Our church has an annual lakeside picnic and worship service at Normandy Lake.

The worship, which is always led by the youth, takes place after dark, making it hard to video. Some of the audio from the worship is used as background music for the earlier parts of the video, and I used some stills to represent the worship service itself.

Brian Mosely, David Melson, Sadie Fowler, John Philleo

Doug Dezotell and Mary Reeves

We had planned a newsroom outing to Miss Mary Bobo’s in Lynchburg for several weeks. Man, I am stuffed.

Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House really was a boarding house for most of the 20th Century. Now, it’s a restaurant, owned by the nearby Jack Daniel Distillery. You are seated at a large table, typically with strangers, and served family style. (Many rooms, including the Tolley Room, to which we were assigned today, have a lazy susan to facilitate this.) The food is delicious, and the quantities are like Thanksgiving dinner. A hostess sits at each table to facilitate the process and talk about the building’s history.

Today, we had fried chicken, country ham, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw (I passed), the famous cooked apples (made with a splash of Lynchburg’s most famous export), mini corn muffins, red potatoes, green beans and chess pie with whiskey-spiked whipped cream on top. It was wonderful, and several hours later, I’m still miserable.

After the meal, we took a quick walk around the Lynchburg square, which is jam-packed with fun little tourist-oriented shops selling everything from whiskey barrels to T-shirts.

The rest of the photos can be found here.

As I posted to my T-G blog, by a fluke of scheduling I will be back for another such meal next Wednesday, as one of the invited media covering the 100th anniversary of Mary and Jack Bobo founding their boarding house in 1908.

Someone left a comment on Ginger’s blog. She’s checked the IP address and, yes, it appears to be the real deal.

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Originally uploaded by jicarney.

The Hiwassee River Rail Adventure was a hoot. The scenery is beautiful, and it’s fascinating how the train spirals its way up a mountain, at one point crossing over where it was just a few minutes before. A terrific day, and well worth the three-hour drive each way.

More photos are here.

I’ve been busy each morning during the horse show putting together results and writing the cutlines for the center ring presentation shots of the winner of each class. That’s particularly time-consuming for the first half of the show, when there are both morning and evening classes.

Well, someone else will have to format those results and write those cutlines tomorrow. I will be in the car on my way to Etowah.

Why?

I have a train to catch.

This is a media event — they’ve invited reporters from around the region — and I’ll be doing a color photo page for the newspaper.

My editor, who has been staying to the end of the show each night and writing a story about it every morning, has worked many more hours than I have this week, and I don’t know how she’s done what she’s done. But it’s been a busy week for all of us, and this will be a pleasant diversion, some calm before the storm of Championship Saturday in Shelbyville.