of traffic of course in and around the cities as we made our way toward Nashville though we did take pleasure in gaining an hour as we moved back into central time after we passed the Oak Ridge secret government facility handily signposted on the freeway offering tours to the public. That one’s going on my list. 

So here’s a lesson in offering to let us moochdock at your place. 

First: expect a pile of parcels to land at your door before we arrive.  Two: access to hot showers. Three: laundry facilities would help. A trash can and a water hose are nice and if the weather is extreme, access to a household plug would be nice to keep warm or cool if sleeping aboard.  We are happy to sleep in the van if your neighbors won’t start creating. 

You have been warned! We have a moochdock planned in Pensacola, an Airbnb in New Orleans and a campground in Houston on our way west so there is some variety in our next three weeks. Texas has no public lands so wild camping is not possible but they do have a lot of rest stops for travelers. 

I can’t say I miss living in one place and reading of one hundred degree waters in the Keys was not encouraging. I had my eye on St Petersburg as a place to settle down eventually but I’ve had enough of Category Four hurricanes, rapid intensification and non existent winters. That’s a bit too much repetition for me. Fires and drought and flooding and burning hot summers.

We did well this summer traveling at high altitude but our comfort was pretty cold when looking at the country as a whole. I wonder what we’ll see traveling south. 

Walking Celo

I’m not sure if it feels like summer or if it actually is summer at my wife’s sister’s place in the woods outside Asheville. We saw some signs of changing leaves in West Virginia but none here. 

Rusty and I went walking with Geeta and Bob first thing. I apparently have made a name as a walker in the thirty years I have been visiting so off we went.

There are ponds and streams and the Toe River with swimming holes and rapids and spots where Bob can sit up to his chest in invigorating mountain water. 

Celo community has increased the number of families seeking rural peace and quiet during and since the Covid epidemic and this is the sort of place where passersby wave and some children play unsupervised. 

The forest is cool and damp but it’s t-shirt weather in the shadow of Mount Mitchell the highest point east of the Mississippi. 

In Celo incomers have to apply to join the community which in the spirit of the Quaker founders has to reach consensus on the application. Neighbors know neighbors and Geeta is aware of which residents don’t like people walking through their yards. And which don’t mind. 

I have got lost here as the trails look alike and wind for miles through rhododendron forests deep in the middle of nowhere. It used to be cellphone signals didn’t penetrate but now they do and I take my phone if I plan to visit parts not known to me. I can read the map on my phone as well as I used to read paper maps. 

Rusty’s pretty good at finding his way home. His first visit was his first time out of the tropics and he stayed in the house listening to the lifters  crunching and the red leaves falling and he was scared. Now he’s an old hand. 

He doesn’t swim but he likes to rinse off in a fresh water stream from time to time and then take off running through the woods leaving me to pick my way, which I do slowly, stopping to look at the light and the trees and the plants as we go. 

West Asheville

I get sucked into camping spots far too easily. I could have stayed several more days parked next to the north fork of the Cherry River, lost in the middle of West Virginia. 

But we have what I consider a punishing pace of places to go and people to visit as our time in the US is running out. The first of October should find us trundling across Nuevo León state in Mexico if the stars align as we hope. And you can’t go abroad without seeing The Family one more time. So here we are.  

We left near noon and arrived around six and I took one toilet break while the van took one gas stop ($3:60 for regular). Layne made sandwiches in the back for lunch and we pressed on. Rusty laid on his pillow the picture of irritation at being swept away from another excellent grass patch. 

I enjoyed the winding roads, the asphalt track through narrow valleys, and these odd little red sentry boxes along the roads. I forgot my camera was in black and white mode unfortunately but these one person outhouses sat alongside the roads through the valleys. I thought perhaps they are bus stops but whatever they are we never actually saw anyone using them. 

Most of the day was an assortment of four  lane  highways,  including  free interstates, toll interstates and Federal Highway 19 winding awkwardly through valleys, around ridges and under mountains with a couple of tunnels included for good measure.  

I find myself wondering why people keep pushing belief. In the fullness of time we shall all find out what’s next, if anything, and we shall have to cope just as we have to manage right here and now. I find the thought of death invigorating as it pushes me to get things done like driving to Patagonia before I lose the ability. 

Decrepitude is all around, time passes. 

But the mountains abide! And they look good as one approaches the Blue Ridge. 

I-26 to Asheville through the Tennessee countryside up to the summit and the state line. 

And then the moochdock, a driveway, laundry services, hot showers, conversation. 

And a happy dog, that homebody Rusty who Esther be in a house than a van I think.