Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia

We have watched the Geico commercial with the gecko dancing between the state borders of Virginia and Tennessee. We thought at first that it was a regional advertisement, since we were visiting those states when we first saw it.

Then we found out this national commercial campaign was filmed here in our new home-town of Bristol! The main street in this historic little downtown is appropriately named "State" because it is here that the two states of Virginia and Tennessee collide. They closed down this block of State Street on July 13, 2016, to film the footage of their famous 6-inch gecko talking about insurance coverage in "Virginessee."

We didn't get the same protection from on-coming traffic, but we did manage to snap a picture of the tip of Mark's tennis shoe firmly planted in Virginia. I think they shined up the street marker they used in the commercial, as this one was a little harder to read.

It's an interesting street with the red state flags of Tennessee lining the south side of the street, while the predominately blue Virginia state flags are on the north. They can all be friends, however, because both sides also proudly display the United States flag.

Living together in a 35-foot motor home, we don't often see much space between us. But today Mark is standing in Tennessee, while taking this picture of Denisa under the lamp post way over there in Virginia.

Further down the street, the folks from Virginia unfurled a Virginia Tech banner that is in-your-face and five stories tall right in front of their Tennessee neighbors.

Also featured in the Geico commercial is the lighted town banner at the end of the street. It declares that Bristol, Virginia AND Tennessee are both a good place to live.

We have to agree that this is a good place to live, and we had a good time exploring this area. We have several blogs about some big attractions, but we have to include some smaller gems that we also enjoyed. We found that the local news calls this the Tri-City area. One of the sister cities in that triad is Johnson City, and we drove there one evening to ride our bikes on the Tweetsie Trail.

The trail starts out surrounded by rock walls, with the traditional cinder riding surface. We also immediately noticed that it seemed to be sloped downhill.

The fall foliage is nice along the trail, but as we continue to roll downhill, Denisa is uneasy. We don't have a shuttle ride to get us back to the car at the end of this trail. With every mile we roll downhill, she must know that she has to pedal that mile uphill to get back. She likes bike riding, but she is a verifiable wienie when it comes to pedaling uphill.

That's when Mark announced that he would make the ride back to the car by himself and bring the car to pick up Denisa (and her bicycle). He tried to convince her that he wanted to do it to see how good his new bike was at climbing hills at a faster speed. Denisa's slow bike always keeps him in low gear too. But Denisa recognized that he was just being a gentleman, and she loved it!

So she hung out at the Sycamore Shoals State Park in Elizabethton while Mark made the eight mile up-hill ride back to Johnson City. He did it amazingly fast, and reported that he had to pedal hard the entire way. Meanwhile, Denisa is taking a leisurely walk through the park, spotting this beautiful tree adorned in a coral-shade of fall.

Denisa has been looking for that quintessential picture of a white steeple church nestled among the fall foliage ever since we saw the first autumn tree. After miles of mountain driving across five states, this is the best we have found. We think that little white church you see on the postcard picture might be hiding in Vermont.

When we were biking on the Virginia Creeper Trail, we saw some Christmas tree farms. On a drive another day, we literally saw miles and miles of Christmas trees along the highway.

Planted in perfectly straight lines, it will take years before the tiny saplings grow big enough to adorn someone's home in December.

So we were certainly surprised to see big parking lots along the road, filled with already harvested Christmas trees in October.

We saw many trailers making their way down the mountain with loads of trees neatly netted and ready for Christmas tree lots across America. We're hoping that they get them into water soon.

We also did some hiking when we were in the mountains around the town of Damascus. We think this sign was placed at the beginning of the trail to scare off hikers. But to us, that is just motivation to continue.

We were heading up the trail that goes straight up to the ridge of Backbone Rock.

A little further down the trail brought us to the Backbone Rock Tunnel. This is one of the shortest tunnels in the world, as it's just long enough to get through the narrow ridge. You can see Denisa in her red jacket right above the tunnel.

The view from the top isn't bad either, as we look down the road that will take us home to Bristol. This has been a great place to enjoy the mountainous area of Eastern Tennessee and Western Virginia. Or as a famous green gecko might call it--Virginessee.