road trip Archives

Well this morning we awoke to the two Draper boys feeling below average. With a visit to Graceland first on the cards, it meant that just Grandpa John and I were up to the tour whilst the other two waited it out in the car. First shock though was that we were charged $10 just to park in the car park, but I suppose as they pump out Elvis music all day you have to pay the price.

My first view of Graceland from the outside is that it was no where near as big as I expected, but we had to pay $28 each to find that out. They start you off with an audio tour very much like the one at Alcatraz, except I dropped mine before we even started.

The tour itself is one of those things that you have to do once in your life, even if you are not a big Elvis fan, I think you'll find John's pictures in the roadtrip pictures section whereas mine are on facebook. It was a shame that we didn't have time to go and tour the car collection and the aircraft, but we knew that the boys were in the car waiting. However, not wanting to be left out, just as we were leaving John dropped his audio tour set, making sure we'd both broken one each. Worse still, John purchased a CD of music from Elvis' early days which we had to listen to in the car, but fortunately I was driving and we set the balance to the back so I couldn't really hear it, I am more a fan of his suff from the later years.

Next on our list was our next state, Arkansas and a location I'd wanted to visit for almost 12 years. It dated back to when I used to work night shifts in a call centre and on those long and dark nights when the calls were failing to come in we resorted to looking through the Western Union directory for the strangest location for cash pick ups, our mind was made up that the ultimate was a branch of Piggly Wiggly (a supermarket chain) in the town of Bald Knob Arkansas. Since then I've always wanted to see this place for myself. A bit of research prior to the trip showed that the Piggly Wiggly had since closed and that Sexton Foods was the Western Union outlet, but Bald Knob still intrigued so we added it to our list.

Well when we got there, it was like any other hick town we'd encountered, but we had to stop and take a photo of the town sign all the same.
The house we stopped out side of had a broken old leather sofa outside on the front porch of the trailer and a broken down shack in the garden, we were half someone with a shotgun to come out and tell us to get off their land. We got our shot and headed into town. It was very disappointing, there was very little to distinguish this place from any other, but as it was lunch time we decided to find an authentic diner and have lunch. Well it looked like an authentic diner from the outside, but when a Chinese lady greeted us on entry we were a little taken aback. We decided to stop and John and Ivan braved the buffet, which I guess adds to our list of near death experiences on our trip making 4 thus far. I guess I can say I was disappointed with Bald Knob, in fact you can say it didn't measure up to expectations.

After leaving Bald Knob far behind we headed as far across Arkansas as possible passing by Little Rock and skirting through the Ozarks before ending up 330 miles and one extra state later in Fayetteville still in Arkansas.

As Rag was still feeling under the weather he decided not to risk another Hooters meal, so he got supplies in the local supermarket and I dropped John and Ivan at Art's bar. Let's see what time they get back tonight and what intelligence they have for our future adventures.

Oh I guess you can't add eating a McFlurry whilst driving at 85 mph in the outside lane of the interstate as a near death experience, but trust me it got tricky at times, however I'm sure I'll make up for it later in the trip.

You know when you’ve ended up in one of those areas where you know you shouldn’t be, well we’ve had a very squeaky bum moment in one of those areas after dark in Memphis.

Let me take you back to the beginning of our 500 mile and one new state day. The day started in a very rainy Pigeon Forge, very very rainy. I’d spotted in the yellow pages that the local helicopter museum had the helicopter from Airwolf as one of it’s exhibits (yes I do lead an exceedingly exciting life, thumbing through the local yellow pages wherever I stay) so we tried briefly to find that but couldn’t see it through the rain and I didn’t fancy the mad dash to a tacky souvenir shop to get any Dollywood tat as I’d already got soaked just packing my things into the car, so we headed across Tennessee. If you are interested, we stayed at the river chase motel in Pigeon Forge - www.riverchasemotel.net

When we got to Pigeon Forge last night we’d been a little confused as we thought that Tennessee was in the next time zone, Central time, but when we asked at the restaurant and checked the clocks in the motel they were showing the same time as we had on the east coast when we started. We then realised that the time zone actually split the state of Tennessee and half was in Eastern and half was in Central and spent the next part of the journey looking for a sign by the road telling us that we’d changed zones, no such luck.

The drive over to Nashville was pretty nasty really, if it wasn’t for the rain it was the wind that was buffeting the brick formally known as the grand caravan but as we headed down town the weather picked up. Fortunately Ivan and his dad had decided to find a bar in Pigeon Forge and had got chatting with the locals and had explained our plans, they had suggested a bar called Tootsies in downtown Nashville and what a result (http://www.tootsies.net/). We were able to park just across the street and once a quick shower had passed we hopped over and went in. There inside the door were two guys playing live music at lunch time and a bar full of people listening along appreciatively. Although I didn’t recognised any of the songs, it was easy to tell they were pretty good and they were entering in with some banter with the crowd. They even regaled a story of how some guys had left his business card for a Santa for hire as a tip and they decided to call him on their phone and put him on speaker phone so the bar could hear, it was like a radio show prank call done live in front of us. I hope that was authentic and not just put on for the tourists as I hope that is just what Nashville is like.

We stayed for a couple of drinks but knowing we had a long drive, decided to head off back on the interstate. This is where I made a new friend. Some guy had been indicating right in the right hand lane and then pulled left in front of my to over take a lorry, no problem. Once he pulled in I accelerated slightly to get past. What I had spotted but he hadn’t was that by pulling in he was about to encounter merging traffic so I accelerated a little more to get past to give him enough time to pull in behind me, but instead he just started to pull out alongside me, so I had to brake and he had to brake more. No damage done so I though nothing more of it. A couple of miles further down the road I noticed that he had caught up with me and had started flicking me the bird. I ignored him and kept driving, but he just kept sitting on my tail flicking the bird. I eventually pulled away and thought nothing more of it, however another 10-15 miles down the road, I had got caught behind a lorry in the outside lane when I looked in my mirrors and there he was again, this time honking his horn and flicking me the bird with both hands, again I ignored him. Eventually he gave up, but I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve, let’s just hope he didn’t have a gun.

In our quest to go coast to coast we also want to visit as many states as we can as well so instead of heading straight for Memphis we decided to drop into Independence Mississippi, chosen only for it’s name (an Independence that Dave Gorman didn’t go to on his trip- If you are not aware of this, check out his book/DVD of America Unchained, a road trip but one avoiding using chain hotels restaurants or gas stations). Independence MS was also chosen for it’s believed proximity to Memphis, but as the sun was setting and we still hadn’t got there we were a little concerned.

As you will remember Monday night was a lesson in not stopping at a motel at a truck stop (or one with railroad tracks nearby) so we had set our hearts on not doing the same again today, but not knowing Memphis we didn’t know what to do. The previous night’s conversation in the bar had pointed us to Beale street downtown Memphis but we weren’t sure of the exact location or where we could stay so we headed for down town. By this stage it was 7 o’clock and dark. We went down a couple of streets and then a couple more and realised that it was looking more and more estate and slum like and no bars or hotels could be seen. In fact all we could see were gangs on corners or the odd dodgy looking guy hanging around. After a couple of more turns and passing by a freight yard we found the Liberty Bowl football stadium and headed the hell out of there. For the second time, and certainly more real time we felt in actual danger. Those are the scenarios you read about, 4 middle class guys in a car with Florida plates in the wrong part of Memphis reading a map is a recipe for disaster. As we were heading out of town for the ring road and the relative safety of a truck stop we passed a crime scene with about 4 police cars and an ambulance, we had assumed that a store had been robbed.

We made sanctuary of the hotel in Lake Horn just over the border in Mississippi, and although the rooms have free wi-fi, they also have very thin walls so am having to type this under the duvet to keep the noise down. We decided to dine at Hooters, as you do, and I have to say I was greatly disappointed, not what I would call Hooters grade girls, Brandi from the WingHouse would knock spots off of any of the girls tonight (which I'd pay to see). We did see on the news though that there’d been a fatal shooting at a restaurant in downtown Memphis around 7 pm this evening which made us all a little uneasy in our seats. Rag and I have left Ivan and his dad back in Hooters to get some intelligence on the day ahead, either that or they need more beer.

Tomorrow is a key day on our trip but I won’t spoil it for you (although you’ll see it on the planned route if you do want to look ahead). Let’s just hope it’s a safer day and we make it through without having to change our underpants too many times.

(Oh and sorry for the large amount of text and no pictures, but it’s difficult taking pictures when driving or you are about to get shot. See Rag’s post or the separate road trip photos page if you want to see more.)

Like all the best episodes of Columbo I have given away the ending at the start, except this isn’t a who-done-it, more a case of where-is it? Well actually Rag's post above has given away the ending but that's because he has the mobile wireless internet device and I have to rely upon the hotel offering free wi-fi.

So how did we get here, 4 states and 393 miles away from our last over night stop? Your guess is as good as mine. It was a case of suck and see today, we kind of knew where we wanted to end up, but how we got there didn’t really matter. We had planned on moseying on up to Tennessee via Alabama, but we realised that where we stayed last night wasn’t that far from South Carolina and that North Carolina was virtually next door so we headed north, well actually we headed north-east, which when you are trying to go east to west coast does seem a little strange, but there you go.

Our first port of call was a tad fishy, in fact it was a town called Haddock, chosen purely on name but it was kind of on the way to the Carolinas and it meant we could leave the soulless interstates. Next on our list was Liberty SC, again chosen for the interesting name, but to get there we had to trawl through the rest of northern Georgia.

***Warning anti-religious diatribe - contains strong language and strong opinions. If you wish to skip this, look for the next stars****** (not these ones you fool)

I knew before this trip that America really was built on religion, but jeez, how many fucking churches do they need. It’s like every other building in some of these two-bit towns is a church. There are the residents living in run-down shacks and right next door is the sparkly church, but not just one but two or three. There are so many different flavours of the same religion it’s untrue, whether it be Lutheran, Presbyterian or Baptist, you have your pick. Surely it’s got to be morally wrong for the people to be in ruins let the church be stinking rich. I have always been against religion, it is the root of all evil, it is the cause of so much conflict you have to question the motives of some of the people behind it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for freedom of speech and everyone having the right to choose, but sometimes the stupid need a helping hand. They may as well spend their money on lottery tickets rather than giving it to the church, they have as much chance of winning as a god answering their prayers. I’m sorry but it gets me so mad, much to the amusement of my fellow passengers.

********* (yes these ones)

A quick check of the map in Liberty and we realised that we were not far from the Smokey Mountains, well given the scale of our map, not far is probably further than you think, almost as if we’d been looking at in the rear view mirror (objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are - no - I suppose it doesn’t work if you have to explain it). Fortunately although this is February the mountains were not snowy or icy so we were able to start negotiating our way from South Carolina into the North and hit Transylvania county. The route took us through the edges of the Great Smokey Mountains, which although picturesque was very twisty and turny and undulating, which after a while took it’s toll on the brakes. We were coming down the side of a mountain when the brakes started to scrape a little, the noise was getting progressively worse and the brakes were getting progressively spongier. We were trying to work out where the nearest town with a rental office was and whether we could get the car there, but with some careful driving and excellent use of the automatic transmission from my co-driver Ivan he was able to nurse the car over the mountains.

We did pass through Cherokee on our trip through the mountains which reminded me of Matlock Bath in Derbyshire, it had a river, it had cheap and tacky shops, a cable car and even a casino (probably more impressive than the 2p slots in Matlock). We are assuming that this is the home of the Indian tribe that gave it’s name to the Jeep, and not that the town was named after the Jeep.

We had decided that once we had gotten over the mountains into Tennessee we would stop at the next big town, which would either have been Pigeon Forge or Sevierville. We hit Pigeon Forge and thought that there were an inordinate number of motels and restaurants, which is when we saw the sign to Dollywood. I could have probably guessed that Dollywod would have been somewhere in Tennessee but couldn’t have named the actual location, well we found it. It seems like a poor man’s version of Vegas without the casinos, cheap, tacky but all in a Dolly Parton theme. I don’t think that we’ll have time to explore Dollywood itself, but I’m sure we can find a tacky souvenir shop somewhere.

We are staying in a very nice looking motel, but it has no wi-fi hence the delay in the posting. Plan is for a bit of lie in based upon the lack of sleep last night and then head across Tennessee possibly dipping into Mississippi if time permits.

Oh before I leave I have just one more question….

It's one of those fun games you get to play when you stay in a different motel each night, how to work the shower. Well this morning I was able to play the game "cold or scold" (sounds like a good name for a gameshow).

You're never quite with it first thing in the morning when you jump into the shower, and neither was I this morning, so I just got in and turned it on without first investigating the controls from outside the cubicle. So first I was hit by an icy cold jet stream of water, so I quickly turned the temperature lever thing to hot and was then almost knocked off my feet by a blast of steam, and no matter how much I turned the lever back the other way, nothing but boiling water was being fired at me. I had no choice, I had to get out and try and work the controls from the outside whilst holding up the shower curtain so as to deflect the water back into the cubicle to avoid flooding the bathroom any more than it already was.

Good news is that I am now showered and just packing for our next leg. If we acheive everything we want to acheive today, it could mean four more states and 700 more miles. ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!

As I lay here in my cheap motel I do now question the sheer task taken on board. A decision was made that seeing as we were so close and that this was a proper road trip we should do it properly and actually go from coast to coast.

We were a little late checking out of the motel this morning and it meant we didn’t get to the Kennedy Space Centre until 11:30, given that we’d hoped to be out of Florida today, we knew we didn’t have long to spend there. In the end Ivan and I did a quick wander around the rocket garden and the mocked up shuttle along with the shuttle launch experience (which I recommend) whilst Rag and his dad did the Imax film. We probably should have planned to spend more time there and done the bus tour, but we didn’t. Which takes us onto the next stop, Cocoa beach, although Kennedy is near the Atlantic, the visitors centre is not actually on it, so we decided to head down the coast a little and actually get onto the Atlantic and touch the beach, this we did at Cocoa beach, a real surfer’s town. That mission accomplished (along with a sneaky one for Dan) we headed for Georgia.

6 hours and over 370 miles later we arrived in the Pitts. Well actually a truck stop just outside of Pitts, Georgia. Not our finest hour, but as we’d been on the road for a long time, we were tired and hungry we just needed to stop. The motel has a dodgy internet connection and there is a truck stop just across from our doors. I doubt any of us are going to get much sleep, so an early start and an earlier finish are on the cards if nothing else to give ourselves a fighting chance of finding a slightly better located hotel with some kind of eating establishment other than a Taco Bell across the street (although Ivan was ecstatic about this as he’d been craving one since he got off the plane).

It’ll be interesting to see how many miles we can cover tomorrow as we are heading North and then West which is a bonus as the Pacific is over there somewhere. Again, the next entry depends upon the availability of internet.

They call the Daytona 500 the Great American race, well we saw the Daytona 383 and it wasn’t that great. I guess it depends upon whether you are a glass half full or half empty kind of person to be able to gauge the day as a whole. Personally I don’t feel too bad as when I had seen the weather forecast I didn’t think we’d get any racing in at all and we’d spend the day watching the ran from the stand/car and have our plans for the fortnight scuppered on day one, so the fact that we got to see over ¾ of the race was not a bad thing.

Apparently, according to the pissed up guy in the queue for the shuttle bus, this was the first time in the 51 years the race had been held that it had been stopped early due to rain, it’s too late for me to research so I’ll have to take his word for it.

For those uninitiated in NASCAR they don’t race in the rain, as soon as the slightest drop hit’s the track, they run behind the safety car for a while, and if it doesn’t stop, they red flag the race and either wait for it to dry or call it a result if it has gone past half way. So when the heavens started to open around lap 150 we knew it was game over.

The day started with a supplies run and 18 cans of Bud being purchased along with a couple of bottles of water, what more do you need. The plan being to head over to the track in plenty of time but not too early. We decided to set off around 11 and got onto the interstate no problem, but then 10 miles away we hit traffic, fortunately this was just before the intersection with another instate that I’d read up on as an alternative route, so we scooted down there. We were a little confused as not many other cars were coming this way so we checked the map, realised we were ok but spotted a bit of shortcut and took that, great we were at the circuit within an hour of leaving the hotel, that’s when our trouble started. We were actually outside the front gates with ages to go, but unfortunately the disabled parking spaces were all taken and we were directed elsewhere (in case any of you are wondering, no it isn’t our mental disabilities that we were hoping to use to blag a disabled parking, Rag is actually a bone fide holder of a blue badge and needs to use crutches to walk - pay attention, that information will come in handy later). Whilst sailing past what looked to be extremely convenient parking spaces we ask one of the police officers on traffic duty what our option were, we could either continue on and swing round to the right but the traffic looks heavy or you can cut across four lanes, hang a u-turn and head left at the next lights, a Uey it was and we turned left, what a mistake. Chock a block traffic as far as the eye can see. Even worse the guys were getting through the beer.

After about an hour of queuing and slow moving traffic we make it into the overflow disabled parking which was actually off circuit. We managed to get the last available spot in the disabled section and then survey our surroundings. First thing that hit us was the distance from the parking spot (over fields with drainage ditches) to the courtesy shuttle bus stops, quickly followed by the realisation that there were no port-a-loos anywhere near the car either. We decided staying in the car was pointless so we started our trek to the bus. What we found next dumbfounded us, in between the disabled parking and the bus stop was a three foot high fence. We all got over one by one, with Rag unceremoniously throwing himself over and found the toilets and the information desk to work out how we got to our actual seats. The plan was that we had to catch the bus, then get a golf cart from the bus stop to the tram stop, get a tram then at the other end get a golf cart to the stand with our seats in. Sounded easy, especially for the A-Team.

Problem was, when we got off the bus at the other end, no golf carts to be seen, not even one we could blag so we meander off in the general direction of the tram stop in the vain hope of flagging one down as we went. We probably got two-thirds of the way before finding and collaring one. The tram itself was uneventful, but again at the far end, no golf carts to be found, so we decided on walking to our seats. By this stage Rag was knackered so this was a slow trudge, made worse by the realisation that we had three flight of steps to negotiate before getting to our seats. Once in the seats, that was it, both Rag and I were rooted to the spot, we didn’t fancy the flights of stairs or any other kind of walking after that. Fortunately the seats were good ones with good views of the start line and the pit exit plus the first turn, and there was a video screen directly opposite, so we were sorted. We got to the seats with about 45 minutes to spare, which was ideal really.

What happened next can only be described as a wild goose chase. Rag wanted a new Juan Pablo Montoya baseball cap as he has new sponsorship this season. I’d looked on Friday when I went to the trucks and couldn’t find one, but Rag was determined so sent his brother and his dad on a shopping trip. Also with the instruction of bringing more beer and a hot dog back. 35 minutes later they return with beer and nothing else. It turns out that they haven’t even made any of these baseball caps yet so the guys were never going to find them. What did happen though was that the guys sitting behind us had picked up on Rag’s request of a hot dog and kept heckling Ivan every time he left his seat to get beer, or have a cigarette or go to the toilet asking him to bring them back a hotdog each time. That is one thing about the fans in NASCAR, they are very fanatical and hard-core in their support of one driver, but they have a great spirit and will join in with the banter, it’s never threatening like football can be at times.

The race itself was good, Kyle Busch (yes my pick) showed his supreme driving skills. It takes some guts to drive bumper to bumper, sometimes three wide at 200 mph, and these guys have guts in abundance (in some cases quite literally). He was unlucky to get collected up in an incident just after halfway. With that 9 car incident (can’t call them crashes, that’s not pc) three of the four guys we’d picked out in the sweepstake had been involved in one way or another leaving only my pick with a fighting chance of finishing highly, and given that the money paid to the highest placed pick, I was laughing.

Once the heavens did open we knew that it’d be race over, and we were proven right when they first red flagged the race and called the result with Matt Kenseth taking the victory. Of course our journey back was made worse by the fact that still no golf carts could be seen, everyone was trying to make the same journey at the same time and it was still raining. By the time we’d go off the tram Rag was completely gone, so his brother kindly offered to piggy-back him part of the way to the buses. It was a sight to behold, if nothing more than the fact that Rag was mooning everyone as his trousers were falling down and he needed his arms to hang onto his brother. We queued for the bus, had a couple of chats to the folks around in the queue, hence the conversation about the first ever rained off Daytona 500 and made our way back to the car. By this stage part of the fence had been kicked down so it was slightly less inconvenient, but overall the transportation policy was a complete farce.

On a bright note to end the evening we ended up in Ker’s Winghouse across the street from the motel, it’s a kind of a Hooters rip-off. We were served by the lovely Brandi, who wouldn’t have been out of place in a Hooters, so it wasn’t all bad. Although when asked for her number she said she was engaged, which is better than the usual response. I won't say who actually asked for the number as it may incriminate one of the crew (however if any of their wives/girlfriends want to e-mail me privately I may divulge that information).

You could look at the day and say we were robbed of a grandstand finish due to the rain, but you could also say that we were lucky to get any racing in at all and at least our plans were not thrown into disarray straightaway.

Now, this could be the last entry from me for a couple of days as I’ve no idea where we will be staying tomorrow night and have no idea what kind of internet access it will have. If it’s part of the same chain as the one we are in at the moment, it will have free wi-fi but dodgy cleaning routines.

Goodbye from Florida and well done for wading through all that drivel.

No don’t worry, we’ve not all joined the Housemartins, although given that John looks like Bill Oddie and Rag may as well be Bill Oddie, Ivan and I maybe better off as birds (of the feathered variety). It is just a reference to the fact as Rag has stated above we are now the proud, if somewhat temporary, owners of a Dodge Grand Caravan and today is Valentines day.

I love how car manufacturers come up with names for some of these things, it is neither Grand nor is it a caravan in any sense of the word. Although it is more practical than the Aspen, it does have a few less toys. Oh well, given how easy it was to scam this one, maybe we can exchange it for a different one when we get bored of this in a couple of days.

It has been a strange Valentines day with Rag and I making it to Christmas and back in one day, the vehicle exchange, the four muppeteers actually together in the same place at the same time everything is starting to fall into place for the Road Trip to start proper.

I do have to mention the fact that the four of us headed over to the TGI Fridays that is just across the road from the motel (although I was actually coerced into driving us across as the crossing only had a 46 second timer and we didn’t want to risk it). What none of us had twigged when we first got there was that it was valentines night so hadn’t expected it to be quite so full. What was amusing was the amount of couples for whom this was their romantic night out, the height of sophistication in Altamonte Springs must be a meal at TGIs. I even saw one couple exchanging cards and gifts at the table, and we were half expecting a proposal somewhere in the restaurant. At the end of the evening we all retired to our separate rooms, well apart from Ivan and John who were both equally bemused quite how they’d managed to pull each other.

Getting back to Christmas though, those that know me know I hate Christmas, but not this one, this was a town, well not really a town, more a collection of random buildings collectively known as Christmas and one I took an instant liking to. My brother had pointed out that this place existed and as Rag and I were at a loose end we decided to check it out. Not knowing quite where it was, we got our motors running and headed out on the highway looking for adventure and whatever came our way, well Christmas came early and we found it by the side of the road. Actually, for anyone looking on it must have been a strange sight, us pulling up sharply at the side of the road, quickly setting up the tripod and then standing by a road sign with a town name on, but then that’s the point of the trip. Christmas didn’t disappoint this year and delivered everything we were expecting, Americana. On our way back we did stop to visit Swampy the world’s biggest Gator, but when we realised it was going to cost us $20+ each to see him, so we took a picture of the plastic model outside and drove off.

Hopefully you’ll find the pictures from this afternoon on the Road Trip pictures page and you’ll see what I mean about Christmas. If not, blame our host, Rag, as he hasn’t worked out quite what he’s going to do with all of the pictures yet.

Tomorrow is the Great American race, so it could be a late finish, I have no idea how much traffic we are going to encounter and how close Rag’s disabled badge will actually get us, but it could be a long old day. That is of course depending on the weather, our entire plans could be changed due to inclement conditions.

I’d best go before this blog jumps the shark. (Look it up in Wikipedia - unfortunately the website that used to list all of the shark jumping moments has been bought out by TV Guide and a whole load of mindless trivia has been lost, gits.) Some might say too late.