We left Winston- Salem pretty late, after lots of talking and breakfasting and headed to the infamous Chapel Hill, home of none other than James Taylor!
We were warned that the college town was fairly fond of the colour, sky blue, but we didn't quite realise how much!
EVERYTHING in Chapel Hill is sky blue! The road signs, the firetrucks, the umbrellas, the jumpers, the Krispy Kreme workers uniforms....etc...etc..etc.. (I felt pretty out of place with my lime green umbrella!).
Every store sold UNC (University of North Carolina) t-shirts and books and sweaters and not much else! We didn't really understand this place that everybody told us to visit! It was full of cafes and blue!
We ventured a little out of town and found a few gems. The greatest second hand book store in the world, and a couple of shops selling nice arty things. Generally we weren't too impressed by our Chapel Hill shopping experience. I mean; it was nice and all, but was this really the place people had raved about?!
We headed to our couchsurf for the night and wondered what was in store. What we found was an amazing family who lived in an amazing location and did amazing things!
After driving down the gravel track, through the forest and foliage we came to a wonderful house! Our hosts, Kathy and Mike and their kids Carly and Skyler were waiting for us!
They are an amazing family of jugglers who have a 23 ft JUGGLING ROOM in their house!!
Both parents work for the government's environmental agency and were really interesting. Their house is full of wood burning stoves, interesting things, and juggling balls!
We'd been on the road for so long that we couldn't tell you what month we were in, nevermind the day or date, but our hosts informed us that we'd arrived on Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) and as they were Jewish, would we like to celebrate it with them?!
Well, what are the chances!? We settled down for some challah, apples and honey, and spaghetti (not an essential new year item) after eating some of Skyler's fried green tomatoes!
We spent the evening talking, comparing British and American words and phrasing, and chilling out with this pretty awesome family!
Monday, 13 September 2010
Winston-Salem
We left Asheville with our wallets a fair bit lighter and headed off on the next part of our adventure. At this point we knew where we were headed, but we also knew we had a fair amount of time to reach our destination. We decided to venture away from the highway and take the low road.
We took a peek at our ridiculously oversized map of the U.S and looked for somewhere 'nice' between Asheville and Chapel Hill. Sunshine looked like the place to go!
We popped it into the GPS and we were on our way!
Sunshine, here we come....10 miles to go.....3 miles to go...200 yards to go...SUNSHINE!?!?! Where did you go?!?!?!?!
Sunshine turned out to be a stupidly small village with about 3 houses and 67 churches (such is the way on the 'bible belt').
So much for that.
We got back on the map and located somewhere a little bigger, with a far less exciting name. Shelby.
Shelby was findable, had a bank, and we even purchased some fish and chips! (it would have come with 'potato chips' (crisps) if we hadn't requested 'WE WANT OUR FISH WITH REAL CHIPS, NOT THOSE STUPID CRISP THINGS'. She got the idea! Tea was ordered, and our lovely perplexed waitress brought out a real teapot stuffed with ONE teabag (At least she had the right idea!).
We headed into an Art Co-operative before we left, had a quick look around, made too many purchases and got back on the road!
We arrived in Winston-Salem in the early evening, and after some bad navigating and staring at a lot of letterboxes, we finally found our couchsurf for the night, Courtney!
We spent the night in her lovely, chaotic house. Her family were awesome and we had great chats with all of them!
We got into bed pretty late after all the talking and spent the night on the squeakiest bed in the world!
We took a peek at our ridiculously oversized map of the U.S and looked for somewhere 'nice' between Asheville and Chapel Hill. Sunshine looked like the place to go!
We popped it into the GPS and we were on our way!
Sunshine, here we come....10 miles to go.....3 miles to go...200 yards to go...SUNSHINE!?!?! Where did you go?!?!?!?!
Sunshine turned out to be a stupidly small village with about 3 houses and 67 churches (such is the way on the 'bible belt').
So much for that.
We got back on the map and located somewhere a little bigger, with a far less exciting name. Shelby.
Shelby was findable, had a bank, and we even purchased some fish and chips! (it would have come with 'potato chips' (crisps) if we hadn't requested 'WE WANT OUR FISH WITH REAL CHIPS, NOT THOSE STUPID CRISP THINGS'. She got the idea! Tea was ordered, and our lovely perplexed waitress brought out a real teapot stuffed with ONE teabag (At least she had the right idea!).
We headed into an Art Co-operative before we left, had a quick look around, made too many purchases and got back on the road!
We arrived in Winston-Salem in the early evening, and after some bad navigating and staring at a lot of letterboxes, we finally found our couchsurf for the night, Courtney!
We spent the night in her lovely, chaotic house. Her family were awesome and we had great chats with all of them!
We got into bed pretty late after all the talking and spent the night on the squeakiest bed in the world!
Sunday, 12 September 2010
From Nashville to Asheville
Aheville was only a short car journey away from our hotel, so we had a lie in (it seemed like a good idea, as it was Labour Day and we weren't really sure what would be open) and headed into town. We'd been told by multiple people that it was an unmissable stop on our journey and we were eager to see what Asheville had to offer us!
It's a lovely town that once had a big hippy scene. The scene nowadays is more middle-class new age, and the prices in the stores reflect that. The town hosted a fair amount of art galleries and stores, as well as some ridiculously overpriced stores selling 'glastonbury-ware' and other such things.
Getting lunch proved to be ridiculously difficult, the prices were high and the queues were long. We eventually settled for some groovy sandwiches and some REAL orange juice at an (once again overpriced) artisan bakery.
We hit a few more stores and headed back to the hotel for a sleep!
It's a lovely town that once had a big hippy scene. The scene nowadays is more middle-class new age, and the prices in the stores reflect that. The town hosted a fair amount of art galleries and stores, as well as some ridiculously overpriced stores selling 'glastonbury-ware' and other such things.
Getting lunch proved to be ridiculously difficult, the prices were high and the queues were long. We eventually settled for some groovy sandwiches and some REAL orange juice at an (once again overpriced) artisan bakery.
We hit a few more stores and headed back to the hotel for a sleep!
Yeehaa!
We checked out of our hotel room and got back on the road, scouting around for a good place to get breakfast! We ended up at Cracker Barrel, a strange shop/restaurant that sells all sorts of things! The menu was packed with interesting(!?) dishes, so we settled for a roast beef sandwich (we thought we knew where we were with that) and some shrimp (king prawns) with hushpuppies?!.
The roast beef sandwich turned out to be boiled beef on toast covered in gravy. Yuk! Mum seemed to enjoy it. The shrimp were covered in batter and tasted of nothing, and the hushpuppies were potato wrapped in cornbread (or something like that). A crunchy but tasteless treat!
The raspberry lemonade was really good, we took some for the road.
Our day took us across Tennessee, to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, Dolly Parton's hometown!
Now, Pigeon Forge is possibly the most horrific place I've ever visited! Tacky doesn't even come into it! Dollywood, The Titanic Experience, magic shows, sky diving simulators, excessive amounts of crazy gold...Pigeon Forge has the lot.
The perfect place for parents to take their hyperactive 10 year olds for an expensive holiday!
The place was so ridiculous that it became entertaining, which was lucky really as we were stuck in the holiday traffic for a good couple of hours.
The one redeeming factor of the Forge was a boot shop. Tucked in among the racecourses and comedy barn we spotted a sign:
BUY 1 PAIR GET 2 FREE!!!
Could it be true? We merely had to purchase one pair of boots and we'd get two free??
This we had to see!
We entered the store, taking note of all the Harley's parked alongside us. (A good sign we thought! We'd heard that bikers only buy the best!). What we saw on our arrival was a cowboy's dream! Row upon row of the most gorgeous cowboy boots you can imagine. Each embroidered with beautiful coloured threads. We spent an age trying on styles, toying with lengths and choosing colours, but we finally ended up with three pairs of boots between us! A bargain at $220 for all three, and ever so comfy! It was almost worth the trip!
We slowly made our way out of the Pigeon Trap and ventured to Asheville, a Rodeway Inn and Applebees for dinner!
Sleep!
The roast beef sandwich turned out to be boiled beef on toast covered in gravy. Yuk! Mum seemed to enjoy it. The shrimp were covered in batter and tasted of nothing, and the hushpuppies were potato wrapped in cornbread (or something like that). A crunchy but tasteless treat!
The raspberry lemonade was really good, we took some for the road.
Our day took us across Tennessee, to Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, Dolly Parton's hometown!
Now, Pigeon Forge is possibly the most horrific place I've ever visited! Tacky doesn't even come into it! Dollywood, The Titanic Experience, magic shows, sky diving simulators, excessive amounts of crazy gold...Pigeon Forge has the lot.
The perfect place for parents to take their hyperactive 10 year olds for an expensive holiday!
The place was so ridiculous that it became entertaining, which was lucky really as we were stuck in the holiday traffic for a good couple of hours.
The one redeeming factor of the Forge was a boot shop. Tucked in among the racecourses and comedy barn we spotted a sign:
BUY 1 PAIR GET 2 FREE!!!
Could it be true? We merely had to purchase one pair of boots and we'd get two free??
This we had to see!
We entered the store, taking note of all the Harley's parked alongside us. (A good sign we thought! We'd heard that bikers only buy the best!). What we saw on our arrival was a cowboy's dream! Row upon row of the most gorgeous cowboy boots you can imagine. Each embroidered with beautiful coloured threads. We spent an age trying on styles, toying with lengths and choosing colours, but we finally ended up with three pairs of boots between us! A bargain at $220 for all three, and ever so comfy! It was almost worth the trip!
We slowly made our way out of the Pigeon Trap and ventured to Asheville, a Rodeway Inn and Applebees for dinner!
Sleep!
Chattanooga Choo Choo, Cowboy Style!
We woke up vaguely early and Beth and Tom were having a yard sale, something we steered clear of, as getting involved would just mean buying more things we couldn't bring back to England!
The car was packed up, we said our farewells and we headed off to the Jack Daniels Distillery, in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
The wierd thing about Lynchburg is that it's a dry county.
You can't buy or drink alcohol there.
What a place to put a whiskey distillery!!!
We took the (free!) tour, which was actually really good! We had an awesome tour guide called Billy, who shared all his stories of English folk with us, and was pretty knowledgeable about the whiskey. He had a great beard too!
The tour lasted about an hour, there was just time for an ice cold lemonade before visiting the official store where you could buy bottles of whiskey for souvenir purposes only (because this made sense......).
We purchased a bottle of single barrel that was only sold in the distillery, no other place in the world(!).
From the distillery we headed into Lynchburg town, a place that at first glance looked pretty cool, but on further investigation turned out to be a bit of a tourist trap. It had the feel of what you imagine a southern town to have. Dusty, old, lots of bikers and accents. But full of overpriced items branded with the Jack Daniels logo. EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine branded with the Jack Daniels logo, and priced far too high.
We'd had enough of the town, so we set off for our second destination of the day, The Unclaimed Baggage Centre in Alabama. A place we'd been told a lot about, and we wanted to see what it could offer us!
http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/
Check this place out! There's only one in the world, and it's where all the..well...unclaimed baggage ends up, where it's sold for cheap prices in a sort of warehouse!
A lot of what's on sale is clothes, but there really are some crazy things you can buy. Tiffany jewellery, expensive perfume, designer clothes, video cameras, you name it, they sell it!
I walked away with a couple of Ipods, a 30gb for $45 (£29 ) and an old school 3gb Ipod for only $10! (£6.50). We made a few other purchases and headed out to Chattanooga, a place we only knew by song, who knew what we'd find there!?!?!
Well, we didn't find much. Chattanooga was full to the brim! A combination of it being Labour Day and a ball game, every hotel was packed out and the streets were wierdly empty.. we couldn't really afford the $170 for an awful outskirt hotel room, so we headed out of the silly city and went to seek our fortune elsewhere!
Cleveland was our next port of call, luckily there was room at the inn! We settled down for the evening and got us some sleep.
The car was packed up, we said our farewells and we headed off to the Jack Daniels Distillery, in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
The wierd thing about Lynchburg is that it's a dry county.
You can't buy or drink alcohol there.
What a place to put a whiskey distillery!!!
We took the (free!) tour, which was actually really good! We had an awesome tour guide called Billy, who shared all his stories of English folk with us, and was pretty knowledgeable about the whiskey. He had a great beard too!
The tour lasted about an hour, there was just time for an ice cold lemonade before visiting the official store where you could buy bottles of whiskey for souvenir purposes only (because this made sense......).
We purchased a bottle of single barrel that was only sold in the distillery, no other place in the world(!).
From the distillery we headed into Lynchburg town, a place that at first glance looked pretty cool, but on further investigation turned out to be a bit of a tourist trap. It had the feel of what you imagine a southern town to have. Dusty, old, lots of bikers and accents. But full of overpriced items branded with the Jack Daniels logo. EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine branded with the Jack Daniels logo, and priced far too high.
We'd had enough of the town, so we set off for our second destination of the day, The Unclaimed Baggage Centre in Alabama. A place we'd been told a lot about, and we wanted to see what it could offer us!
http://www.unclaimedbaggage.com/
Check this place out! There's only one in the world, and it's where all the..well...unclaimed baggage ends up, where it's sold for cheap prices in a sort of warehouse!
A lot of what's on sale is clothes, but there really are some crazy things you can buy. Tiffany jewellery, expensive perfume, designer clothes, video cameras, you name it, they sell it!
I walked away with a couple of Ipods, a 30gb for $45 (£29 ) and an old school 3gb Ipod for only $10! (£6.50). We made a few other purchases and headed out to Chattanooga, a place we only knew by song, who knew what we'd find there!?!?!
Well, we didn't find much. Chattanooga was full to the brim! A combination of it being Labour Day and a ball game, every hotel was packed out and the streets were wierdly empty.. we couldn't really afford the $170 for an awful outskirt hotel room, so we headed out of the silly city and went to seek our fortune elsewhere!
Cleveland was our next port of call, luckily there was room at the inn! We settled down for the evening and got us some sleep.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Getting our country onn.
We woke up late-ish and headed into Nashville, where we visited the Farmer's Market to collect ingredients for dinner. We had decided to make our hosts spaghetti bolognese, a general crowd pleaser and something we're pretty good at, plus, we knew we were visiting the market, so it seemed like a good time to cram in some local veg.
We had a look around the market, were given a free bulb of garlic as a present for being English, visited an Indian food shop and decided to grab some lunch.
I had some strange chicken which tasted like it'd been boiled for far too long and was covered in lots of pepper and spices. It came with a roll.
Mum was more successful and chow'd down to some falafal, salad and flatbread.
Satisfied (to a degree), we scouted out the free Nashville bus and took a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The tour was pretty awesome, we paid Elvis' gold car a visit, saw some old school country music videos and saw Dolly Parton's original lyric sheet for 'Jolene!
It was a great place to spend the day, although the hall of fame had strange metal plaques which didn't really fit the musicians! The gift shop was full of things we definitely needed to buy, so we stocked up on our country gifts and headed back to Antioch.
On the way back we stopped at a discount liquor store where we (once again) remarked on the ridiculously cheap prices, and amazing selections of spirits and purchased a bottle or two...or three..or four.
We cooked up quite a fantastic dinner with a nice, fresh salad (something we'd both been craving!) and spent the evening drinking wine, chatting more and generally having a lovely time!
We had a look around the market, were given a free bulb of garlic as a present for being English, visited an Indian food shop and decided to grab some lunch.
I had some strange chicken which tasted like it'd been boiled for far too long and was covered in lots of pepper and spices. It came with a roll.
Mum was more successful and chow'd down to some falafal, salad and flatbread.
Satisfied (to a degree), we scouted out the free Nashville bus and took a trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The tour was pretty awesome, we paid Elvis' gold car a visit, saw some old school country music videos and saw Dolly Parton's original lyric sheet for 'Jolene!
It was a great place to spend the day, although the hall of fame had strange metal plaques which didn't really fit the musicians! The gift shop was full of things we definitely needed to buy, so we stocked up on our country gifts and headed back to Antioch.
On the way back we stopped at a discount liquor store where we (once again) remarked on the ridiculously cheap prices, and amazing selections of spirits and purchased a bottle or two...or three..or four.
We cooked up quite a fantastic dinner with a nice, fresh salad (something we'd both been craving!) and spent the evening drinking wine, chatting more and generally having a lovely time!
Headin' down South
We left Gabi's house and headed south to Tennessee, passing through Kentucky on the way. In true nature of 'when in Rome..', we headed to a KFC to sample from the source.
We were pretty disappointed by the KFC BUFFET!! Which was a horrific combination of overcooked 'vegetables', badly fried chicken and entertaining customers.
We headed onwards to Nashville to try out our second couchsurf.
Driving through the streets of Antioch (the town we were staying in) we wondered about all the piles of rubble and half houses that we kept seeing. We later found out from our hosts that there had been a terrible flood in Nashville, and what we'd seen was the aftermath.
We arrived in Antioch in the early evening and met our couchsurfing hosts for the next two night, Beth and Tom, and their crazy cat Polly (who likes to jump at walls)!
Tom is an artist, and Beth, a photographer. They gave us a tour of their amazingly artistic home and showed us our SEPERATE bedrooms (a luxury that's rare on the road!). We then settled down for a lovely home cooked dinner, which was so refreshing after all the fried food at the rest stops. We shared some English shortbread and some Gin and Tonic's and settled down for a lovely evening of chats and drinks.
We were pretty disappointed by the KFC BUFFET!! Which was a horrific combination of overcooked 'vegetables', badly fried chicken and entertaining customers.
We headed onwards to Nashville to try out our second couchsurf.
Driving through the streets of Antioch (the town we were staying in) we wondered about all the piles of rubble and half houses that we kept seeing. We later found out from our hosts that there had been a terrible flood in Nashville, and what we'd seen was the aftermath.
We arrived in Antioch in the early evening and met our couchsurfing hosts for the next two night, Beth and Tom, and their crazy cat Polly (who likes to jump at walls)!
Tom is an artist, and Beth, a photographer. They gave us a tour of their amazingly artistic home and showed us our SEPERATE bedrooms (a luxury that's rare on the road!). We then settled down for a lovely home cooked dinner, which was so refreshing after all the fried food at the rest stops. We shared some English shortbread and some Gin and Tonic's and settled down for a lovely evening of chats and drinks.
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