On August 4, 2024, Karen and I set out for a Sunday drive on Lookout Mountain just 20 minutes from home. Our first stop would be “The World’s Longest Yard Sale.
Dubbed “The Highway 27 Yard Sale” the event occurs each year around the first weekend of August. The route begins in Gadsden, Alabama, and ends 690 miles later at Addison, Michigan.
The 127 Yard Sale was started in 1987 by Mike Walker to help travelers avoid major interstates and discover scenic routes. Vendors set up shop in peoples’ yards, empty lots, parks, town squares, fields, and just about any open space available along the route.
While traveling on Highway 27, Karen and I have often wondered what this building perched high atop Lookout Mountain was. We made it our second stop on Sunday’s cruise. Built in 1928 as “The Castle in the Clouds” it was a 200-room luxury hotel boasting the South’s largest ballroom. It is now the residence hall for Convent College on a 400-acre campus with less than 900 students.
The campus was vacant except for the Administrator of the Residence Hall, his wife, and their two children playing in front of their home. We learned the Presbyterian College is private and 99% of its students receive some form of financial aid. After our self-guided walk about this beautiful campus, the wife sent us to check out the hang gliders five miles up the main road. It was good advice.
The overlook is 1,340 feet above Lookout Mountain Flight Park and also offers a take-off ramp for hang gliders when there are updrafts.
Along the grass landing strip the flight park offers cabins, a swimming pool, hangers, a store, and meeting facilities. Flyers must provide their transportation to the top of the cliffs for running-start takeoffs.
Custom-made ultralights are used to tow hang gliders into the air on days when the winds are calm.
I flew in a tandem ultralight in Winter Park Colorado where we took off at 9,000 feet and I can’t imagine the skills needed to tow a hang glider behind such a fragile aircraft. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
The saving grace is both tower and towee are capable of gliding to a safe landing without mechanical propulsion.
Our Sunday drive started as a lark and ended with new and unusual places to take future visitors. “Ya never know, until ya go.”