After spending nearly a week in Huntsville, AL for work, we had to hit the road heading for NY and on Monday, home. We needed to somehow keep our larger vehicle for both the comfort and for the space it gave us to take home the stuff we bought in New Mexico last week. Earlier in the week when we had to trade the monster in we almost ended up with a car instead of the Suburban. That would have been bad because we are pretty sure our chimeneas would not have fit in the back seat. We needed a plan. As the week went by Chris had different ideas on how we could keep our Suburban but none of them were panning out. We were going to use free days which we had accumulated to rent a suburban for 3 days but renting that sized vehicle with free days would not have allowed us to have unlimited miles. That would have been a problem because we had about 1000 miles to drive. We also thought of just trying out luck and begging at the airport to keep the large car but we didn’t want to take that risk. Finally we just decided to call National and ask them if we could return our current vehicle in NY rather than in Huntsville and if we could return it three days later. We never told them that we had a car that was probably 8 sizes larger than what we were paying for but we figured if they wanted that information it was probably right at their fingertips. They said we could but our entire rental would be at the one way rate rather than our first week at the regular rate and only 3 days at a one way rate. We did the math and figured it was only $12 extra to do it this way so we ended up keeping our monster and even better, we would not have to repack the car. We even had room for more stuff if we wanted!
We left Huntsville on Friday at around 7:30 AM. It was raining pretty hard for the first hour or so as we drove away. Because of the rain we did not make very good time. It stopped raining somewhere around Tennessee and we made our first stop at a Confederate cemetery just outside of Chattanooga. The cemetery has 155 soldiers buried in it, mostly in unmarked graves. When reading the sign out front we read that most of the graves were once marked by wooden crosses giving name and rank but today there is nothing. There was no explanation as to how that happened but when we got to a computer we found out that the cemetery was originally located closer to the river and was once flooded, washing away the wooden markers. After the flooding the remains were all moved to this new place where they remain today but when they moved the remains they had no way of knowing who was who.
After the cemetery we made a stop in Cleveland, TN where there was an interesting sight. We visited a mausoleum in Cleveland which was the location of if nothing else, an interesting story. John Henderson Craigmiles was a very successful man. He was a former sea captain and a prominent business man in Cleveland, TN during the 1800s. However, he endured more tragedy than most people can imagine.
Nina Craigmiles was born on August 5, 1864, to John Henderson Craigmiles and his wife, Adelia Thompson Craigmiles. From the day she was born, her entire family fell in love with her, especially John. He showered her with affection, and bought her the best toys money could buy. He rarely ever let her leave his sight, and, as a result, she had few friends her own age.
Sadly, on October 18, 1871, that happiness came to an end. It was Saint Luke's Day, and Nina's grandfather, Dr. Gideon Blackburn Thompson, was taking her for a ride on a horse and buggy. He had done this many times before, and Nina absolutely loved riding. Apparently, Dr. Thompson lost control of the horse and buggy, because it went directly into the path of a train. Dr. Thompson was thrown to safety, but Nina was killed.
The entire town was saddened by the news, and many people showed up for her funeral. After her funeral, Dr. Thompson and two others were baptized. The Craigmiles were devout Episcopalians, and since the Episcopal congregation of Cleveland did not have a church to visit at, John Henderson Craigmiles vowed to build one, which he did in memory of Nina. Saint Luke's Episcopal Church was consecrated on the third anniversary of Nina's death. It was (and still is) a very beautiful church. Not long after, Mr. Craigmiles had a mausoleum built behind the church in memory of his daughter. She was laid to rest inside, as was another infant son who died, and Mr. and Mrs. Craigmiles. Mr. Craigmiles met an untimely death after falling on some ice, which apparently triggered blood poisoning. A third member of the family had met a tragic death.
Today, if you visit the mausoleum, you will notice red streaks the color of blood appear on it. The stories say that the bloody stains first began to appear on the Craigmiles mausoleum after Nina was interred there. With the death of each family member, the stains grew darker and more noticeable. Some of the locals began to believe that the marks were blood, coming from the stone itself, in response to the tragedies suffered by the family. We snapped a picture of the mausoleum and the “blood stains” and we were on our way.
Our next stop was at an overlook that looked out over an old copper mine. There was a museum on the site but it was really tiny and they charged $4 per person so we skipped the museum and took some pictures of the mine from the overlook. We then stopped for lunch at our favorite fast food restaurant, Hardees. You cannot find any Hardees restaurants back home so we took advantage and ate some burgers for lunch. We then drove about 3 miles south to the town of Copperhill, TN, where the TN/GA border runs right through a parking lot of a supermarket. It was marked by a blue dotted line, which runs across the parking lot and then through some buildings. Supposedly it also runs through a bar, which is interesting because the bar is half located in a dry county in TN and the other half in the GA county that allows alcohol sales. So the restrooms are located on the TN side and the drinking side is in GA. We did not stop because we still had some driving to do but maybe we will return some day.
After leaving there we went to see something a little different which we had seen on Roadside America: The world’s largest 10 commandments. Near Murphy, NC is a 300 foot wide tablet covering a hillside. Had we known we were going to come here Chris would have bought a staff so he could have his picture taken up top holding it high above his head like Moses. Unfortunately we didn’t have one so we just took pictures of the 10 commandments. We also met a very friendly cat in the parking lot which reminded us of our cat, Red back home. We fed him some pizza which he seemed to love and we headed out.
 |
| To give you an idea of the size of the commandments, yes that is a small airplane at the bottom of the hill |
 |
| Looking down...the little speck in the parking lot is the cat |
We started heading towards Asheville, NC, with no intention of making any more stops. However, as we made the drive up through the Nantahala gorge through western North Carolina, the same drive we had made back in April, the fall foliage was really nice so we stopped to take some pictures. There were people rafting on the river, just like back in April, but this time they were all in wetsuits.
We arrived in Asheville, NC around 5 PM and checked into our favorite hotel, the Hotel Indigo. We could not afford this place but we were using points, so it was free. We then walked around Asheville for a little while before coming back to eat dinner. We found it unusual that we were drawn back to Asheville, after all, we were here only 6 months ago, and at that time we stayed for 3 nights when we only planned on staying one. This time we can’t stay 3 nights but we are fairly certain we will be back.
No comments:
Post a Comment