Day 2 entry – Monday, October 13th

I honestly thought we would have had more information up on this blog site before we left. The reality of the situation is that we had 1000 things to do before we left and updating the blog site before we left dropped to the bottom on the list…so here we go.
The last week in DC was super busy. We spent nearly every night packing. The movers came on Thursday morning. We took the day off from work but they were in and out in 2 hours. Will is an awesome packer! (Will obviously wrote this part.)
Day 1 – Saturday, October 11th– We woke up as late as we could. I slept on my favorite couch that night knowing that it would be getting put to trash. We made breakfast at Jeannie and Mike’s place upstairs (they were in Ohio) and then cleaned our apartment as we packed our last few bags in to the car.
By mid-afternoon, the apartment was spotless and the car was packed. We left DC and drove down Constitution Ave past the Washington Monument, White House, etc as we headed into Virginia. We traveled 49 miles and stopped…we arrived at Sleekfest. (Sleekfest is a gathering a friends like a picnic…food, drink, games, etc…and then there is a big bonfire and you sleep in a tent.) We planned months in advance to attend this annual event and as usual, it was a lot of fun.
We woke the next morning and Amy was not feeling so well. I broke down the tent and packed the car and we headed out towards JMU. After that 30 minute adventure, we drove south again on i81 towards Roanoke to meet my friend Dave and his wife Phoebe (while Amy napped for two hours). We met them for lunch and after 1.5 hours of catch up, we were back on the road.
Our goal for the day was to make it to Tennessee, perhaps Knoxville. While at lunch earlier, Dave recommended that we visit Pigeon Forge and Dollywood. We had no real interest in Dollywood but wanted a shower and bed that night and from what he described, it sounded nice. We drove south off of I40 in TN towards the Great Smokey Mountains in search of this area called Pigeon Forge. We discovered what I thought to be “a tourist trap.” I had to explain the definition to Amy (as well as what the term, “for the birds” meant). It turned out, that Dollywood is an amusement park (that was closed for the day when we got there) and that Pigeon Forge is all the not so upscale touristy motels, restaurants, and cheesy (think Ocean City, MDish) attractions supporting it.
The road it is on then enters the National Park. Will had to pee really bad so we pulled over to a side road thinking no traffic would be on it. Of course 4 cars came by and Will “waved” at all of them. At this point we were in the woods and found nothing that Dave described to us. We turned around and I called Dave to say that “Seriously? You wanted us to hangout here?” He told me that we didn’t drive far enough. We turned around again and drove into the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. After several miles going up into the mountains, we came across an upscale lively town called Gatlinburg. It resembled a small town that one would find in south Germany or Austria. It has a small river running through it and a tram to the peak and skiing. The town had many nice shops, hotels, and restaurants….and they were all packed on the Columbus Day weekend. It was where Dave was directing us originally and it turned out to be a great find for us.
After dinner and a solid night sleep, we got back on the road with 187 miles on the odometer (add 357 miles – as Will forgot to reset the odometer while leaving WDC). We stopped in Knoxville to eat breakfast and drove through the University of Tennessee campus.
Approximately 3 hours later we were in Nashville. We drove past the Grand Ole Opry and down Broadway and got back on i40. It was 193 miles to Graceland!