Tennessee is awesomesauce, part 1

So David & I got back from Tennessee last week after an almost-week-long trip. This trip was my first big dose of The South and my very first time meeting David's People (which is only fair, because he's already met just about all of mine). Super exciting!!



Our drive down was pretty lousy. Poor David had to drive the whole way because I can't drive stick, and for a good chunk of the drive, the weather looked like this:

Ew. We also took the long way down, passing (very quickly) through West Virginia (reprise!!) and Kentucky, rather than Virginia. The trip was 13+ hours long, and we burned through a ton of mix CDs.

I made a girly coffeehouse-esque mix for David including Kate Nash, A Fine Frenzy, Lenka, and for a good measure, a couple silly songs. Silly song #1: Becky by Be Your Own Pet ("we'll wait with KNIVES after class!"), silly song # 2: Sixteen by The Indelicates ("Even though we're 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29..."), and silly song #3: Foundations by Kate Nash ("Yeah, intelligent input dahling, why don't you just have another beer then?"). But luckily, David cut my girl music & musical theater mixes with Counting Crows, Fountains of Wayne, and Ben Folds (good stuff!).

Our very first adventure of the trip involved trying out HAM JERKY (that we bought from a West Virginian rest stop) for the first time:

It was okay. I think we both still prefer dried out cows to pigs though.

Then, we ventured into Lexington, Kentucky (a first for both of us...I've never set foot in Kentucky, and David's never been to Lexington). This is what it looked like:

Unfortunately, we didn't find it very adventuresome. To be fair, we also spent about 10 minutes there. But we did see some really cool TARANTULA TRACTORS! :D

And some ERF?? traffic lights. (explanations anyone??):

And then, we went to the VERY FIRST KFC ever in Corbin, Kentucky. It had some funky KFC memorabilia:

...but the actual food was exactly the same as you'd find in a regular KFC. Meh. Although I must say, food is CHEAP!

Throughout the drive, I got a huge kick out of the following (graphic depictions included):
1. Farmtasticness!!! (I LOVE farms!)

...cows!! We saw goats and horses and deer too! And those really cool giant rolls of hay :) And can I just say air quality = superb??

2: The Bible Belt Ain't No Joke!!

Now this is serious stuff! I'd be scared to drive down that road at night!

3: Hardcore Americana!

This picture depicts the epitome of America in a lot of ways...the flag, the minivan, the giant inflatable cow with a sign reading "EAT MOR CHIKIN!" The only thing that could make this picture even more American is if you replaced the minivan with an SUV. I love the composition of this shot, but it was totally an accident :P

4. Lots of signage that appealed to my rather juvenile sense of humor (please click on the pix to see what they say!):

Eventually, we made it to Tennessee! How exciting!

See? Evidence:

We drove past Knoxville with their nifty Sunsphere:

And THEN David showed me around Kingston, the town where he grew up. This tour included checking out the closest massive Walmart and shopping center, downtown Kingston, the barber shop where David gets his hair cut, the Dominos where he used to deliver pizza, Handee burger, and driving along lots of winding heavily-wooded roads really fast. He also showed me the rivers that intersect at Kingston and they were perty:

And THEN we went to Chattanooga to visit David's ultra cool BFF John & his family, where I did a bad thing. :O

We stayed with David's mom in Kingston, and I also met their 3 cats. One of them woke me up in the morning by batting my face until I pet it. I lurve cats :)

In other adventure news, we tried peanut butter flavored Moon Pies. I may or may not have ever eaten moon pies before, but David says they're nothing like regular ones. *shrug*

The next day (Friday), we took a little car drive to see the local fort in Kingston with David's mom and aunt. We looked at military costumes, artifacts, and old weaponry, and we also walked around a partially reconstructed rendition of the fort in its heyday. The tour guide was really amusing...I got called a city slicker! Woot! The fort was also cool because it had birds in the chimney and this weird type of bug called mayfly that died all over the property. We also went to look at the ash spill that happened in Kingston back in December. Apparently there used to be this pond, but it got covered and completely filled with sludge that started growing vegetation on it, so you can't even tell that there's supposed to be a pond there. How crazy/depressing is that.

But enough excitement for one day...David will continue blogging about our epic Tennessee roadtrip in the near future. TBC!