House of Mugs

My daughter and I took a ride to Collettsville, NC to look for the mug house. We didn't have directions but, no matter, this town is so small that you can't go wrong by asking just anywhere. We were directed down a narrow dirt road through fields, woods, and along a river. We finally came to the house.You can't miss it. This house is covered with row after row of mugs as is the fence that surrounds it. The sign on the door calls it the John's River House of Mugs.

Mr. Sisk, the man who created this masterpiece evidently had too much time on his hands. They say he retired, needed a hobby and also had too many mugs on his hands. What a combination! Now he has thousands of mugs and a whale of a hobby. He is even starting to tack them up on the little camper next door.

Another car pulled up while we were there, a local woman taking a friend on 'the tour'. She told Robin that she drove the school bus for years and years without even noticing this masterpiece until her granddaughter pointed it out. Imagine that!

 

Home Again

Back in the good ol' North Carolina mountains. For my western acquaintances, I present photos. Not that it all looks like this everywhere here, just like the old west is not full of crumbling log ranches and antique mines. The old homesteads are getting increasingly more difficult to find. This is what I look for when I travel. I am trying hard to escape the land of malls and tract housing which are everywhere and with little variation. I am in it for the old and the odd.

Huge guy occupies a spot in Cookville, TN, but I don't know why.

Eastward Ho

The sun set on the prairie in Oklahoma and I drove on. Daylight found me in a completely different country, though still Oklahoma. On this side of the state it is green with tall trees and riverbeds that actually have water in them. I don't know that I missed much by driving at night  because one could hardly see anything but the glaring lights of casino after casino after casino. I was told there are over 90 of them, all tribal, and that the government cannot mess with them.

I left the interstate in Arkansas, headed for crystal digging country the lady at the visitor center informed me would only be an hour out of my way. Three hours later, I came across this older gent at a rock stand just east of Mt Ida. He told me that the government had put many of the tourist mines out of business by requiring insurance and safety standards that are unaffordable. He mentioned one I might go to but told me they were just about played out, just a few little pieces left. I kept driving. Crystals, crystals and more crystals. They are as common as the petrified wood in Arizona, if not more so.

Arkansas humor? If you can't grow 'em, tie 'em on, them flowers.

Tennessee is much like Arkansas: green, rural, big rivers. Time to get off the highway again. So I went for this gem called Crystal Grotto, located in a Memphis cemetery. It was built by sculptor Dionecio Rodreguez who claims to hail from Aztec artist stock. That's what the sign says, anyway. A few other sculptors added their work to this grotto. Enter and its like walking into a strangely shaped cave in an even stranger place...it even has that heavy dank like a cave. Inside are murals and sculptures depicting the life of Jesus in and among the pillars of stone and quartz crystal. Outside is a pond, a sweet little log bridge and a huge stump replicating Abraham's Oak but crafted of concrete and steel. This is well worth taking a short hop off the highway to see.

Modern day Abraham's Oak

We've all heard of the walking dead. Now we have the running dead!