Karen and I have passed this lookout, with a sweeping view of the beautiful Sequatchie Valley, dozens of times going and coming from day trips to hike waterfall trails in the far eastern portion of the Appalachian Mountains. This was the first time we stopped. On Saturday (5-7-2022) we ventured to the quaint hamlet of Dunlap, Tennessee, positioned at the head of the dale, for Valley Fest.
The spring-fed Sequatchie River has carved this unnaturally-straight basin that is six-miles wide and sixty-miles long. Towering 1000-feet above the valley floor, the Cumberland Plateau forms the east wall and Walden Ridge completes the ravine along the west side.
Dunlap’s population barely tops 5,000. The local car dealership emptied its sales lot to accommodate the festival’s car show. The 1963 Corvette next to the new, mid-engine 2021 Corvette created a startling transition. Cool never goes out of style.
Watching kids flung into the air on elastic bands and tumble like laundry in a dryer, inside plastic-bubble tubes in a wading pool, made me realize, “I may feel like a big kid sometimes, but I’m too old to do this kind of kids’ stuff.”
Valley Fest had food trucks and trailers with all the usual heart-attack inducing choices, but this vendor had them all in one place. Go for the sizzle, expect the burn.
The characters at these festivals are a large part of their charm. This cedar walking stick, complete with hand-carved snake, was an instant conversation starter.
The Festival rules forbid bringing dogs, but if you had a whiskery mutt with a tiny hat, nobody seemed to mind. The pouty-pooch looked mortified to me.
We missed Charlie Daniels opening Valley Fest Friday night, but the Saturday music lineup was also good. Drew Sterchi & Blues Tribe played rock, blues and jazz fusion for us that was excellent. The sketchy weather kept attendance low, but the light rains and drizzle were interrupted by patchy sunshine.
We walked a block from the festival to take in Dunlap’s oldest stretch of downtown. Working on a ladder behind the window in a stretch of storefronts built in 1829, was Eric Beavers. Karen got his attention and he let us inside the unfinished Sequatchie Valley Brewing Company. Eric gave us a sample of his excellent Stout while he and his wife Laura told us about growing up in Dunlap and coming home to start their new business. It was a cool space, with genuinely nice owners and we promised to come back. It will be an easy oath to keep as there are many incredible sights left for us to discover in this historically- and visually-stunning environment.