2015-8-22---Knoxville 

  They took us to Tupelo Honey Cafe for breakfast the next day.  Here Faith's enjoying a Bloody Mary while I enjoyed a Mimosa.  Our meals were excellent, too! 

 The mall downtown turns into a marketplace on Sat.s, so we wandered around the mall a bit.

 Some of the many local items.

 There are even performers there.

 Tim and Faith heading down the marketplace with the Federal courthouse Tim works at in the distance.

 Tomato jam!

 A look back at Tupelo Honey Cafe on our way back through the "mall".

 The World's Fair was held in Knoxville in 1982 so we walked to the area where most of it took place.  The Sunsphere was the symbol of the fair.  After the fair, it closed to the public.  It was used for short periods of time until 2005 when it was scheduled for renovation.  The 4th level is the observation floor, 5th level is a restaurant, and other levels are businesses.  Best of all, it's free!

 View towards downtown from the observation floor.

From there we walked towards the Worlds Fair park passing another water feature along the way.

 and a Chocolate store, but for $15/lb, I passed on buying any.

 Another city sign.

Now it was time to find a little nature.  So many parks to check out around Knoxville!!!  This time we went to Ijams Park and hiked around a bit.  

 even saw some snakes

 love all the wild flowers growing throughout the park

 down to the Tennessee River.

 House with quite a view.

 more wild flowers

 walkway along the river

male eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly

female eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly missing part of it's tail.

hoping to someday be a butterfly, but these fall webworms will end up as moths.  I believe the big webs we saw all over the trees along the highway were webs caused by colonies of webworms.

Back at Tim and Faith's place, I even saw more colorful wildlife in their back yard.  They even have hummingbirds, but I never was able get a good picture of any of them.

 That night we headed back to Gatlinburg to dinner at a brewery on our way up to Clingman's Dome for sunset.  Had a good laugh at this mobile home!

 Dinner was great, as was the company.

 Sunset, though, was not so great.  It clouded over by the time we got up there.

 Coming back down we did see this bear, but I had my settings all wrong on my camera.  He didn't stick around for me to correct them.

 Back in Gatlinburg we got a kick out of this boat/car.

It was a funfilled day!