Ate a late breakfast today while reading the comics and doing the crossword puzzle. Took off for a drive to the afternoon contra dance in Jonesborough, Tenn. around 12:30. Really nice, sunny day for a drive up through the great Smoky Mountains. The top of the pass I went over was somewhere around 3,500 feet in elevation and the trees were just starting to leaf out up there. As the road drifted lower the foliage got much more lush and full and the color's were stunning. Against this really vibrant green of the grass you had all these different hues of green, yellow and red leaves of the hardwoods as well as the deep green of the pines. Every once in awhile you would see this 'pop' of color as the purple-red blossoms of the red bud or the white of the dogwood would suddenly appear. Down even lower the rhododendrons were just starting to blossom out and in peoples yards and along fence rows there was this amazing color of all the flowers and shrubs in bloom.

    The dance was wonderful. It was held in the same building as the weekend dance, 'Mountain Madness', was last October. Warren Doyle was calling and they had a really good 4 piece band from the area. Unfortunately I have already forgotten the name of the band, but I'll look it up again and edit this at some point. About 55-60 people were there and really a pretty balanced mix this time, though it started out with way to many men for the first dance or two.

   Men are really quite funny at times. Where as women don't seem to have any problem dancing together as a couple, it seems like most men would rather be set on fire. That seems to be easing some as more and more younger people are starting to dance again, and that's a good thing. My only problem is that I can barely dance the men's part.... you really want me to try and dance the same dance only backwards and with more spins and twirls? It is probably good that there are generally more women than men at dances, even though I do feel sorry about it at times.

    It rained hard while the dance was going on so the temperature really cooled down a lot even though the humidity went up. The drive home was, if anything, even prettier than the drive over. The area through the high mountains had a lot of fog lingering in the valley's and wisping over some of the peaks. It made it easy to see how they acquired the name 'Smokies'.

    I had some feedback from a few people today, about the blog, after I posted the web site link to it on Facebook and via email yesterday. Was a little surprised to tell the truth, but then I have been wondering about this whole idea of a blog for quite some time. Just wanted to say thank you to all of you that wrote such kind comments. As to some of the questions you asked; as far as actually commenting in the 'comments' section of this blog, as well as other questions you might have, I have to say that " I have no idea how to do most of what you asked". If you only knew how long it took me to figure out what it took just to get this thing up and running you would be amazed. I'm not really very good at this kind of stuff really. My thought is that you should go find some 8 year old kid and have them tell you how to do what ever it is that you want or need done. That's what I always do, I'm usually on 'YouTube' trying to find a video about something and it's always some teenager doing the run through. It's enough to make ya feel really old.  :-)

   Finally for today, I'm going to post a bunch of the pictures that have already been posted on Facebook. Just the one's from the last couple of weeks or so, not the whole batch from the whole trip. I'm still trying to figure out how this blog is going to work versus what will be posted on Facebook. I hate to duplicate things, but I think there will be a certain amount of overlap going on. I guess for those who are on Facebook the easiest thing will be to be contented with it and not visit this site very often. I hope it will stay interesting enough to keep even some of them coming back once in awhile.

Here are the photo's I've taken and have posted over the past couple of weeks. If anybody has any questions about any of them let me know.