Clinching

Donald, myself, Vic (my brother) and Barbara (his wife) just completed a camping and fishing trip to the Clinch River in Tennessee. It's listed as one of the 100 best trout streams in the United States so it sounded like a good destination for a camping trip together. Donald and Vic both love to fly fish and Barbara and I love to relax, tour, read, hike and other things that keep you happy.

We all decided to travel a day and camp 2 nights so we had a couple of days at each park to explore before we reached our final destination. Our first campground was Lake Chicot State Park in Lake Village, Arkansas, which is on an oxbow lake and very pretty. I had read that there was a great place to get down home cooking (one of them being in the book Roadfood and website Roadfood.com) called Rhoda's. As we were passing through town and by Rhoda's and I knew exactly the address of the place my first exclamation was "Oh my God!" because I caught a glimpse of it after the fact and I thought nobody I was with would follow me in there. But like troopers, we all went there the next day and had the best soul food in a hovel/shack one could have. My 3 companions all said it was the blind leading the blind. I've had experiences similar to this in my travels by myself but never when I was responsible for 3 other people and their opinions. I felt really good as we all sat around a tiny table and the only white people there with only the words "UM!" coming from our throats.

I think the next night we had steaks that Vic cooked and delicious veggies that Barbara made.

The 3rd night was spent in a state park just minutes away from Huntsville, Alabama, and there is an outside mall there that would blow your socks off only because Huntsville isn't even that big. But we did have dinner at p.f. chang's only about 5 minutes from where we were camping. Talk about a life's journey from only 2 days before.

When we finally reached our destination at Norris Dam State Park where the Clinch River flows, we were glad to be settled for several nights even though our campsites were'nt that ideal. Barbara and I spent a day exploring some historical sites around us and a couple of little towns. On one of the days, the 4 of us took about a 2-hour drive over to Biltmore for about 5 hours of tours and wine-tasting and then 2 hours back. That was a great day!

Donald and Vic didn't have quite as much luck fishing for giant brown trout. I think their buttocks were doing more clinching at the small fish they were catching - maybe that's where the river got its name. They say they had fun though so that's all that counts.

We played lots of cards, grilled outside, laughed a lot, and generally just had a good time.