Where is Eagle’s nest RV Park in Pigeon Forge?
We arrived in one piece after the drive across the Smoky Mountains. Not a bad drive. None of the 8% grades that I found in the NC foothills.

My family is here, but the main attraction is my sister-in-law’s formal family reunion which culminates on Saturday. They are shacked up in a very nice condo not far from my RV park. There has been a steady stream of her relatives since many of them live in this area. My family is here, not as a reunion, but a TN get-together as a side attraction to the reunion.

The youngest members of my family, two great nephews, are present and assuring that they are the center of attention as only a one year old can. This is my first opportunity to meet one of them.

A trip was made to Clingman’s dome yesterday from a sunny valley to a rainy peak. But that is typical. Yesterday I went to Cades Cove and made the mandatory loop drive.

The rest of the week will be spent visiting family some with a barrel of laughs.

I will be moving in the direction of Nashville from here, but there will probably be some stops before arriving there. I have an offer from Carl in Cookeville, TN, a fellow Barth owner, to spend a night there. Carl has an electric hookup to use. I will at least go by his place, and may spend the night.

Hopefully I can post a couple of pictures next edit.

Today I traveled back to Hiawassee, GA to the Georgia Mountain Fair. The fair was smaller than I expected, but it was very pleasant. The booths were individual mountain cabin style planted in a dense forest of trees to provide much welcomed shade. The weather was nice.

Today the featured attraction was the photography exhibit. I viewed the photographs and as a frustrated photographer came away with a few observations.

Even in this age of instant image gratification by the use of digital cameras, a successful photographer is created with the mind, not the camera.

The best photography is usually closeup shots of nature or kids, and black and white shots of simple patterns and the occasional landscape with a gimick. Somehow the full length candid snapshot of Uncle George and his grand kids never quite wins a prize. And the family never appreciates that photo of an isolated butterfly wing, twisting it all around trying to figure out what it is.

Even so, the judges at this event at least, apparently gave more credence to photographs that had in my judgment been subjected to image manipulation by a computer. I thought many of the non-molested images, whether digital or not, were superior to pictures displaying the obvious adjustments to color intensity, not so subtle effects previously created by ‘burning in’ focal point portions during printing and automated contrast adjustments. I know, some people claim that ‘vinyl’ recordings sound better than CDs and old style tube amplifiers sound better than their semiconductor counterparts. Just, maybe they do.

Having said that, I now must admit that my mind fails miserably when it comes to photography because I gallantly and proudly placed my camera in my pocket before this trip, sans the flash memory card. It seems that I was reluctant to remove it from the computer the day before because of it’s unfailing action of crashing my computer. So those old tractors, those old 1914 single cylinder engines with the external crankshaft, and that ‘hit and miss’ engine that was cranking the old fashioned bucket style ice cream freezer will have to be an image only in my mind forever. I guess I will have to abide by an opinion offered by a not so wise person in my past: perhaps I do not succeed in taking photographs because I have them firmly and irretrievably embedded in my brain, and therefore do not need them.

The balance of the day was most enjoyable. After being visited by Ray and Ann, who reside two mountain passes to the west in Murphy, NC earlier this week, I visited them this evening. Ray is also a Barth owner, a new owner I should say, and we exchanged visits in order to swap Barth epiphanies.

Ray’s gracious and beautiful wife Ann invited me to stay for dinner, and served up a country style meal that my Mom would have been proud of. I hope she was serious when she made the offer; if not she should know better than offer a grouchy old bachelor a home cooked meal! Too bad I could not get a photo of them with his Barth. Ann sent me home with a few ears of locally grown corn and several homemade brownies.

All things said and done, at the end of the day, after the fat lady has sung, a very enjoyable day was had.

I was installing some additional lights on Barth’s bumpers this afternoon and discovered that I needed four washers. Off to Lowe’s I went, to find that JJ would not turn over when I tried to leave. I begged a jump from guy #1, using my jumper cables. Since it would not turn over, I guessed that his battery was too small.

Guy #2, parked in front of me in a large diesel pickup came from the store, so I begged a jump from him. Still nothing.

Guy #1 then got his cables, which immediately worked. The conclusion: I had a bad battery and defective cables.

So while it was running, off to Wally’s I went, purchasing a new battery and new cables. I left the engine running while I was in the store.

When I returned I found that some good samaritan had shut off the engine. So guy #3, parked directly in front of me, soon approached from the store. I begged a jump from him, using my brand new cables.

Then I returned to Barth where all my tools were located to replace the battery. That is when I found that the culprit was really a broken battery cable clamp. The cable had been replaced in Sierra Vista. So I placed a vise grip plier around the remaining clamp part to hold it onto the battery and proceeded to buy a new battery cable end.

Upon replacing the cable end I found that the old battery is fine. So off to Wally’s tomorrow to return a battery.

Those four washers occupied about 3 hours of my time and necessitated solicitation of three good samaritans. It is a good thing that the good folks in Franklin are nice friendly folks.

A few pictures have been posted today, playing catchup. So there may be overload for one day.

I have not been taking many as I could not load them onto my computer, I forgot the camera, and, well, I was plain lazy! But I will attempt to be more diligent in the rest of the Odyssey.

My computer is still not fixed, and is misbehaving in more new ways. But at least I have the old gal crashing when I remove the Compact Flash card instead of when I insert it. I guess I caould consider that as normal, since it has been doing that for about a year, toward the end of Odyssey II.

I may (or not) post a few more random shots, but quite frankly I have very few more.

Annie got a new do at Clayton while camped at Moccasin Creek State Park.

A couple of shots of the Moccasin Creek State Park scenes.

Barth keeps an eye on any happenings on the path.