Sunday, August 27, 2006

The Rock City Barn I missed several times.

here it is, right on the side of the interstate, on top of a hill. How could I miss it? The stretch of long-distance Interstate driving I am on more than any other is probably Interstate 24 between Nashville and Chattanooga. If you are traveling Eastbound, right after exit 155, the Freeway splits as the Eastbound and westbound lanes separate for a short distance. If you are traveling westbound, the split starts right after you cross the Tennessee River (and Nickajack Lake) at Exit 158. There is a fireworks store between the lanes. I always wondered how someone would be lucky enough to get a store of any kind between lanes of an interstate. At this same spot, if you looked to your left, there used to be a Rock City Barn wishing you goodbye. Sadly, it has been removed in the past 10 years. Pictures of the Goodbye Barn are Here.

Let's move back to the split in the eastbound direction. The land of that area is used to display tractors and other various farming equipment for sale. There were probably 50 of them in nice rows. This caught my attention. It is difficult to take a good picture from a moving car. It's worse when you are on the interstate and on the passenger side looking at something on the left. It came out horribly blurry:
This is a horrible picture
I did think it was neat how all the tractors were in the foreground with the See Ruby Falls extra-wide billboard was in the back. However, I was severely bummed that this picture didn't come out well. I couldn't wait for my next opportunity to try again, which came a few months later. It rained that day. Months later, I had another chance, and it was sunny. When we were about 30 seconds away, I took this test picture:
Tractors
(Side note: the Ruby Falls billboard was repainted a different color.)
While I was getting ready to take my good shot, my wife asked, "what is that Rock City thing on top of the hill?" We pulled over and stopped the car.

See Rock City Today

SEE
ROCK CITY
today


This is Barn #10, the Joe D. Thomas Barn in the Capps Book.
This is on Page 159, top center in the Jenkins Book.
OhioBarns.com lists this as #RCB 42-56-02.
It is located in Marion County, and you can see it on a map here.
Lat & Lon: 35.043471 N / 85.609154 W

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey! If you're headed westbound in I-24 just past Chattanooga there's a goodbye barn right on the side of the interstate (to the right) that is half covered in kudzu. I just noticed it a few weeks ago!

11:27 PM, September 28, 2008  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Someone is living in the goodbye rock city barn.

2:14 PM, June 03, 2010  

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