We greet you now from Sunshine Valley, tucked into a mountain basin at 7800 ft a.s.l., 35 miles north of Taos, NM. Warm days, COLD nights and a bunch of snow. Juniper and Josh have been nice enough to host us for a few days and show us around. It's dashed majestic here, mountains jutting skyward from under a blanket of snow and scrub pines. (I really wanted to make some sort of erection reference there, but I'll contain myself.) (Ooops, too late.) Everywhere I turn there's a damn mountain.
But...before I can continue, you'll remember that we left you hanging on the edge of your seat in Tennessee.
Ok, so we get off the highway, lured by the Ripley's Aquarium billboard. Now usually these things are just a few minutes off the interstate, right? Well, not always so. This was a deliberate ruse to get us flies to venture into the depths of the web. The aquarium is actually located in Gatlinburg, at the base of the Smoky Mountains, an hour off the highway at the end of a thundering wampus trail of tourist traps and flapjack joints. They do love their pancakes here in Pigeon Forge, TN. It seems almost pathological, really. Like some poor schlub might waddle out of the pancake house, drive a block to the lazer tag arcade or D-luxe mini golf mountain and suddenly find himself in a debilitating carb deficit. Light-headed and bewildered he looks to the right. Only a Go-Kart track. Across the street...a dinosaur museum in a building no larger than a two car garage (my guess is they made a bunch of shoebox dioramas using tiny plastic dinosaurs from the gas station toy rack, and called it a museum). But, using the last of his waning strength, he swivels that thick ol' southern neck to the left and there, encircled in golden cherubim, bathed in heavenly light, is yet another flapjack emporium. I'm not kidding. These things are everywhere.
This strip is kind of like the hotel zone of Cancun in that all the worst chain restaurants and bullshit that America has to offer line both sides of the four lane street. Plus fireworks, churches of increasingly paranoiac denominations, and elaborately constructed theme playgrounds advertising go-karts, wildwest arcades and tiny amusement parks featuring terrifying apparatus designed to fling small children into the next county. Dollywood is in this area. Don't know what that is? Look it up, chief.
We did finally find the aquarium, a new facility boasting to be America's favorite. How it can be so new and yet so favorite is a handy trick. A nice Aquarium, tho'. The best part for me was the glass tunnel that took us through the largest of the tanks. We boarded a slow moving walkway as sharks, rays and sawfish swam overhead and all around. Sarah was especially fond of the jellyfish. I was hungry for peanut butter.
_____________So which of these do you want to make out with?
A really funny moment for me was when I was admiring the cuttlefish in their tank. A family came up behind me and the mother said "Ooooh, cuttlefish!", to which the 5 year old daughter mused, "They don't look very cuddly to me." Cute. Here's a cuttlefish changing colors. Based on the second fish's reaction I must have been stepping on some territorial toes. Don't mess with a pimp's ho.
We made it out of seaworld unscathed if you don't count the raping our wallets took. $20 bucks for a single admission. Hmphh.
We stick to the back roads and wind our way through the foothills of the Smokies into the heart of Tennessee where we stop in Clevelend for a bite at a place called The Spot. We looked around the town a bit first and found entire blocks of businesses shut down and boarded up. Despite Sarah's kicking me under the table to say nothing, I persist in asking our 17 year old waitress "What happened around here? Why are so many storefronts closed up?" She wrinkles her nose and posts a hand on her hip. "What do you mean? What's a storefront?" She yells to another server, same age. "Do you know why stuff is closed in town?"
"What do you mean?"
She turns back to us. "I didn't notice anything. I guess we just don't pay attention."
She seemed like she might try to offer more help, so to save myself I ordered a BBQ plate with hot slaw. Sarah got a wafer burger. Everything was disappointing except for Sarah's milkshake which was, I have to say, outstanding. The leaden feeling in our stomachs as we left was anything but. I still don't know how "hot slaw" differs from regular slaw, but they should change the name of the place from "The Spot" to "The Stain".
Out of Tenessee into Alabama. Sweet sweet home, Alabama. Nothing much to say here. We had no place, really, to go in Alabama, so after a brief argument about where we were going, Sarah settled in for a nap and I started a four hour burn down the shitpipe center of Alabama. I must admit I felt a bit uneasy as I left the major highway for Rt.43 South. The shift from the busy three lane Interstate to a dark and lonely country road was a little jarring. There were no other cars, and homes only sparsely broke up the the night-time landscape. Adding to my discomfiture was the profusion of high-wattage street lights surrounding every domicile. I imagined that perhaps they were warding off some night-time demons, some slathering chupacabra that prowled the area. Maybe they were just trying to keep their daughters locked down. Alabama.
Well, nothing went "Boo" in the night. The most frightening thing I saw was only a bunny hopping up in front of my headlights. It was armed to the teeth with automatic weapons but I pretended to be southern and he let me go. RT.43 finally dumped us just outside Mobile in, fittingly enough, Saraland, where we paid too much for the privilege of dropping gratefully into a king sized hotel bed.
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