Fantastic Tennessee Parks

Welcome!

"And the adventure begins..."

Especially during this time of year, Greg and I love going to some of the fantastic parks right here in Tennessee.

There are so many interesting places to explore in our Tennessee parks-

and fun things to do-

picnicking

swimming, boating, hiking, etc.

Some parks have restaurants-

with delicious food! Yum!

Some have bridges with water features.

All have gorgeous scenery-

and wildlife-

Recently, Greg and I, along with several of our family members, enjoyed visiting a pretty park in Knoxville-

"We are living our adventure."

Also, we're planning to return to a park which we visited several years ago, Fall Creek Falls, during the next few weeks. It's one of the best parks in Tennessee with its beautiful waterfalls.                                                                                                                                                      

Tennessee State Parks is celebrating 80 years this year so for this reason the parks are being featured in several publications, including the current issue of the AAA magazine, "AAA Living."

A great site to check out not only for Tennessee and its parks, but for any state that you'd like to visit is www.onlyinyourstate.com. This is our favorite go-to website to look up places that we might like to visit. (Thank you, Lynn, for telling us about this wonderful website!)

Later this month, we'll be traveling outside of Tennessee to visit a park in another state, Kentucky, which I might feature in an upcoming blog post.

Have a happy, safe Fourth of July!

Be sure to check out my latest "Spirit Photographs" blog post at- www.spiritphotographs.blogspot.com

Positive thought: "In nature one receives far more than he seeks."-John Muir

Thanks for visiting! Until Sunday, August 6, 2017, Becky

Tennessee Park-of-the-Month

Welcome!

I guess you could say that Greg and I are hooked on Tennessee parks, and you'd be right! Our home state of Tennessee has some wonderful parks that Greg and I love to visit often, both near and far. In some of my previous blog posts, I've mentioned several different Tennessee parks that we have visited.

There are still quite a few parks in Tennessee that are left for us to explore, so we decided that for the next few months, we are going to go to a new park every month.

This blog post is about a park we just recently visited, Montgomery Bell State Park, which is in Burns, Tennessee. It was named for wealthy industrialist Montgomery Bell who established a major iron furnace.

The park has an inn and a conference center. In fact, the day we visited, we could hardly find a place to park since there was a large meeting going on there.

We were really glad when a parking space finally turned up so we could go have lunch at The Forge Restaurant which is inside the inn.

The dining room can seat 180 people.

The buffet is Southern-style.

Our Table with a View of Beautiful Lake Acorn

Lake Acorn

Delicious Food

Just like their website says, The Forge Restaurant is "recognized for its outstanding food, hospitality and lakeside views."

After lunch, we looked around the inn...

which has a rustic decor.

We then went outside on the inviting porch.

Imagine you and a friend, relaxing here!

We thoroughly enjoyed exploring the park-

Greg, Doing Some Creative Photography

There were some beautiful sights around the park-

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books."
-John Lubbock

Know what this is? (the photo below)-

It's an iron smelter!

We loved our April park-of-the-month, Montgomery Bell State Park, and we can hardly wait until next month!

FYI:
Montgomery Bell State Park
1020 Jackson Hill Road
Burns, TN 37029
www.tnstateparks.com

Positive thought: "May your search through Nature lead you to yourself."-Author Unknown
Thanks for visiting! Until next Monday, Becky