National Corvette Museum and Coles Family History Lesson

This morning we searched out a little bit of history regarding LaDonna's ancestors. Her mother's maiden name was Coles. LaDonna's Great-Great-Great-Grandfather, Isaac Coles founded and operated a ferry to cross the Cumberland River just north of Lebanon, TN. Great-Great-Grandfather, Marcus Coles continued to operate the ferry after Isaac. We learned from a cousin in Oklahoma about the Coles Ferry Pike that leads to the location of the old ferry. (It's now a boat ramp at the end of a dead end road.) You have to really want to go there, you see. Well, we took a little side trip with Old Gold to search out the boat ramp to see what we could see. Here's the sight we enjoyed this morning.

Here's LaDonna with Old Gold at the US Army Corps of Engineers sign identifying the Coles Ferry Boat Ramp.

Here's the old ferry crossing across the Cumberland River north of Lebanon, TN.

Our next stop was at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. The current state of the art Corvette Assembly Plant is across the road and has been building Corvettes since 1981. You trivia buffs know how and where Doug and LaDonna met. If you're really sharp on your trivia, you'll know that Woodbury County Iowa is where we met. (Sioux City) Now, you can figure out the vanity plate shown above and how it relates to Chevrolet Corvettes.

As we begin the next leg of our Big Adventure and drive through several more states, we paused to snap a picture of Old Gold in front of the National Corvette Museum. We had lots of good comments from other visitors to the museum even though we felt we had to apologize for all the accumulated road grime from almost 6,000 miles without a wash job. Old Gold's paint color is Fawn Beige. We think it is a very expressive color that enhances the shape and style of the car. It really shows off the cove's concave shape and the style line that defines the "Duck Tail" shape of the rear body work. Maybe it's a good thing that Old Gold is painted Fawn Beige for long road trips since it really does a great job of hiding dried road splash. Now, what to do about the layers of dead bugs on the front end?

Here we are doing what we do best, DRIVING down the highway! We'll drive through St Louis tomorrow, which is where Old Gold was born in the spring of 1961. The old assembly plant is closed and not a place we really want to go on this trip so, stay with us on the blog and we'll post some more stories and pictures of our big adventure.