TO-BEE at TYBEE '23 - JELLICO & PIGEON FORGE

"Welcome," "Y'all!"

     That's what the sign says.

Anxious.  Excited.  Anticipating. 

Those words all describe John in his efforts to get on the road to Tybee Island!  

To chime in with John Denver's song, "His bags were packed and he was ready to go, standing there outside the door" and Spencer would do the "leaving on a jet plane."  Spencer's trip of 1 hour and 26 minutes seemed tasty when compared to ours -- 12 hours split into 3 days of driving.  We did enjoy a giant pause in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, though.  I didn't know if Darling Hubby would be able to handle much of the driving or not, but he was a trooper.  We did split shifts of 1 1/2 hours each.  Not bad.

A stop at Jellico, Tennessee, was where we got the long strand of curly fries, and, I tried to get a nice photo of their picturesque church but it wasn't meant to be.

Jellico is from the name of the angelica herb that grows in the mountains.  The nearby waterway bears the name Jellico Creek.  And here I was imagining a bowl of orange flavored cool wobbly Jell-o wondering if a packaging plant was in the town, LOL.

John did see a sign on the side of a truck, "Why do cows wear bells?  Because their horns don't work!"

Which reminds me of "Why did Curly fry?  Because he had more fat than the other stooges!"

We took a country road around to Pigeon Forge, came up the slight incline and there we were, eyeball to eyeball with King Kong!  I wasn't expecting that.  John said, "I took a wrong turn."  LOL 

As we sat there with our right turn signal on, and cars going to the right in front of us, and the traffic so bad we were gonna have to wait for somebody's kind inviting wave, when an RV passed by.  Three kids were sticking their hands and faces out a window waving and being silly.  I stuck my hand out my passenger window and gave 'em the thumbs up.  They snickered and giggled and embarrassingly pulled away from the glass laughing.  They got a reaction.  I got a reaction.  Success!

Though the road had been narrow and winding, with lots of tall trees, and green hanging overgrowth, we were able to stop at a yard sale in the hills.  The hostess was so sweet and friendly.  She kept giving me un-asked for bargains, "Oh, you can just have those."  And to John, "Take the third tractor, too, you can have it with the others."

She was interesting telling of relocating to Pigeon Forge and loving it except that her son, a CEO of Lowes (Now that was a shocker since she and hubby lived so humbly!  They lived in a mobile home, with weathered wood front porch loaded with rejected furniture from the house, and a pile of discards blocked cars from going over the hill!) didn't come home much any more.  She said it was quiet where she lived and more so in the last few years, but when all the Covid restrictions lifted, it was like a vacuum suck and the valley filled with new people. 

So lady-like she was, with such a "Bless Your Heart" southern drawl.  She wore Daisy Duke short shorts, had an Adele body, and a Dolly Parton voice! 

Leaving there we drove around boulders the size of a dog house, wondered at a squashed roof top of an abandoned barn resting low in the holler, and laughed at an old, very rusty, tractor with its front bucket raised to block a driveway, all the while still excited with anticipation.  We were on vacation!