Tennessee Vacation – Big South Fork

After Memphis, we hit the road and travel to Jamestown, Tennessee, where we stayed at the Wildwood Lodge, which was a bed and breakfast just right outside of the actual state park, Big South Fork. First things first, Clare and Julia were wonderful hosts. They were the kind of hosts that you dream about having. Without question, Sweet Sweet and I thought they were absolutely wonderful and made our stay memorable.

Back to the trip, we were pretty hungry and after driving for a while, we realize that we’re not going to be close to any restaurant, so we ask the ladies for a good place to eat. They recommend a restaurant called Bacara’s, and after a U-turn, we find the place, and we’re notified that it’s going to be a lot of food and the price is $9.00 per person. Sweet Sweet and I are fine with this, site unseen. Holy smokes, we had no idea what we were in for.

This was the first course, which consisted of fresh fruits, cream cheese and a cinnamon-peanut butter bread that was incredible:

Next up was Sweet Sweet looking pretty hungry:

Up next, was a garden fresh salad (I almost forgot to take a picture of the food):

Then we had an onion soup. Delicious:

Now we’re actually to the main course, which included the following: two large slices of prime rib, two chicken breasts, baked beans, scrambled eggs, a savory pancake, fish, rice and fresh vegetables:

Finally, we had desert, which was some sort of pastry with cream and a chocolate sauce:

Here’s the only bad thing about the meal, it took us 3 hours to eat, and that’s not an exaggeration. We had time to do a couple of small hikes. The first took us to a vista (the actual hike was 100 yards) overlooking the river, and yes, I forgot I was shooting in black and white:

Sweet Sweet:

Me:

Next, we took a hike to what was supposed to be a falls area along the river, but there were no such falls, but there were some nice photos:

Sweet Sweet is a little disappointed at the lack of falls (I was too), but we did get to work off some of our lunch:

Sweet Sweet and Me:

Sweet Sweet suggested that I get across the limb for a picture and this is me telling her to go fly a kite:

We then head back to our our lodging to check in and shower-up. First, we were introduced to another huge meal, which began with strawberry mint-juleps. Sweet Sweet quipped that we needed to start having cocktails before dinner. Again, a huge garden salad, all of the wine we could drink, and enough chicken carbonara you could eat. We were again absolutely stuffed and happy. The next morning, we decided that were were going to hike to two places: Twin Arches and Slave Falls.

Twin Arches is one of the largest land bridges in the world and here we begin our hike at 9:00 a.m. in the morning:

It was only 0.7 miles to Twin Arches and the sign for Slave Falls said it was only 2.5 miles away. No problem we said. So we start walking along huge rock formations:

And we walk:

And we get to a trickle of water (I seriously could have urinated a stronger stream of liquid) called Slave Falls:

It was surrounded by a huge amphitheater, but other than that, not too exciting and it took us a really long time to get there:

So we’re pretty pissed off because there was no “payoff” for walking all that way and it’s a couple of hours to get back to our car, mostly uphill. Damn. We get back to Twin Arches and go up and cross the bridge itself:

We’re both pretty exhausted so I make the suggestion that we go down to the river, grab a six-pack and hangout. Sweet Sweet was pretty nervous about getting into the river, but I had no problems sitting back and relaxing. As an aside, you may want to turn down the brightness on your computer screen, my chest needs a little sun:

Shots of the river:

After we finish the six-pack, we head back to the B&B and shower-up again for dinner. This time it was garden fresh salad, steak-kabobs, and all the wine you could drink.

The next morning, we figured out that there was another falls area on the way to the Smoke Mountains, but was still in Big South Fork, called Colditz Cove. Not a long hike, but we thought we didn’t have much to lose.

I can see some real falls:

A very pretty walk:

This is me with my killing-stick. Which reminds me, when walking back from Slave Falls, there was a snake in the pathway that scared the crap out of both of us. The snake wasn’t moving too much, but I didn’t have a killing-stick with me at the time. Luckily, I found a stick, but we did not harm the snake. We were able to jump over the snake without issue. Again, scared the crap out of us. Back to me: