Where are we?

Over the past two days, we’ve been in three different states and cities, so I’ve had to remind myself continuously where the heck I am.

Asheville packed a lot of fun into a few days. Right down the tracks from where we were parked, the Wedge gallery and micro-brewery served up $10 pitchers of a beer that Seth will actually drink (that means it’s really good). We also made some new friends and revived some old friendships: thanks to Stacey and Lee for taking us to the falls, and thanks to Justin for the great dinner and company!

So we left Asheville yesterday afternoon where the day before Seth and Bob painted murals in the mural garden, a local wall dedicated to harrassment free expression, we were told by the folks at Flood. From the looks of it, few mural painters grace the mural garden. The walls were completely covered with tags, though, and several by a tagger called Doink.

The only rule at the mural garden is to completely cover another person’s work, taking care not to leave anything half-covered. The garden was close by, so the guys schlepped some paint cans down the railroad tracks to the wall. A tagger called Doink had a few things up. Seth painted this over his tag:

Behind this wall are some shorter silos on which Bob painted a tractor emiting a cloud of nasty smoke whose nastiness comes from several tags showing through a light coat of gesso and white paint, but I don’t have any pictures of his, so he’ll have to add a picture HERE:

Flood had a great library where I found an illustrated version of the Bible by world-class painter, Thomas Kinkade. I just wanted to share this.

Here’s a little sampling from the inside. I’m not sure how his imagery relates to the content.

We got the bus cranked and probably spent thirty minutes tuning our CB radio: thumping it, testing channels, figuring out (or not really figuring out) what SWR, USB, LSB, SSB, talkback, af gain, rf gain, roger beeps, dimmer, squelch, and 10 codes are all about. Finally we hit the road and got a little CB action. There was some work on I-40 and a trucker was telling another trucker that he better “geeit on over when they says merge, don’t be scaird now!”

It wasn’t but a couple of hours and we found ourselves in the rapidly dwindling mountains of Knoxville, Tennessee. We made a quick stop to see the folks at Yeehaw Industries who run one of few letter press shops in the country. They use mostly post-consumer papers and cardstocks, which is just one reason why you should buy stuff from them. Another reason is that they make really cool stuff, so check them out.

After leaving Yeehaw, we found ourselves at a crossroads: head to Nashville or head north to Kentucky. While we all want to go to Nashville, Dawn and Seth did some research on temperatures around the country, and we were figuring the westerly route might bring us into hotter climates, so we’re heading north for the Great Lakes, Canada and…oh yes…Alaska.

But first a stop off in Lexington, Kentucky and then Cincinnati, Ohio. Today we met up with friends Brian and Blakely who treated us to an afternoon in the Raven’s Run nature preserve. We hiked out to an overlook of the Kentucky River.

Tomorrow might bring a visit to the Wild Turkey distillery, which offers free tours. What would a visit to Kentucky be without taste-testing some whiskey? Until next time…Jamie