And the Road Goes on Forever

We couldn't figure out why our GPS was saying that it took almost eight hours to get from the edge of Tennessee to South Carolina. When you look at them on a map, they look so close! At about 9 o'clock on Monday night, we figured out why it takes just that many hours to get there.

There is no real high way between Tennessee and the Carolinas. There is only this winding two lane road that twists through the Smoky Mountains for miles and miles. When you are on the road, the tree covered mountains tower on either side of you, and the bends in the road are 90 degree angles. Trucks bust down this road doing 70 mph, but thankfully, Bobby was nice and cautious. Not that I don't have total faith in the RV, but when you see signs warning that there is a hill with a 7% grade (are we supposed to know what that means??) coming up and pictures of trucks at a steep angle on the yellow roadsigns, one tends to get a little nervous. This road was like five hours on a Dollywood ride. Lol.

Aside from the awesome places we are visiting, driving in the RV and camping all over the place has been such an awesome experience. I tried taking pictures of the roads we are traveling and the campsites, but it just doesn't do the scenery justice. I think that even when we are back home, we will make camping at KOAs a habit. It's a great mini-vacation, to just get away from the TV and mail and the mundane. I'll post some more pictures of just funny things we've been doing and things we've seen.

This is space command to Zoom.....

Well, if you're like me then when you read something you hear the author's voice in your head. While we were at Graceland I read everything with an Elvis accent, Wrigley Field signs were all written in an exaggerated Harry Carey voice, Dollywood was a sweet lil Miss Parton southern drawl and this blog has been my sweet singing Shanny voice so far.....until now. First of all, that sign I hit was camouflaged and anyone would have hit it, The Ol' 76 is about 200 feet long and often has a mind of her own and goes wherever she wants. Okay, maybe not, I drive around this great country like Mister Magoo just driving around and bopping up and down singing "On the road again" and "radar love". Sooooo where did she leave off ? I think after the last transmission on Snoop Bloggy Blog we spent a few days in Pigeon Forge at Dollywood. It's like Disneyland but replace the mouse with butterflies and exchange all of the children with sweaty rebelflag weilding rednecks. Lots of rides, food and shows. We went to the Dolly Parton museum and went onto her tour bus. Pardon my french but that day was hot as heck so the surprise rainstorm was a treat. However the flash floods and Tennessee Trash wet tee shirt contest couldn''t have been worse. The rain made the ground slicker than an ice skating rink for anyone wearing Crocs with socks : ) and the rain only accentuated what we were trying to avoid seeing. I'm not writing this trying to be mean or negative but it just seems that people down here are a little slower, a little fatter, just a little dumber and a WHOOOLE lot more racist. Not my first option of crowds to be stuck in wearing transparent, rainsoaked tankinis. Okay anyway, we decided that night driving would be best for the old girl b/c she doesn't seem to like the heat anymore than I do, so we left around 8ish for our 7 anda half hour trip to Myrtle Beach. The original plan was to drive a few, sleep a few then finish in the morning but we were rocking, dancing, texting, singing and guzzling Joe so we kept on keeping on and landed at a WalMart around 4:30. I've loved this whole RV thing so far... driving it, starting it, driving with my arm out the window, talking to other RV guys and especially using RV terms ((okay, I'll admit I bought a book called RVing For Dummies, but I've learned a whole lot of cool lingo)) so that night we "boondocked" which means that didn't have the water/sewer/electricity hookup so we slept with a battery powered fan. We woke up and checked into our Kampsite, which is 1 block from the beach, and went out on our bikes for lunch and beers, which seems to be the only thing we've been doing on this honeymoon aka superlong vacation. We swam, got dressed and wentto Broadway at the Beach which was PACKED so we put our name in for dinner reservations at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville only to findoutthat there was a three and a half hour wait. Boardwalk at the Beach is like a Salem Willows meets Hampton Beach meets Faneuil Hall, lots of stores, food, activities, fish feeding spots, kids, singers and what not... so we did what you'd expect us to do..... we went to the movies and saw Grownups. We've been swimming in 6 different swimming pools so far, have visited 2 countries and have visited 11 states at this point. Today is my 33rd birfday aka Larry Bird aka Varitek aka Rolling Rock aka Carter Estate and I'm thankful for all of the birthday wishes I've been receiving from friends and family. Last night our family received bad news about Cousin Michelle's battle with cancer so please keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she gears up to endure a stronger round of treatments. ++++ We miss everybody and keep listing things that we miss most, usually starting our list off with Chinese food and Sox games on tv only to be followed by Wallace, Flax Pond and oh yeah.... you guys, JK we do miss everyone and can't wait to get home to talk about the wedding and look at pics together...... Elvis Impersonator show tonight and Barefoot Landing..... talk to ya soon - - - Bobby Conlon
*PS- we have an AWESOME bumper sticker collection going on here.

Random pics from the road

Driving through Kentucky

The Ol Seventy Six at a KOA campground

For some strange reasaon it had to Be/It Was All A Dream About Tennessee

We are in Nashville Tennessee, the country music center of the world. It is easy to see why all aspiring country singers have to go to Nashville. It is a city like any other except that every single bar up and down Broadway street has 24 hours of live music. The way the bands make their money is just by passing around a big tip jug every hour. We stopped at a bar around 12:30 in the afternoon just for some AC and a drink and there was a young girl singing with a band of old guys playing behind her, and the bar was full--on a Friday afternoon at a place that doesn't even serve lunch!

Besides every bar having music all the time, every store sells Boots. There is probably about ten Boot shops on the strip and one bar that even sells boots, no kidding. We had a drink at a place called Tootsie's Orchid Bar that had signed posters and photographs of every famous country singer you can imagine. Minnie Pearl, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, etc.

The first night we were there we went to The Grand Ole Opry which if anyone doesn't know is a live radio show that they do three times a week at the Grand Ole Opry theater. They have about sixteen acts that come on and sing and tell jokes and stories, etc. Since the Grand Ole Opry was flooded this past spring, they are still holding the show but at the Ryman Auditorium right in dowtown Nashville where it originally was before they built the Opry house. We had such a good time at the Opry, we even got to see Little Jimmy Dickens and Vince Gill who performed at the end of the night and brought his daughter out to sing with him. We could see his daughter and Amy Grant watching him perform in the wings, it was very cool.

We figured that on our way to Myrtle Beach we will make a few pit stops, one of them being Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville is the big city right next to a small town called Pigeon Forge which is at the base of the Smoky Mountains. Pigeon Forge is where Dolly Parton is from and we are going to go to Dollywood! Does Tennessee hold the record for the longest state from East to West in the US? It HAS to! Four hours from Memphis to Nashville and four and a half hours from Nashville to Knoxville!

To quote the famous line of Minnie Pearl... "How-deeeeeeeeeeee!"

Ghosts of the Old South are all Around Me

On the way to Memphis, a funny thing happened. The awning on the passenger side of the motorhome suddenly began to dangle in the breeze as we were cruising down the high way. I could see that one leg of the awning had come loose, and both of us thought we could just keep going, but after a few minutes, it dropped down a little bit and was dragging along the highway. We pulled off onto the breakdown lane and Bobby climbed up onto the roof. We couldn’t figure out how to get it to stay on, so we did the next best thing. We tried to tear it off. While Bobby pried at the bolts from the roof, I yanked at the pole from the ground. When we finally got it loose, it began to fall towards the ditch on the side of the high way and… I’ll admit it…. I just let it go. We thought our problems were over, until we realized that without the pole, the awning could come unrolled on our journey. At the next truck stop, we did what any one would do… yanked the other leg off and with a Swiss army knife, cut the awning off the side of the RV and left it in a dumpster when no one was looking. You have to break a few rules when you are living on the road, and as much as it broke my heart to not recycle all of that plastic, the awning had to go.
Lighter and more streamlined than we were before, we headed on in to Memphis.

Any Elvis fans out there? Graceland is amazing. We checked out of the Heart Break Hotel early because we wanted to be first in line for the Graceland tour. His house is not as big as one would imagine, but you have to remind yourself that Elvis bought this piece of land when he was only 22 and it was the sixties. Everything was scaled down compared to what we have now.
First you get to walk around the first floor of his house, viewing his living room, dining room, kitchen and “the jungle room” which was like a large sitting room that he’d added on to the house and decorated in such a way that reminded him of Hawaii. There was green carpet on the floor and ceiling and fake fur covered furniture with big hand carved wooden arms and legs. Elvis recorded his last album at his home in the jungle room because his manager was finding it increasingly harder to get him out of the house. We bought the album (called “Moody Blue”) before leaving Graceland.
It is so cool being in the place where he lived. His family pictures are still hanging on the walls. In his basement, you get to see his sitting room where he hung out and watched TV and his pool room. In the backyard there are the graves of his grandmother, mother, father and himself. I can’t lie, we both cried when we got to this part (I haven’t seen Bobby cry like that since the wedding). It is just really moving thinking of how loved he was, how many lives he touched, but that it was probably all of this adoration that eventually led to his death. When you are there looking at all of his glamorous outfits and all of the screens that play his performances over and over again, you can imagine how his icon – the idea of Elvis--grew bigger than any normal person could manage. Elvis wasn’t the kind of guy who could just roll out of bed in the morning and put on his slippers and watch TV all day…every moment he lived people wanted recorded; every thought he had, people wanted to know about it. Can you imagine how that could mess with someone’s mind?
Our next visit will be Nashville. After witnessing where the best blues, jazz, and country musicians cut their teeth in Memphis, we have to see where the current country stars call home.

Pics of Beale Street

the pics don't do it justice--the music, the food, the atmosphere... but it will have to do! having fun in Tennessee!!!

Walking with our Feet Ten Feet Off of Beale

Memphis has to be the coolest city ever. I mean, Boston is cool, New York is cool, Chicago is cool, but MEMPHIS defined cool before we knew the word. As small as Beale Street is, it's influence in the music world is ageless. For two people who love music as much as we do, visiting Beale Street and Graceland is one of the most neccessary things to do.



We checked in to the Heart Break Hotel around 5 and wanted to catch the shuttle to Beale Street by 6, so there was no time to waste. When we go there, it was overwhelming how many places there are to eat on such a small strip, especially for out-of-towners, how do you decide on one blues cafe from the next? Each of them boasting "best BBQ in town" with sounds of live jazz and blues and blue grass coming from inside, it was almost impossible for us to choose. It would be a pity to pick the wrong restaurant on a street that has so much to offer.



First we tried Alfreds, which, save for the delicious pulled pork nachos, left a lot to be desired. We decided not to eat dinner there, and just had a drink and appetizer. Good thing, because we finally landed at BB King's Blues Club which was inspirational to say the least. There was a young kid singing some southern rock, classics like Whipping Post and Midnight Rider, and every single table in the place was hand painted to reflect the Blues Persona of the street. Rufus Thomas was painted on our table and the table and the table next to us was painted bright red and in black letters said "Do you like good music? That sweet soul music?" One table had the STAX logo on it. i walked around taking pictures even though i probably looked like a total amatuer. :) Bobby got the best ribs he ever had and I had something called a "Stuffed Porktato" which you can only imagine how delicious that was.

We also got pretty lucky because it happened to be Bike Night on Beale Street. For a Street that is about two blocks long, there had to be at least a thousand bikes lined up and down the street. Some of them were like nothing i'd seen on the east coast. We will post pics of those coming soon, but we want to make sure this posts because as we drive we lose service. There is so much more to say about Memphis...next blog---Graceland :)