Day 2 - Bear Knob, TN to Wytheville, VA

Saturday, May 02, 2015
Wytheville, Virginia, United States
After an excellent pancake breakfast at Susie's Kitchen, we headed out about 9:30. Susie lead us back down the mountain.  

We drove through Knoxville, and crossed the border at Bristol where we stopped at the Virginia welcome center and grabbed every brochure that looked interesting. Most of you know that I plan our trips sort of on the fly. You know, Tennessee is a big state!! Especially when you drive from the southwest corner to the northeast corner!!!

Our first tourist stop was Abingdon, VA. It's a neat little Appalachian town with lots of historic buildings. We walked up and down the main drag and saw some really neat buildings. According to the guide book, if Daniel Boone had had his way, this place would have been called Wolf Hills. (Our camera settings were messed up which made everything blue.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 










 










 





 
























 


 
 
 
We came across this guy - James E. Turner - who was selling paintings on the street. We ended up buying a little painting, and on the back is his story. "I am a paranoid schizophenic. My paintings are of hallucinations when I am quite ill. The paintings are spheres within spheres, wheels within wheels, circles within circles. As an artist all my life I have the challenge of caturing these dramatic three dimensional images. ... I am doing very well now despite my disability and have a regular life, using much of my time painting." After Armando read his story, he asked the guy if his story had been in the newspaper because Armando remembered reading something like that a few months ago. He said yes, there was a big story in January. The painting I bought is little bit bigger than a postcard. It's all acrylic and has some metalic paint that shimmers in the light. The picture is a lot prettier than it looks in this photo.
 
 
 




















 
We also went into The Arts Depot - an old depot turned into artists' studios and a gallery. We met several artists and watched them work. The one who intrigued me the most was weaving tapetries. She had some beautiful ones and some were 3D. You can go to www.abingdonartsdepot.org and see the various artists. The weaver is Nancy Garretson and the second work pictured was my favorite - a waterfall spilling right out of the fibers!

We decided to drive a little more until we got sick of driving (well until Armando got sick of driving), so a little after 4:00 we stopped in Wytheville, VA for the night. It's tucked in the mountains too, and here's a picture of our view of the pretty mountains, but the buildings and the billboards kinda mess up the view. Susie's and Bob's view was way better!!
 
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Comments

Etta
2015-05-11

Abington sounds like a great place to visit. I like those small towns with something special to offer.

2025-02-08

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