--The Wisconsin Chat-- (Madison, Portage, Rib Mountain: rental, campground, cabins) - (WI) - Page 19 - City-Data Forum

JoshB · 10-25-2008, 06:32 PM

Just letting y'all know that I'm in Bristol. Arrived around 2 eastern time today. I've already checked out some mountains at a Tennessee Valley Authority Dam. Nice area, the south is quite a different experience. The fall colors are around peak here.

I will be posting some pictures on the Tennessee picture thread today or tomorrow. I will post a link here when I post them.

JoshB · 10-25-2008, 08:08 PM

Here is the link to the Tennessee Pictures
My first day here in NE Tennessee.

Here is a few of Kentucky
Rural KY photo "sticky"

JoshB · 10-26-2008, 10:12 PM

My second day in paradise. I hiked 15 miles today or I should say Sunday.

My second day here in NE Tennessee

JoshB · 10-30-2008, 09:54 PM

Well just thought I'd let y'all know I made it back late last night. I drove roughly 830 miles in 14 hours. I can't complain!

hankejp · 10-31-2008, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoshB

Well just thought I'd let y'all know I made it back late last night. I drove roughly 830 miles in 14 hours. I can't complain!

Ugh, that's a long drive. I have a hard time driving 3 without my arase getting sore.

susancruzs · 10-31-2008, 08:12 AM

Ugh, from me, too! I remember driving straight from Gatlinburg to Waukegan in my younger days would never attempt it now. Five or six hours is my limit, I think!

Welcome back and let us know how it was, everything you expected?

JoshB · 10-31-2008, 10:24 AM

Susan, I will have a report of the areas I visited. I let you know what I thought.

UW Badgers · 10-31-2008, 11:49 AM

Just had to let out that we are coming HOME for a visit tomorrow and WE CAN'T WAIT! We haven't been back to Wisconsin since June. We will be in the Milwaukee area(where we come from)for 5 days. Might shoot up to Oshkosh/Appleton to visit friends if time allows. 5 days just isn't long enough,

we want it to be permanant!

Josh glad you made it back safe. We used to drive straight through to Vegas when we lived in Wisconsin. It took about 26 or so hours, but we loved it. Now living in Iowa, 4 hours would be cut from the drive, however we fly now.

JoshB · 10-31-2008, 12:10 PM

Glad your coming back to visit Badgers! It's supposed to be nice the next few days! Wow, 26 hours. That would be tough. If I had another person with me I may have been able to do it. Since I was alone 14 hours was about all I could handle.lol

Have a great and safe trip up here!

wilywilly · 11-05-2008, 04:41 PM

Just for the hell of it I thought that I'd Google Paddock Lake where I spent several memorable summers as a youth. Lo and behold there are others who are interested in Paddock Lake as well.
My folks had a small cottage shell built on a small lot on the north shore of the lake in 1955. We lived a mile west of Midway Airport in Chicago and we would drive up to Paddock Lake every week-end. My dad was very much the handyman (anyone remember Walt's Workshop on TV?) so every weekend was a working one. We insulated, sheet-rocked, paved and painted for many months. Finally, summer came and we could enjoy the place. We fished, swam and boated blissfully. In winter we ice-fished and ice skated and kept warm by the fire. When Sunday night came we hated to leave. It was 67 miles door to door and it took two hours of dreadful city, then country driving to get there. In 1957 my baby sister was born and things started to change. We spent fewer weekends going to the cottage. I started high school and academic pressures meant that I spent less time at the lake. Finally, in 1958 my folks sold the house in Chicago and we moved to the San
Fernando Valley in L.A. The cottage was sold a few years later and all the great weekend fun was now, sadly, a memory.
I returned to check out the place once in 1969. Again in 1988 and once in 2002 I stopped by while on a visit to Chicago. Except for the large number of newer places on the eastern shore, it still seems much the same as it was when I left. But, as they say, you can't go home again.
My folks, in their later years, tried to, I guess, re-create the Paddock Lake experience. They bought another week-end place at Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California before my dad retired. But that place proved to be too costly and, although it was ok, it wasn't quite the same. After a couple of years they sold it and stopped going away on weekends. In 1999 my mom died. My dad, all alone, decided to move to Alaska with my baby sister's family in Juneau. There he designed and built an apartment above their detached garage and lived for 5 more years untill he died.