The 2025 Legacy Luncheon for the Parks is set for Friday, September 26, from 11:30-1 p.m. at Strong Stock Farm. Tables of 10 are available and individual tickets are $200. This event always sells out.
Diane Nyad
The speaker is Diana Nyad, who at age 64 became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. The swim took nearly 53 hours and covered 110 miles.
A prominent sports journalist, filing over 30 years for National Public Radio, The New York Times and others, her story is captured in her memoir Find a Way and the 2023 Netflix film Nyad.
BoardSafe is the presenting sponsor of this year’s luncheon, which celebrates 20 years. The mission is to preserve open space, expand parts and improve the overall quality of life and economic vitality of the community, per the website.
Since 2005, Legacy Parks has raised over $21 million for parks and open space, helped conserve 1,000 acres of forest and farmland, and added over 700 acres of parkland in the region. Legacy spearheaded the first adaptive dock and trail in the region and added 65 miles of trails and six public access points on local waterways.
Fiddles and banjos at Big Ridge
Norton Grist Mill at Big Ridge State Park (file photo)
Big Ridge Bluegrass Festival is today (8/15/25) from 6-10 p.m. at Big Ridge State Park. Free admission. This is the 44th annual festival and it’s worth the trip. Live music, food trucks to enjoy, crafts and fellowship. Bring a chair; bring the kids. The host is Josh Powell. Reach him at josh.powell@tn.gov or 865-992-5523.
Directions: the address is 1015 Big Ridge Park Rd, Maynardville, TN 37807 if you’ve got a smartphone. The flatter route is to drive in from Andersonville on state Hwy. 61. The curvy way is Hwy. 33 from Halls to Union County. Take a left onto Hickory Star Road at McDonald’s and follow the signs.
About the park: Big Ridge State Park is a heavily forested, 3,687-acre park located in the Appalachian Ridge and Valley range. The park is home to a variety of activities, including more than 15 miles of hiking trails ranging from easy to very rugged. The park has 50 campsites on or near Norris Lake to accommodate RVs, trailers and tent campers. There is a group camp that accommodates up to 120 people with 19 screened-in bunkhouses. There are three backcountry campsites that are hike-in only.
Notes and Quotes
Today three quotes from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who loved the outdoors:
- Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west.
- Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.
- It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.
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