Taking a discount vacation

R.I.P.
(1990 - 2007)

Buick Skylark
(a.k.a. Nelly Belle, Rust Bucket, Rusty Gray.)

Buick Skylark is survived by it's owners Brent and MariLynn, and it's compadre 2004 Chevy Monte Carlo. It was purchased by MariLynn's parents from a rental car company in 1991. Services will be held at our Antioch house about the time that a tow truck takes it away and gives me $200 cash for it. Visitation will also be at the house before the service.

My car breathed it's last breath and the carburetor has bureted for the last time. Just two months ago, it had a Transmission fluid leak that stranded me at my workplace. Then, a couple of weeks ago, as I was driving to visit my dad in his office, something in the front of the car made a snap. By some very fortunate timing, this happened in front of the house of someone I know (My college C++ programming professor who also happens to attend church at the same place I went to until I moved a couple of months ago). He also has a circular driveway, meaning I didn't block him in until the tow truck came.

The next day, the tow truck did come and took it to a mechanic I trust, who could fix it at a reasonable but unfortunate cost of more than the car is worth. The timing chain broke but happened to severely damage the engine in the process. I'll have to spend time this week cleaning out the car. Hopefully I won't find an active wasp nest in the trunk like the last time I scrapped a car.

Add this to the fact that My wife and I are paying two mortgages until we sell the old house.

And it's time for our wedding anniversary - we've already gotten days approved off of work.

One of the state of Tennessee's most wonderful natural areas is Fall Creek Falls. We went there on our 2nd anniversary and wanted to go back. Back then, we stayed at the Fall Creek Falls Bed & Breakfast. I've never been very keen on staying at Bed and breakfasts, mostly because the target market for them are old people and wives (of any age) to drag their husbands along. That, and they cost more money than I usually have.

My wife wanted to stay somewhere romantic. it is our anniversary; I suppose I should make an effort to oblige. However, a few paragraphs back I talked about how I owe a bunch of money and stuff. Enter the Internet. Nowadays, every mole that has a spare tunnel has it's contact info on the internet. I scoured the web looking through the hotels, chalets, cabins and the bed & breakfasts in the area. I found a bed & breakfast that had a reasonable rate. They had an opening and I now had a reservation.

I was informed that they don't actually make the breakfast for us. Instead, they supply breakfast-making materials inside the fridge once you get there. They shouldn't call it a bed & breakfast; they should call it a bed & ingredients. How can we even be certain that the bed was made when we got there? I don't want to have to cook on our vacation. Let me rephrase that. I don't cook. My Wife doesn't want to have to cook on our vacation. (I would actually be neutral on the issue. In fact, I think it would be romantic for my wife to wake up early, cook breakfast on our vacation and then serve it to me in bed when I wake up, but at the same time, I would like to be allowed back into the house once we get home.)

Before we left home, my wife decided it was time to clean the pool skimmer. we've been warned on the possibility of snakes. Today, we found a frog.


We were on our way. After a brief interlude in Cookeville (Mauricio's Italian restaurant - check it out!), we made it to our mountaintop retreat. The owners had their own house in the mountain. They built a second house on their property and rent it out. Now, I think it's more of a chalet than a bed & ingredients. The place was nice.

We looked in the fridge at the breakfast ingredients. Bacon, sausage, bread, butter, jam, orange juice and a Bud Light. Hmmph. When we stop at a gas station, let's pick up some food.

Sunday, for lunch, we drove down Main Street in Pikeville, TN. There we found a country place called Pig-N-Catch. I wanted to stop there solely based on the name of the establishment. (Other contributing factors include they were open on Sunday and they weren't McDonald's.) If you could violate rules of grammar in the name of your business, this is one way to do it. It seems to me that the name should be Pig-N-Fish, or worse Slaughter-N-Catch. The food was O.K. and maybe a bit expensive for what you usually find in the country, but the owner was friendly like you would expect in the south. "grab a plate, eat until you can't eat anymore and then come see me."



we spent a good part of Sunday at Fall Creek Falls. It's the highest waterfall in the U.S. to the east of the Mississippi River. There are several other smaller waterfalls throughout the park. Many of the falls are easily accessible to those who only want to drive but the option exists to take the scenic trails. You can eat dinner at the Inn while watching the deer take a drink from lake viewable from the table. Did I mention that there's no admission cost to the park? They also have the only ping-pong ball vnding machine I've ever seen.

The water levels were about as low as they had ever been, but they still had plenty for my wife and I to do. She loves swimming in nature while I like photography.


On Monday, we drove home. We spent a good part of the drive trying to decide where to eat lunch. Nothing that was open appealed to us in Pikeville, Spencer, McMinnville, Morrison or Manchester and we ended up eating at a place 10 miles from home. but we like eating at Demos. It's not every day that we make the drive down to Murfreesboro.

After getting home from a vacation, there is usually a period where you come home relaxed, not thinking of the routine stresses that plague us daily. It's a sense of euphoria that you are still on cloud nine. Getting home from this trip caused us to fall off cloud nine in record time. My wife walked in the house and went "Uh Oh."

It was hot in the house. Very Hot. Hotter than the temperature outside of the house and it was at the hottest time of the day. The air conditioner unit was broken. Specifically, the conditioner part of the air conditioner was broken. The air was blowing fine. I picked up the phone book to look for anyone who could make it that day since it was already 3 PM. It took calling the 6th ad for a company offering around-the-clock same-day service to find someone who could get out there. As it turned out, the the power cord to the fan for the compressor had somehow snapped off and this caused the AC to blow hot air into the house.

They got that fixed, and they also discovered the freon levels were low. That would explain why the house never really got cool in the first place. that would explain why our first electric bill was $100 more than it ever was at the old house. Contrary to it's name, freon ain't free. The repairmen came and went and we paid the bill. Now we just need to buy a car.

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