Seeing Some of Tennessee

Today was a great day. We started off by going to the Bristol Motor Speedway. What a place! We took the tour, which lasted a whole hour. Since we were the only folks for the 11:00 tour we had one on one with Janet, our guide. She took us up to Burton Smith's luxury suite. What a view. What a room. For those of you who are not race fans, he owns the track here, plus a few more. We were able to walk up the banking of the track. It was hard to walk up. She also took us up to Victory Lane. The van we were in took the track at about 60, and you could tell we had the wrong tires.
The complex also has a drag strip. We took a run down the lane there, too. We were very pleased with the tour, and suggest it to everyone, fan of racing or not.
After we left the track we headed out for Jonesborough. It's the oldest town in Tennessee. What a neat place. There are so many old buildings there. Old hotels that daste back to the early 1800's. Presidents have been there, and many people of note. Today the town is getting ready for their annual Storytelling Festival. All the churches are going to have dinners or lunches, they have these huge tents all over the place. If we had known about the festival, we probably would have gone over the week-end. We did the shop stopping thing, and had some good ice cream.
On the way to Jonesborough, we passed a BBQ place with a packed parking lot. We decided to stop on the way home. We ordered pork BBQ sandwiches. They also have beef, and ribs. Tom got fries, and I ordered onion rings. They served huge portions. The sandwiches were great, as were the fries. The onion rings were nothing special. The place is called Pardners. We would also put them on our list. We like to go to places that local folks think are good, and the amount of cars there was a good sign.
We packed a lot into one day, and now it's off to Crossville to see a Coast to Coast park there. We'll be there a few days, so we will do some more touring. Man we love this. Exploring and finding great places.