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!

2015-8-21---on to Knoxville--- 

  Next day we were up early and back on the road for another 400 miles to Knoxville.  I especially love the drive through the Smokey Mountains to Tennessee.

It was another long drive, but a really pretty one.

 Loved seeing all the flowers along the highway, too.

 Our son and daughter-in-law moved to Knoxville in June, so it was nice seeing them again.  We spent 3 nights with them.  It really is a neat little city. 

2015-8-20---on to Edisto---

The next morning we attended the "owner update breakfast" and got a $125 Visa gift card.  Breakfast was pretty sad---instant oatmeal and muffins.  Then loaded up our stuff and took one last look at the ocean from our room  before headed off to St. Louis---via Edisto, South Carolina.

 One of my favorite pastimes while traveling long distances in a car is to take pictures along the way.  So when I saw this interesting bridge in Jacksonville, Florida, I snapped one of it.

 Some 350 miles or so from Daytona we came to this interesting bridge over to Edisto Island.

I managed to get another Presidential unit at the Wyndham King Cotton Resort in Edisto.  This time a 3 bedroom 3 story villa complete with our own elevator.  Possibly the nicest Wyndham resort we've stayed in.
The livingroom area.

 master bedroom complete with boxes of chocolates.

 Assortment of goodies.

 The huge kitchen and diningroom.

 Our elevator to the 3 levels of our unit for when we didn't feel like walking up all the steps.

 After checking out the resort, it was time to check out the beach and then find some dinner. 
One of the many walkways to the beach. 

 We ended up here at Finns for dinner.  Dinner was good and the views were great. 

I had been to Edisto a couple times with Angie when she lived in Atlanta, so I knew there could be some awesome sunsets there.  Tonight's was no exception.