Top of the World is a residential development around Lake in the Sky in Blount County, Tennessee.  It borders Smoky Mountain National Park.  Foothills Parkway, a national scenic parkway managed by the National Park Service, is the only major road  to the development.  There are school children in this development.  As part of the shutdown, Bambi's Brownshirts have barricaded Foothills Parkway, effectively stranding this community and its children.   The closure came without warning and left the local school district scrambling to get children back to their homes. The Fox news story notes there are no safe bus routes in and out of this development.  Looking at the satellite map of the location of the nearest schools and from my personal knowledge of the local roads in eastern Tennessee, I concur with the following assessment. One local resident told Knoxville television station WBIR that the alternative roads are "white knuckle routes." The...(Read Full Post)