The End of the Road. Not Literally. I Guess the End of Our Trip. Or Something. This Is Too Long. For Sure.

After we handed over the car to that guy who went to my high school somehow, our trip, as I mentioned, was ostensibly over.  The next stop on our list of stops was meeting up with Amanda’s old friend Andrew, and his girlfriend Anna.  You may remember them from post number three of this very blog.

On the way up there, Amanda was in close contact with Andrew, via text messages, and they were discussing were we should eat.  A little about Andrew:

He is, quite literally, one of the pickier eaters in the history of eaters.  Not only is he a vegetarian, which limits his options immediately, but, as Amanda tells me, he basically subsisted on pizza and Goldfish brand snack crackers for the entirety of high school.  He has, since then, expanded his tastes a bit, but is, by his own admission, stuck with an extremely bland palate. 

Because of this, both Amanda and I were expecting to be eating at The Olive Garden, which serves decent food along with excellent salad and breadsticks.  I would have been perfectly happy ending up there.

During the back and forth phone messages, he mentioned wanting to go out for seafood.  I was, and Amanda was more so, shocked.  This was highly unexpected, but not altogether unwelcomed.  We were back on the East Coast, which is pretty great as far as getting seafood goes, so I was looking forward to some good, fresh Atlantic Ocean dwelling food.

I learned during the car ride, and you will learn with this next photo, where we ended up:

Not exactly what I had in mind, as we were about an hour from the cold waves of the Atlantic, but whatever.  Andrew’s a good fellow, and it was a capital time.

Here’s what I ordered and subsequently received:

Shrimp and stuff.  What stuff?  Pasta.  What other stuff?  This stuff:

Holy hell, that’s is a piss-ton of butter.  Seriously, look at all of that butter.  Holy crap.  Relax on the butter Red Lobster.

After we had finished up our conversation and food, we went our separate ways.  Their way was likely to their house.  Our way was to the house of Amanda’s sister Melissa.  The same house that we stayed in the first night of our trip.  The same house with the teeny tiny little girl’s bed that I sleep on.  And the house that I took the final picture of the trip in:

I found this little notebook lying on my nephew-in-law’s desk.  This cracked me up at the time.  At this time, I still cracks me up.  Not only is the sentence, with a correctly spelled “pizza” in it, just awesome, but with this misspelling?  Greatness.  Me want pissa as well.  Yum.

And that’s it.  The end.  I may go back through everything and give you some highlights/favorites and whatnot within a week or so.

The next adventure for Amanda and I?  Selling the house we bought and rehabilitated, which I also blog about here.  oh, and a little matter of moving ourselves to Puerto Rico on the 31st of January (which I will likely blog about on that other blog also). 

Slammin’.

A Really Sad Trailer

Not for The Notebook.

After our incredibly big time at Dollywood, we headed for a visit with Amanda’s dad in Hickory, North Carolina.  We planned on stopping in for dinner and a quick tour of the factory he runs.  Luckily, before dinner, we got a peek into the life of a trailer dweller. 

In kind of a weird story, Amanda’s dad is renting a trailer from someone he knows.  He is basically house-sitting for a pittance instead of living in an apartment or something for more than a pittance.  He is basically content anywhere, so he seems OK with the situation (plus, if he wasn’t he’d just leave).  The man who owns the trailer left all of his stuff inside of it, including this incredible shrine to all things hillbilly:

Amanda’s father, who is college educated and a very intelligent, non-hill-dwelling man, lives with this cabinet in full view.  Just awesome. Awesome. 

Not only is this thing in his house or half-house, but the rest of the house looks like this:

Drab, brown, dreary and completely deflating.  I cannot believe that the man has not yet murdered himself.  Luckily for everyone, Mr. Stotzer is somehow content there and remains alive and well, no worse for wear.  A consummate professional.  And also and excellent fellow.

Once we got the tour (including the second bedroom that is filled with all of the junk that the owner left in the place) and I had sampled the back-relief apparatus we were on our way into town for some dinner:

That was weird and a little uncomfortable, but no big deal.  Less weird and more comfortable was dinner here:

The reason we went to this place?  Amanda’s longing for and loving of the spinach dip appetizer:

That picture sucks, but Amanda loves that stuff.  Loves it.  I found it not lovable, but who cares?  I didn’t order it.

What I did order was some real southern fried chicken:

It was great.  I could have dealt with a little less of the peppery white country gravy, but the chicken was completely sterling.  Crunchy batter (even under that pool of gravy), super moist chicken, excellent spices in the batter, very good smashed potatoes and some excellent conversation made the dinner a rousing success. 

The teeny pile of greens on the plate?  Gross.

After dinner, we headed to Cold Stone Creamery for some standard ice cream, then headed back to our hotel for some more conversation and Celtics’ game watching.  Hooray.

The next day, we visited the plastic roll factory briefly and headed back onto the road, in the rain (surprise).  Into Virginia we went.

Our first stop in VA: lunch.  Using a little book we bought pre-trip, we found this place:

I’ll let you guess where in Virginia this place is located.

It was a dumpy restaurant that looked like it served only elderly folks, which I’m fine with.  I ordered my standard lunch plate:

Turkey club.  Kaboom.  Passable.  The best part of The Roanoker?  This sign above a old person:

I had no idea what a Dorking Hen was at the time.  I’ve since learned that it is not a plodding, unathletic, kind of overweight social outcast chicken, but instead, a regular old boring breed of boring chicken.  Color me disappointed with Wikipedia.

Once I had scarfed down the kind of dry sandwich and kind of crappy French fries (FREEDOM FRIES!), we got down to some business.  It was finally time to hand in the vehicle we had been driving around the country packed with our stuff.  A few days earlier, I had set up an appointment with the good folks here:

I walked in, chatted with some salesman fellow and found out that long ago, he went to my high school.  I went to a tiny private school in Dover, New Hampshire, so finding an alumnus from the seventies, when the school was even tinier, is kind of rare, especially when they live in a radon town in random Virginia.

Small world weirdness aside, we got down to business.  That business turned out to be super easy, as I signed something, handed over two keys, we inspected the car for thirteen seconds and we were on our way.  I cried a lot, said my goodbyes to the Ford Motor Companies finest creation ever and we hopped into the rental car we had gotten a few miles away from the dealership.

I will tell you about the rental car shortly.

Once the car vanished from our lives forever, we got down to some lunch.  We found a place by name alone using our GPS and headed inside:

What a dumpy place.  The benches were from the early fourteen hundreds and were held together with some green shaded duct tape.  It smelled a little off, but sometimes these are the places that prove the old “don’t judge a book” adage true.  We ordered despite our uneasiness with the place:

A cheeseburger with bacon (and a free old-timey sword shaped food spear) and some rippled potato chips.  not too bad at all.  The bacon was very good, nice and thick, and the rest of the plate was pretty standard.  I think I enjoyed it a little bit more because I was worried about food-borne illness prior to receiving the plate.  Once my fears were quelled by the look of the food, my rock bottom expectations were exceeded and thus, it was kind of yummy. 

*Aside* – Everyone.  Please.  Learn to manage expectations.  Especially if you are a contractor.  Do not tell someone that you will have something finished in one day, then take seven.  Instead, make up reasons that it will take well over a week, then pleasantly surprise your customer by finishing in only a week.  If you’re not managing people’s expectation, in any walk of life, you are a dummy. - *Aside Over*

Here’s where we ate:

I saved this image for last because it contains photographic proof f the car that we rented.  Here’s how we ended up with this pile of essword:

A few days previous, I booked a car rental online.  I rented a small SUV, as we needed a bunch of cargo room for all of our junk.  I figured that since we had crammed all of our stuff into one small SUV (Mercury Mariner) renting a similarly sized SUV would serve our purposes well one the remainder of our trip up the East Coast.

The morning of the car swap, we headed to the car rental company (at a super small airport) and I walked in to get the keys to what I had reserved.  Luckily for us, what I had reserved was not yet available, nor did it look like what I had reserved would become available anytime soon.  The clerk explained that the customer who was using it currently had not yet returned it.  Hooray.

I explained our situation after he offered to give us a large sedan, and he said he had one car that might be sufficient for our needs. 

The car pictured above is a Chevrolet HHR.  It is, perhaps, the worst car ever made.  It is ugly (in my opinion), terrible with gas mileage, uncomfortable, assembled from poor quality materials and was a huge embarrassment to drive.  I felt like an overweight mother of three behind the wheel of that thing.  How that thing is ever sold to anyone other than a rental car company eludes me. 

I really, really, hate the hell out of the Chevrolet HHR, very, very much.  It’s no small wonder that Chevrolet went into the tank with that abortion of an automobile.  I really don’t like Chevrolet or anything that they do.  I hope they go under completely.  Jerks.

This pretty much marked the end of our trip as far as we were concerned.  I will have a post or two more, but not much.  Heads up.

Dolly Parton Probably Has Fake Boobs

But you’d never know it visiting her amusement park. 

Once we left church, or rather, a place that adult who want to be rich lure kids to talk about Jesus Christ during a soft rock concert, we were hungry.  Luckily, we had a great place picked out and after much driving, we arrived in Memphis Tennessee to eat.  Also?  We got drinks to go along with our food.  I add this detail because the drinks were humongous:

That’s Amanda’s adult hand holding that gigantic soda cup.  No wonder the folks in the south are such a strain on America’s dismal obesity statistic.  That’s a crapton of calories in that cup.  Tasty though.

Back to the place we ate.  Sorry for the semi-tangent.  Here’s where we ended up:

World famous, or at least famous in the south, this place is highly recommended by every book out there about Bar-B-Q and is generally featured on The Travel Channel and The Food Network.  In short: high hopes alert.

We stepped in and saw this super fun group of folks enjoying some slaughtered meats:

Yea.  It’s kind of dumpy.  No big deal.  It was still going to be awesome.  We ordered from a semi-depressed, fully-disinterested teenaged girl and hunkered down for some rib goodness:

Signature ribs, baked beans, cole slaw (Barf City), and bar-b-q sauced up pasta.  The ribs were very good, as were the beans.  They were obviously slow cooked and “falling off of the bone” as they say (well, they usually say “falling off the bone”, but I generally like grammar).  The sauce was a little sweet, with a bit of tang to it, and was overall very pleasant.  Were they as good a rack of ribs in Texas?  Essword no.  Not even close.  Dry rub is absolutely where it’s at. 

The pasta was a little bit weird for me.  Basically, it was overcooked spaghetti, chopped up to be super small and topped with a ladle-full of the sauce smothering the ribs.  A good comparison would be canned spaghetti with bar-b-q sauce, instead of the sauce used on SpaghettiO’s.  Not great, but at least a little interesting?  I guess?

After we ate, we decided to take our time a bit in Tennessee, in an attempt to let the gigantic storm that had been following us since San Francisco, pass.  We headed to our hotel near Nashville and slept.  Boring.

The next morning, we headed out with some big big plans.  Just kidding.  We had teeny-weeny plans.  The first stop?

We expected to be able to walk around the venue a bit to check it out.  We hadn’t planned on spending $20 apiece to tour the place, so we decided to just check out the boring gift shop and call it a visit.

After buying a cheap harmonica and some drum sticks (for Rock Band on ps3, duh), we were back in the car for stop number two of the day:

Amanda was super duper extra mega ultra pumped for the Pancake Pantry.  She loves pancakes.  A lot.  This place was also highly recommended apparently, as the line to be seated was out the door and the place was packed with folks at every table.  See?

*Aside* – When we were in line waiting to be seated, we were behind, and in front of two separate groups of people who had come to the city to see the Philadelphia Eagles play football.  It was terrible to listen to them talk to each other.  I really don’t like some people from Philadelphia at all.  They are the worst.  Luckily for them, I do like some people from Philadelphia, especially if they are feeding me. – *Aside Over*

Once seated, we started to realize what all of the fuss was about.  To say that the pancake options were extensive is like saying that the selection of classic book at the Library of Congress is extensive.  That was excessive, sure, but there were a whole lot of different pancakes to choose from.  I chose this meal:

Sausage links wrapped in pancakes, or Pigs in a Blanket.  I smothered them in butter and maple syrup and dug in.  Pretty good I guess.  I’m a dinner connoisseur, so breakfast is lost on me, but this meal was a little disappointing.  I guess if you offer a ton of different stuff, you can really expect to make everything great (like The Cheesecake Factory).  They were passable, certainly, but nothing to seek out if you’re ever in Nashville.

After brunch with Eagles fans, we drove to a teeny little town in Tennessee.  That might not narrow it down, but I will narrow it for you.  Pinpoint it actually.  Bellevue, TN.

This place just oozed old timey charm that women just eat up:

Red brick everywhere.  Tons of little shops on a long strip of old school American Main Street.  Amanda loved it.  We popped into a few shops, grabbed some gifts for folks, then ended up in Sweet CeCe’s.  It’s a little do it yourself frozen yogurt shop.  First, you pick your flavor:

Then you pick your dry toppings:

Thereafter?  Non-dry toppings:

Then the cashier weighs it, you pay, and your left to enjoy something like this:

Sure, it’s ugly and poorly constructed, but the toppings (brownies, Butterfinger and M&M’s) and the yogurt itself (vanilla) were all excellent.  The frozen yogurt was actually surprisingly ice-cream-esque,  Really thick and quite savory.  Excellent stop for sure.

After that, we got to steppin’, then got to drivin’, then got to checkin’ in.  We were hungry, but luckily for us, right outside of our hotel?  This place:

We had to eat there, as Uncle Buck is perhaps the greatest thing John Candy ever did before his premature and morbid obesity related demise.  Sure, the character on the sign looks nothing like John Candy, but perhaps this Uncle Buck was the inspiration for the film?

We went in, sat down and were accosted by an overly friendly, super bored, kind of stupid waiter.  He didn’t really leave us alone very much during the experience and he acted like we were all best friends.  I really dislike such people.  What a dink.

Here’s what Uncle Buck had to offer:

As chicken fingers go, they were very good.  But still.  They were just chicken fingers.  No big deal.

The next day?  Greatness:

Dollywood.  Kablam.

We were really very excited about this.  Amanda loves Dolly Parton and we both love amusement parks, how can you lose?  Answer:  You cannot.

The park itself was surprisingly devoid of any sort of Dolly Parton references; it was mildly shocking.  We both expected a statue or some portraits or something, but at most there was a song or two played throughout the park’s sound system featuring Dolly.  Lack of Dolly aside, the park did not disappoint.

The rides were pretty good to very good, even though a few of them were closed, the lines for the rides were laughably short (pretty much no wait at all), the park was well laid out and well kept, and the food was standard crappy amusement park fair:

 

Not so great,

So what made Dollywood stand out?  Two things.  The first:

Adventure Mountain.  It was basically a giant ropes course.  I had never seen anything like it in an amusement park, or anywhere other than the forest.  It was comprised of a series of interconnected rickety bridges, rope crossings, and various other seemingly dangerous gap crossings.  It was pretty fun.  The best part is shown in that last image.  It was basically a two inch wide beam you had to cross.  It was a little bit unnerving, even though we were pretty safe the entire time.

Well done Dollywood.

The second standout aspect of the park?  The clientele.  Outstanding.  When we arrived at the park, we had to park our car in a lot that was at least a mile from the entrance.  We assumed that the park would be pretty crowded, which we were correct in assuming. 

How could such a crowded park lead to almost no lines for the main attractions, the rides?  Well.  It’s easy. 

The elderly. 

This place was jam packed with overall-wearing, blue-haired denture cream commercial waiting to happen.  It was glorious.

Why would so many old folks flock to a place that their pacemaker company probably issues warning about?  Why, religious trios of course:

Just marvel at all of that grey hair.  Incredible.

These folks have season passes to the park and come to both exercise and listen to music by hillbillies stuck in 1940.  It was awesome.

Occasionally, we’d see an adventurous old person venture onto a ride for the thrill of their lives.  This was the usual outcome:

Her hands were over her face for the duration of the ride.  She was terrified.  I was hilaritied (not a word).

Overall, Dollywood was definitely worth the visit.  Just an awesome place to ride some mid-level roller coasters, get some hand churned butter and homemade candy, and watch elderly people tap their feet lightly in near silence while listening to what amounted to a barbershop quartet singing about Jesus and his dad (who is the same person/soul or whatever). 

Incredible day.

After that, we headed to North Carolina, where we found this:

Yee-Haw.