RATTS, Tas Won a Guitar

We are in Knoxville, TN tonight at the Best Western, which is high end luxury compared to camping for a week. Actually, it is a very nice hotel and our room is a suite so this gives us adequate space so we're all not on top of each other. Tonight, is our last night of vacation then we'll make a b-line on I40 tomorrow for home.

We had a fun week in Kentucky. After Cumberland Gap, we drove to the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky, which was pretty cool. It is a world class climbing area so we met people from all over the US and Canada. Some highlights were: walking over several arches including the Natural Bridge, camping and Tas running around teh campground naked greeting everyone, finding a quiet shallow swimming hole on the river, biking down a winding, gravel mountain road, taking a sky lift with the boys up a cliff, hiking with the punkins (we've determined that 1/2 mile is their limit), sleeping through the night, enjoying good BG numbers from Chance, eating especially at Miguel's Pizza, going to a bluegrass festival and meeting some really good people.

"RATTS" stands for Race Against That Thunder Storm. We did this the day we biked. The storms came in before we got back to our car - oh well. At least it cooled us off. We did enjoy fairly dry weather though - a first for us.

A definite highlight was the Sally Gap Bluegrass festival today. This was no Shakori Hills, but as the mc said, "we have vendors,  not a lot of vendors, but they are the best." It was very hot today. The boys made banjos and got free festival T-shirts for doing this. They also got to go on stage to play their instruments. After the mini recital, the festival organizer drew four raffle tickets to give away quality musical instruments amoungst the kids whom had just performed - an accoustic guitar, a mandolin, a fiddle and a banjo. The first three kids who won picked the mandolin, the fiddle and the banjo. Then, she drew the forth ticket, but the winner was not present so she redrew and the winner was Tasman Clayton! Wow - the Clayton's are really on a winning streak. The guitar is beautiful and Tas was so excited. He stood on stage and strummed the guitar while the festival folks took pictures. he will be featured on their website and in the local newspaper.