I recently spent a wonderful couple days in Johnson City, Tennessee.  I was so warmly welcomed by my friends Sam and Michael.

Johnson City years ago  had a long railroad history, mostly due to the coal mining that used to go on in that whole region. Coal mining has largely died off, and now there are wonderful huge old buildings downtown that supported many industries there, and many now sit empty.

But Johnson City is a progressive place, with people who want to do things to improve the citizens’ lives and make the city grow.  Investors and people with good and big ideas are revitalizing areas of downtown, taking one building at a time and making it into something new, useful and very nice.  We visited one of those buildings which now houses a brewery with a bar and large seating area. In the other half of that building is the White Duck Taco Shop, where you can get almost anything on your tacos.  http://www.whiteducktacoshop.com/http://www.whiteducktacoshop.com/

It’s just one example of things the city is doing to improve and revitalize itself.  They also recently completed a downtown area called Founder’s Park, a large and beautiful addition to their city where you can stroll along and see unique sculptures and a beautiful waterway. One of the unique sculptures almost cost the life of one of Sam and Michael’s friends, but later he managed to escape from the alligator’s mouth, lol. We had fun in the park that night.

In the Park they  have a seating area where there is  live music  on weekend evenings. They are also working on a huge new farmer’s market building, which can house lots of vendors for many months of the year due to their longer growing season than we have here.

There is a huge sundial in the park, and I didn’t get to hear how it works, but just to see it and realize somebody had such an idea to make an interesting thing for people and then carried it thru, it’s great.

They also have art on several of their large building walls, like this mural, depicting the importance of their rail road history.

I had a great weekend adventure, and appreciated all the southern hospitality I encountered there:  people are nice, and the pace of life is slower. I need to write more about that  weekend adventure, and some of the neat things we did.