N. Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas…. when do we get home, please?

Having Julie and Alex fly in for Georgie’s party gave us time to spend with them, as well as the rest of Georgie’s family. Alex works long and hard and we don’t always have much if any time to visit with him as much as we’d like. Hmmm… Or maybe it’s more than he’d like. Nah. He’s a good guy. 

 

Both Alex and Julie told us we really had to plan our trip so we could see the Great Smoky Mountains. Alex went on and on about their beauty and on our map it looked they were tall enough to be called mountains. We could never say no to Alex and we had to head in that direction anyway.

 

The weather got hot and humid and the skeeters were biting, so we were happy to stay in Jabba with the air conditioning on and the windows closed. Tom commented on how smooth the roads were. The words were barely out of his mouth when we hit a rough section and the under cabinet mounted coffee maker came unbolted and crashed down onto the counter. 

 

Virginia and North Carolina has tons of Daylilies and Black-eyed Susans along side the roads. Their were no tobacco fields, unless they masquerade as kudzu or corn. We did pass the Philip Morris USA HQ the day before. It has a huge tall tower in front that looks like a cigarette. 

 

I love the kudzu. It envelopes the trees and makes them look as though they are dress up for Halloween – wearing leafy green sheets and trying to reach out and scare you. Boo!

 

I think Tom likes Rving because he now has a real reason for not stopping so I can shop. Few places, including many RV parks, are big enough for an RV and car extending over 60 feet long. Sigh… No more opportunities to buy kitchy crap. Tom needs that saved money to pay for the diesel fuel. At least there are no more tolls. 

 

We passed over  the Yadken Pee-Dee River Basin and by the Pudding Ridge Golf Club. There are no freeway adoptions or sponsorships.  We see why. There, alongside the highway is an prison inmate road worker crew. We know they are convicts – there are two guards accompanying them who are carrying rifles! 

 

Cars follow and tailgate each other like NASCAR drivers. Ville is the most common suffix to town names. 

 

Between the Sloans’ house, Rene and Den’s place and the countryside in general I am getting a lot of good landscaping ideas. Watch, Tom will complain but eventually do them and then take original credit for the ideas.

 

I love seeing all the great signs for places so different than what I am used to seeing. Not that I want to partake of a lot of them, but they are worthy of mention, a snicker or an outright laugh. Road-side stands sell Frog Jam and Moonshine Jelly. There was a Papoose Motel and Cherokee Choppers and the Native Clans Casket Company.

 

We must be in the Bible Belt. There are no casinos, but a big sign proclaims “Night Club” – Stompin’ First Baptist Church Ground Swamp Party with Pig Pickin’.

 

Hot Boiled Peanuts, the Tidal Wave Car Wash, Biscuitville, and this one I later saw in San Bernardino, CA – Landshark Lager – Let the fin begin! Not far away, as we start our ascent into the Smokys a billboard warns “Life in the Ocean Depends on Us – Keep it Clean.”  The Atlantic is hundreds of miles away.

 

English seems to be a second language here. The accents are so strong it often sounds like the locals have mouths full of those boiled peanuts.

 

We pass a place advertising Hillbilly Golf and drive past Gum Stand Road and Knotty Branch Road. A yellow diamond sign warns us to “Watch for Fallen Rocks” – no falling rocks as in the West . It is an older geographic area I guess.

 

The Smoky Mountains are indeed great. The road is bordered by beautiful rocky creeks and hiking trails. The turnouts to see the views are spectacular. Like the road to Hana on Maui, there are many switchbacks and hairpin turns. You attain an altitude of 5,000 feet. There are no rainbow eucalyptuses, orchids, hibiscus or tarzan-vines, but there are real forests filled with maple, rhododendrons, kudzu and babbling brooks.,Jaded person that I am, I thought they would just look like the LA basin on a smoggy day. Nope. They are definitely worth the trip. 

 

The other sidc of the mountains brought us to Gatlinburg and then the Mecca for jaw-dropping tourist-trap kitsch Pigeon Forge.  Gatlinburg is at least in a pretty mountainy setting, but both places are as fake as Dolly Parton’s “twins.”  

 

Gatlinburg has Santa’s Land and Zoo. Its little rollercoaster has Rudolph “pulling” the first car. Ray’s Diner was a single wide trailer. You are in Cherokee land.There was a guy hanging around a street corner dressed in tribal attire and sporting a Mohawk haircut. It has a Tomahawk Mini Mall and places selling Rat Cheese. You’ll find Jigglin’ George’s, Bubba Gump’s, a Hard Rock Cafe, an aquarium and the Motor Nature Trail.

 

 In Pigeon Forge, Dolly Parton’s home town, there are mile after mile of video arcades, carnival and amusement park rides, go-carts, Elvis shows and museums. One place offered you a “Free Hermit Crab” and we passed the National Knife Museum and the World’s Largest “As Seen on TV” store. We passed a huge “adult” superstore. We didn’t see Dollywood, but saw billboards advertising the combination Gospel & Harvest Festival (Oct. 3-31). Like ABC stores in Hawaii and Starbuck’s in Seattle, every block had at least one and many times two or more pancake houses. It was with regret that we kept driving. Yeah, right.

 

Tom made breakfast the next morning before we hit the highways again. Guess what he made? Yup, pancakes! We have decided it must be the official state food.

 

No more towns of untold delight awaited us, but we did pass a place extolling its Wheat Community and African Burial Ground. Lots of the trucks passing us boasted wheels with spikes sticking out of their lug nuts, like the ones in the chariot race in Ben Hur. We kept our distance from them. We went through gently rolling hills, it wasn’t so flat. The kudzu looks almost like topiary creations. We passed Frozen Head and Mousetail State Parks a Crab Orchard and a Y-12 National Security Laboratory Complex (whatever that is). We drove by a place with the best name ever – Bucksnort, Tennessee.

 

Getting fuel is a disaster waiting to happen. Ah, for the good old days – any station, any pump, any price. When buying only 10 gallons, 10 cents a gallon difference in price doesn’t amount to much.  With Jabba’s 150 gallon tank, the price difference becomes significant!  The station the King of the Road selected didn’t have a diesel pump convenient (read that possible) to get in and out. And at the station across the street that we could get into we had to disconnect the HHR and make a 7 point turn to get to the pump. And then we were boxed in by other cars for a half an hour. Yes, I remember those good old days well. Arrive at the motel and bring in your overnight back, my pillows, and the dog food. Cheaper and a lot less hassle than refueling. At least we can go 1,000 miles between fill-ups. But when we get below a half a tank Tom starting acting like a smoker down to his last half pack of cigarettes. 

 

It is very hot. Wicked witch that I am, I’d usually melt, but it is too humid. We kept the air conditioning going all night. 

 

The RV parks all have signs that tell you, “In case of natural emergency, seek shelter in the restrooms.” Luckily, tornadles are not forecast.

 

We passed some motorcycle riders sporting leather jackets emblazoned with “Sons of Silence.” Silence? On Harleys? We saw a place selling Lazer Z riding lawn mowers. They had roll bars! The rear bumper of a big truck “passing side” on the left side of his rear bumper and “suicide” on the right side. 

 

It is getting flatter. Just little downgrades. Very gradual.  60 miles east of Memphis a billboard for Graceland cried out, “You had me at Hound Dog.” There were tons of bouquets of flowers in front of it. 

 

Another decreed “In the beginning God created” then there was a circle with a monkey in it and a line drawn through it and Darwinism written below that and another circle with “earth” written it.

 

The National Hatchery was passed. I think they hatch gnats there.

 

Oh, did I forget to mention in Indiana we saw a billboard that asked the question “Hoosier Daddy?” for DNA paternity testing?

 

It was incredibly oppressively hot in Memphis. We parked by the Mississippi River and Tom disconnected the HHR and went for barbecue to bring back for lunch. Julie insisted Memphis had the best in the world. After tasting the food Tom brought back from Neely’s I have to agree. It turned out Alex and Julie had never seen the Great Smoky Mountains, but they did have Memphis barbecue. We ate in the air conditioned comfort of the RV, as it was in the high 90’s outside. We saw the pyramid, but there was too much road work and no time to explore anyway. We need to get to Dallas. 

 

We need to add more coolant to the AC. Until now, everyone has said it is rainier and 10 degrees cooler than normal for this time of year. It is flat here too. The only variations in the horizon are groves of trees. Tom thought he saw a tornadle, but it was just a dust devil, thankfully. 

 

The waffle houses continue where the pancake houses left off. There is one at every freeway exit. They are more plentiful than Walmarts!  We passed Mack’s – the World’s Foremost Waterfowl Outfitter. Your ducks need wearing apparel in the south, I guess.

 

We saw a swamp along I-40 and it looked just like the one in Disneyland’s Blue Bayou. I-40 needs work: it is bumpy and junk is piling up along its shoulders. No road adoptions here either. Medians sport black-eyed Susans, whose sunny petal color matches the yellow-orange stripes on the roads. Many of the trees and shrubs throughout the south are unfamiliar to me. 

 

Silos are bigger in diameter than in the mid-west, but shorter and have Chinese coulee-hat pointy tops.

 

The Rest Area restroom door bore the sign: “Women – No Pets.”  T-Ricks RV Park had a big t-rex statue and advertised barbecue and ribs. I wonder if they were t-rex ribs? Nick’s barbecue featured catfish. And there was the Catfish barn. And finally a Starbucks. 

 

Billboards warned: “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,” “Warning: Prepare to Meet God,” and “If you die today, where will you spend eternity?” “I hope it’s not here in Arkansas,” said Tom. The scariest one was “I-30 Liquors – exit now…the next 5 counties are dry.”

 

A Pentecostal church declared itself to be “a real church for a real world.”

 

There were few animals in fields, but one place offered registered Brangus cattle. 

 

The road continues bumping along and the coffee maker shook loose again.  The air conditional blower tube either popped off or melted loose. The “Smokin’ Style BBQ” seemed appropriate. We passed the town boasting to be the boyhood home of Bill Clinton. I know now why he didn’t go back to Arkansas after the presidency.

 

The fellow Tom is interviewing with suggested we stay at Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He said he and his fraternity brothers stayed their during their college days. Yeah, for hell week. Hot Springs was hellishly hot. There was an amusement park with nasty looking rides and the town looks kinda rundown.  Then the RV problems began for real. The AC quit. The stairs wouldn’t descend (I guess it thought we were already at the lowest level of hell, and the generator doesn’t want to cool. Tom commented, “If you’re not a Mr. Fix-It and enjoy fixing stuff, don’t buy an RV.”

 

A roadside business claimed “Humane Animal Removal and Repair.” Of the animal?

 

There was even a Romainian Apostolic Pentecostal Church. 

 

We saw the first palm tree of the trip and a cardinal. Lots of fireworks stands were open and ready for business. Moonlight Tattoo told you to”Blame it on the Moon.” We passed some roadkill – an armadillo.

 

Soon to be roadkill, we were passed by a couple sharing one motorcycle. No helmets, just bandanas. Both wearing shorts. She in back in a tube-top which kept slipping down and her legs wrapped around his waist.

 

The Red River was neither red, nor a river. Texas continued on hot and humid. Mt. Pleasant –  where? Passed a big Ocean Spray Cranberries plant. We are nowhere anywhere near where a cranberry would grow. We passed the Rainbow Ranch, a dairy museum, and the Audie Murphy-American Cotton Museum. 

 

Tom is psycho. Oops, psychic! Yesterday we were talking about celebrities and he mentioned how he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Michael Jackson had died. This morning it came to pass. We were together the entire day, so I know he didn’t hear it some other place.

 

Alliteration at its finest: Big Bruce’s BarBQ and Burger Barn. Hardee’s is now Carl’s Jr. There are Steak ‘n Shakes. The Black Eyed Pea restaurant tells you to “arrive empty and leave full.”

 

It is flat and there is a big lake. Where did it come from? A lotta rain? Musta been a real gully washer.

 

Oh, boy! A waffle house again! How about a place called “Condoms to Go.” Or maybe you prefer “All Shoes $4.99 – Off Price Shoes.”

 

The road-side warned “We ticket drivers and passengers. Click it or Ticket.”

 

Miraculously, we managed to bypass the North Dallas Toll-way. Whew!

 

Note to self: Don’t apply lipstick while traveling bumpy roads, or in stop and go traffic. 

 

It is hot, humid, hazy and 105 degrees, but a sign warns to watch for ice on the bridges. 

 

Great sign on top of a taxi: Grandma always says, “pull ’em up.” It shows low droopy baggy pants.

 

How about a bumper sticker, “Horn broke, watch for finger.”

 

We made it to Dallas. Yee ha!