Saying Good Bye to the Smokey Mountains


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Published: May 18th 2010
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Can't believe it was our last full day in Gatlinburgh. We headed into the Main Street area to check out the Art festival. It was small but cute and honestly it was hot so we didn't need a reason to stand outside for an extended period of time. We had a short list of places to hit for our last stint of shopping. I had to get another chocolate caramel apple, it was like heaven the first time and the second was just as good!

We walked around and it was amazing the difference in crowd from Thursday night to Sat, obviously Gatlinburg is a popular weekend getaway. I overheard one of the store owners who said that once Memorial Weekend came the place would be a mad house, thank god we got there early!
We escaped the heat to a place called Blaine's where Jay says he had a darn tasty chicken friend steak and Gabrielle had all the wait staff clamoring to entertain her! http://www.blainesgatlinburg.com/ We were wilted so headed home for some true vacation laying around. We had steaks and all the fixins for the BBQ grill so it was easy to just camp out. The highlight of the day was a game of scrabble. We had an amazing shock when Gerald broke out some killer words and stole the game.- he is a triple word score king! His prize...getting to put Ellie down for bed:-)

There is something special to just hanging out with friends, especially when it involved a bucket of KarmelKorn and caramel apples:-)
We reluctantly packed up and got ready for our respective road trips home.

Sunday morning we discovered one of the most amazing aspects of Gatlinburg. It came in the form of something called Royale Sauce at the Log Cabin Pancake House. http://www.logcabinpancakehouse.com/gatlinburg.html this was such a discovery it had the entire table pretty much in a yum-coma - Royal Sauce is like a sweet cream cheese sauce. Our estimation is that it could be a mixture of maple syrup, butter and cream cheese, we will be experimenting at home to see how close we can duplicate this, though quite frankly I can imagine it being a tasty experimentation process!

We parted ways sadly at the pancake house since we were heading in different directions. With a heavy heart Jay and I went to pick up Lola and head to Spartanburgh, Sc to meet up with his old high school buddy Glenn Silverman. On the way out of town we stopped at Our House, a used book store and coffee shop. the owner was super nice and gave us alot of info on the area while we shopped and we bought some interesting organic coffee roasted by a company situated just over the mountains in North Carolina. So fresh cups of coffee in hand we officially started our trip home.

Unfortunately not 45 minutes later we were parked.....on Interstate 40 at Mile Marker 1 with a few hundred other road warriors. Apparently last year this area of the interstate experience a major rock slide and had just reopened in April. So the crews are using this cable and metal netting system to wrap the area to prevent damage to cars if a future rock slide occurs. We happened to get there right when the helicopter was running the cables. We had a truck next to us with a CB radio and got to find out what was happening. We hopped out onto the road figuring, how often do you get to walk along a highway, shot photos, Jay grabbed a cigar and made the best of it. The truckers ahead of us were chatting back and forth on the CB system and it was pretty funny, especially the guy driving beer suggesting we do the longest tailgate on the highway.
Fortunately after an hour we got on the move again and were on our way to the Mellow Mushroom which was an ideal location since we needed outdoor seating for Lola and Glenn had kids and who doesn't love pizza! It was a great location to stop at and the staff were super accommodating for all of our needs. The pizza was good, some unique topping combinations and the hippie vibe made it a colorful place to relax at. http://www.mellowmushroom.com/spartanburg#/store/index/spartanburg

Back on the road we hit more traffic and it was frustrating, only because the more time on the road the less time we were going to have in Savannah. By the time we made it into town it was almost 10pm and most places were closing. We drove into the center of town and got a feel for the layout of the area. Even at night it is such a pretty city, all the gardens with benches to sit a spell, the spanish moss dropping from the tree canopies, it was so beautiful.

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