Vern and Carol's excellent adventure part two - heading east

We left St. Cloud, next stop was Des Moines, Iowa.

Monday the 13^th.  We visited West End Salvage, the site of the TV reality show of the same name. They have 5 floors of architectural salvage, we had a lot of fun snooping around... in the end we walked out with nothing but smiles. On the way out of town we stopped at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden.

Then on to St. Louis. We spent the night with Leigh English and his wife Sheila Mapes in their lovely home. Leigh was my first judo instructor at NDSU. We were just in time so I could join the judo class in Leigh's basement. Monday is the kids class, “little puppies” is I think how Sheila referred to the kids. There were half a dozen adults and a half a dozen spirited kids. It was great being on the mat again with Leigh! And great meeting his students and training with everyone.

After training we got a chance to hang out for a while and visit. After a nice breakfast the following morning we said our goodbyes. It was great seeing both Leigh and Sheila again, it has been many years!!! Too many years!!! They were my sanity at NDSU after I got out of the Army.

On the way out of St. Louis we stopped at the Missouri Botanical Gardens and spent much of the day there. The trees were just budding/blooming, azaleas were at their peak, black and yellow tulips in profusion! This garden is very photogenic, I took about 30 pictures and they all turned out great.  It is a big place, it takes a couple of hours to tour the grounds, more if you really want to check things out. The Japanese Garden is very handsome.

 











Next stop Bowling Green, Kentucky

Wednesday the 15th We arrived at the Corvette museum a bit after 10 am, it had been raining off and on all morning. If you like Corvettes this is a great place to spend a morning. There are 70 to 75 Vettes on display, including the 8 cars that ended up in the bottom of the sinkhole. The sinkhole has been filled in, they were finishing up the concrete the day we were there. The cars from the pit are on display in various states of damage, from relatively minor to almost nothing left – from a car enthusiasts point of view the collapse was a horrible loss as all of the damaged Corvettes were one of a kind vehicles and irreplaceable.

After lunch at the Museum Diner we toured the Chevrolet Corvette manufacturing facility across the street from the Museum. The walking tour started with a short video. We watched as the various sub assemblies were put together, then attached to the frame, watched as engines were mated with the chassis, brakes, wheels, seats... to start up and testing. Even Carol was fascinated with the entire process.

We departed Bowling Green for Mammoth Cave, only about 50 miles away. We stayed on the park grounds in an old hotel, which is run down and we were told in its last year of operation. Once we were settled in our room the rain which had been off and on became steady. I opened the exterior door to the room and settled into a chair with my Kindle for some “reading in the rain.”

After a bit we visited the park restaurant for supper... while it was clean and the service was good the food was not good. We had breakfast there the next morning and they even screwed up bacon and eggs! Don't eat there!

Carol and I took the historical tour of Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in the world at 400 mapped miles, with they think, maybe an additional 600 miles yet unmapped. Bat guano was mined from the cave by slaves during the Civil War to supply manufactures with saltpeter for gun powder. After the war the saltpeter mining was abandoned and the former slaves who worked the mine were converted into tour guides.

Mammoth Cave is pretty much devoid of flow formations, we saw no stalagmites or stalactites on our tour, although we understand that there are a few. Wind Cave and Jewel Cave are much prettier and our favorite is Carlsbad Caverns, if you only tour one cave in your lifetime it should be Carlsbad Caverns!

Friday the 17^th In the morning visited the American Museum of Science and Energy, a museum dedicated to the Manhattan Project, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This is a very data dense facility, it would take the better part of the day to read all the displays.  A fascinating part of our history.

As a kid born in the 1940s our school days were filled with observations and lessons about the nuclear world we lived in. We had “Duck and Cover” drills in school, Bert the Turtle encouraged us to “duck and cover” when we “saw the flash.” The fact that no one would survive a nuclear attack if you saw the flash was denied by the Government and protests pointing out the fact were vigorously quashed. Government sponsored programs encouraged people to get ready for nuclear attack by setting up fallout shelters, our neighbors had a shelter buried in their backyard. We all worried about Khrushchev pushing the button.

Oak Ridge prior to 1942 had a population of just a few thousand people but by 1945 the population was 75,000 and other than the residents few people even knew it existed. Oak Ridge was chosen as the site of the Manhattan Project because of it proximity to roads, railroads, a newly constructed hydro electric dam and the topography; the ridges and valleys would allow for a nuclear disaster without damaging the entire facility and... hide what was going on there. Amazingly only a dozen or so people even knew the purpose of the facility: to extract Uranium 235 from yellow cake. After the bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, only then did the employees learn what they had worked on for 3 years.

original graphite reactor

We took a tour from the American Museum of Science and Energy of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a 3 hour bus tour of the facilities. The tour guide was retired military, had worked at the Lab in his earlier years and at the Pentagon in his later years – he gave an excellent history and explanation of the facility. There was an old guy on the trip, he had worked as a physicist at the Lab during the war, he was showing two of his granddaughters where he worked. We got to see a lot of buildings and hear about the current research effort taking place... it was interesting to me. We also got to see the original graphite reactor that was brought to life during the war.

Although there are great dangers with nuclear energy there can be great rewards and so I support the use of nuclear energy reactors - except that the ones that I support are small, air cooled reactors that are built to be meltdown proof – of course they are less efficient and make less money for investors so there is little investment, except in Europe.

Saturday the 18^th We started our day at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. The day was partly cloudy and free of rain, warm and not so humid so we could leisurely stroll the grounds and look at the trains on display. There were a couple of steam locomotives, a couple of diesel locomotives and an assortment of cars in the yard. I walked around taking pictures while we waited for our 12:05 train to depart. Our consist was 3 passenger cars and a diesel locomotive. We

choose the oldest car with opening windows. The route is only 4 miles with a turn around wye at one end and a round table at the other. When we got to the yard we departed the train, watched the train decouple and spin the locomotive on the turntable. We got to look around the yard. There was a small crew of older guys, guessing retirees, who were maintaining and restoring equipment in the yard. If it were closer I might consider volunteering some time to help out, it looked like fun!

All aboard, next stop is Asheville, NC

 Sunday morning, wipers pushing rain off the windshield, we are on our way to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. From the entrance of the estate to the house proper takes 45 minutes at 20 miles per hour... the place is huge... the azaleas are in bloom and color is everywhere. We elected to have valet parking, it is sure nice to drop off the car next to the front door so we didn't get drenched. The main house was built between 1889 and 1895 by George Vanderbuilt and still remains within the family making it the largest family owned residence in the United States. The house is 178,000 square feet. It is really hard to describe the feeling in the house, it is huge with high ceilings, extensive stone and wood work, fabulous attention to detail, amazing. It really takes one's breath away.  Think about Downton Abbey the TV show and that will get you in the right time frame.  If you are interested I would suggest googling the Biltmore Estates and look at the images.  The picture below is from the Internet. 

We spent the better part of two hours on a self guided tour with one of those audio devices.  Then we toured the gardens, luckily we purchased rain coats at Mammoth Cave so all but our feet stayed dry. The gardens were European style and very beautiful.

The stables, to the right of the house in the picture, have been converted into shops and restaurants... without losing much of the charm of the old stables.  We were seated in a horse stall where there were 3 tables... there had to be seating for a thousand people! The menu has many items that would have been served during the time of the Vanderbuilts, we choose a meal for two consisting of roasted chicken, pulled pork, ribs, cold slaw, pickles, and cheesy grits – we took a doggy bag and got a second meal out of it.

We stopped at the former dairy on the estate, participated in a wine tasting and finally hung our hat at Cedric's Tavern, named for the St. Bernard dog that was the Vanderbuilt's pet.  I had a locally brewed stout that was very good. After the Cedric tap we dropped by the dairy and picked up malteds made with hard ice cream on our way to the car.

The tour is expensive, we paid about $50 each but we both enjoyed ourselves and felt it was money well spent. The food, beer and wine was no more expensive than eating in Fargo.

We arrived in Murrell Inlet, South Carolina on Monday evening, the 20th