back

The grueling winding steep gravel road to the tower (we thought we'd never get there as we snaked up the mountain from the south at about midnight) was our price for the excellent setting of our camp that night. The view that morning was magnificent, as we awoke to find ourselves high above the ridges and valleys of the Jefferson National Forest.

For geography geeks like Yolonda and me, the town of Bristol in southwestern Virginia is nifty because of its location, straddling the border between Virginia and Tennessee. The town seems quite proud of its claim to fame, with the active and healthy downtown area along State Street, the middle of which is the state line.

We packed up and were on the road rather early, and we groggily but rapidly blasted through the Kentucky hills on newly completed 4-lane roads that were all engineering wonders (though the landscape is scarred; the engineers clearly took a page from the mining industry in the area, which appears to now simply remove the tops of giant mountains to get to the various minerals being mined).

next