Posted on 03/03/2009 2:46:28 PM PST by MHGinTN
Okay Freepers in the East Tennessee/Western North Carolina/ Southeastern VA Area, we’re gonna have a picnic! Time to gather, meet one another, and become a potential network in the coming months if needed. [ It’s also fun to have a picnic in the Spring before the insects get going too strongly. ]
My family has a nice picnic area with entertainment pavillion in Boones Creek (the Tri-Cities area) and I am inviting you freeper folks to gather there on April 18th for food and conversation. I’m not even asking y’all to bring anything to the picnic, unless you have something special you like to drink. I’m providing sandwich fixins, fried chicken, potato salad, slaw, chips, unsweetened tea (sweet and low and sugar will be available to add to taste), bottled water, and Coca Cola. There will be clean ice in a cooler, and plastic cups, paper plates and napkins and plastic utensils … all the stuff of picnicking.
Plan on eating around 2 PM, but arrive before noon and chat it up. The picnic area has room for primitive camping (no electric or water hook ups), a separate parking area, and a fire pit to enjoy for those who wish to stick around into the late evening. If you let me know in advance you’re coming, I can unlock the area for overnighters on Friday evening, and feel free to stay until Sunday if you clean up after yourselves. I have one gas lantern for evening in the pavilion at the picnic grounds, so if you’re arriving Friday and want to bring a lantern for use after dark, that’s about all you need bring to have a good time.
It is sometime chilly in the evenings in mid-April, so bring a sweater or coat to use if needed. There is a ‘johnny house’ and I will park my little moho at the grounds with a bathroom on board and a generator if evening need arises. Freeper bert (from Kingsport) will be posting pix of the grounds, showing the pavilion and the ‘mosh pit’. Please let us know (bert or me) if you intend to join in so I can plan food accordingly. If you intend to camp Friday or Saturday (or both), please let me know a week ahead.
If you do a google map search on 290 Crouch Road, Gray TN 37659, you will get a view of where the picnic grounds are located. Generally, highway 36 runs from Johnson City to Kingsport. If coming from the Johnson City direction (toward Kingsport), turn right at the light at Zaks Furniture (Boones Creek Road crossing HY 36) onto Pickens Bridge Road (Boones Creek Road turns into Pickens Bridge Road at the light going northeast). Pickens bridge Road goes down a long hill then makes an abrupt left up a steep hill, past a Baptist church on a hairpin right curve and straightens out. In the straightaway Crouch Road turns off to the left and is named Flowerville Road going right … take the left on Crouch Road. About a mile from Pickens Bridge Road you will pass a restored historic log house on the right (the Jesse Crouch historic home site), the picnic grounds are just down the road on the right, across from a large log house and log cottage, on the right up the hill. The picnic grounds are in ‘Mary’s Bottom’, with a spring branch running through it.
If coming along highway 36 from the Kingsport direction (toward Johnson City), turn left at Zaks and follow the above directions. Interstate 81 has a highway 36 exit near Kingsport that is approximately ten miles from Zaks furniture, going toward Johnson city. If you follow Interstate 81 and take Interstate 26 toward Asheville, there is a Boones Creek Road exit. This is the Boones Creek Road which ends at the light at Zaks Furniture if you go right off of the Boones Creek Road exit from interstate 26.
If anyone needs more involved directions or more detailed info, freepmail me and I’ll give you my phone number to call. Bert says freepers are always lookin’ for a reason to take a trip. Well, here it is! We’re havin’ a picnic for freepers.
I drove across Tennessee one summer, including coming through the area you're talking about -- eastern Tennessee is absolutely beautiful. (And it didn't hurt that I got to eat barbecue for three meals a day!)
Ping-a-ling-a-ling
Come down and camp with us!
Pingaling ... you might want to drive over and see the camping area, for the story telling festival visits you make.
Thank you, sincerely, for the invitation -- I would love to see Tennessee again. Unfortunately, I've been out of work for a long time and am living on "survival income." If I don't have any job leads by April, then.... well, let's stay positive.
HOWEVER, your fellow FReepers expect a full after-report, along with pictures!
Let me have my social director get that on the calendar. Sounds like fun
"About a mile from Pickens Bridge Road you will pass a restored historic log house on the right (the Jesse Crouch historic home site), the picnic grounds are just down the road on the right LEFT, across from a large log house and log cottage, on the right up the hill."
I pinged her, too.
Darn! Drat! Sorry! We can’t! Number One Nephew’s wedding down in South Carolina!
For some strange reason Google Maps is not showing the address, BUT if you google map ‘Katies Way, Johnson City, TN 37615’ you will have the precise location. The entry to the picnic grounds is to the left and just before arriving at the loop road called ‘Katie’s Way’ (a subdivision up there).
Ping
Will see if we can work it out. Son’s birthday is that weekend and he wants to have some folks over. Can’t leave a bunch of 18 year olds at the house to trash.
Thank you so much for the opportunity for Freepers in this part of the country to finally get together. I know that we will have a great time.
I hope folks will RSVP, me and my two old cats can’t eat too many leftovers if few show up and I’ve catered in too much food. The camping would be fun, too.
As a man, weddings are not way up high on my "can't wait for the next one" list. But, as a husband and a brother, my "man-sense" tells me what is what as far as my list goes!
Freepers unite bump
When I was in Memphis, instead of heading directly to The Rendezvous (like a tourist would), I made it a point to ask the motel concierge "Where do the locals go for barbecue?" He told me "Neely's Interstate Barbecue" -- which turned out to be the best BBQ joint I've ever visited!
Dixie BarBQ on North Roan Street is one of our best. There is also a very good one on HWY19E, on the road from Bristol Speedway to Elizabethton. Golden Rule is not bad, but Dixie is one of our best. There is or was a really fine one in Kingsport, run by a blackman who ‘trained’ in Ensley, AL near the Football stadium where one could on the weekend drive the street and numerous homemade cookers were out aromatizing the air. (Best BQ I ever ate was from a little old black Lady who cranked her drum up every Saturday morning on football day, right out on the curb! That Lady could cook! I would purchase pounds of pulled pork and eat on it all week.
Didn’t Alton Brown include Neeley’s in one of his roadshown episodes? Alton Brown is my favorite TV star, BTW.
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