an unexpected adventure (lyn)

The kids ask what our plan is for the night.  We tell them we don't have one.  They chastise us for being unprepared.  We admonish them for being dull.  "Where's your sense of adventure?  It'll be fun," we tease.

We leave Duke, then drive around UNC at Chapel Hill.  Next, we plan to drive to Davidson College, on our way to Nashville. This does not happen. 

We leave UNC around 3:30 and drive two hours out of our way and cannot find Davidson.  We get confused when we see a sign for Davidson County and think we are close.  We exit and learn that we are not close.  We begin to follow instructions someone gives us at a gas station, but end up totally confusing the GPS female voice.  She sends us on a little tour to nowhere. Along the way we pass a plantation.  A muffler clinic.  A place to buy feed.  And roads with names like Buffalo Shoals and Rock Hump. After thirty minutes or so of backcountry roads, we find ourselves at the place where we started. We decide to give up on seeing Davidson.   The boys don’t care.

We re-calculate our plans and decide to drive straight through to Knoxville, have a late dinner, and spend the night there.  The GPS estimates we should arrive around 9:15.  This never happens either.

We start driving to Knoxville.  Things are going pretty smoothly.  We drive for about two hours.  We are on I-40 West, when all of a sudden we see an ominous sign:  DETOUR. I-40 closed due to mudslides.  We later learn that this stretch of road has been closed for a year.  At the time, we don’t expect much of a problem.  Nothing more than a small inconvenience.  We exit and stop at a gas station.  The clerk there has pre-printed instructions telling us how to detour.  Great, we think.  How hard can this be?  We follow the instructions that tell us to get on I-40 East, then take exit 26, and blah blah blah.  We are frustrated that now we are driving about ten miles in the opposite direction.  Everyone is getting cranky. It’s late.  We are hungry.  We are sick of being in the car.  And now we are not even heading in the right direction.  Zelia is driving and I’m reading the instructions. Exit 26.  There’s exit 24.  25. And 27.  No 26.  It feels like we are in an episode of The Twilight Zone. 

Then I get a nosebleed.  Blood gets all over my clothes.  My new shirt.  My favorite jeans. My purse. I don’t have enough tissues to stop the flow.  We stop to get some.  I look like someone who has been beaten up but has no visible signs of injury.  While getting tissues, we  find a very nice Southern man who gives us new directions.  We leave and within five minutes, we make another wrong turn. Our GPS lady has abandoned us.

It’s about 8:30 now (we’ve given up hope of reaching Knoxville) and soon we find ourselves climbing a long, curvy road up a mountain (The Smokies, we figure).  Warning signs everywhere.  No other cars in sight.  No lights anywhere.  It’s a harrowing road and no one is even pretending to think this is an okay route.  We are momentarily distracted when we come across a fire in the mountainous forest that surrounds us.  We see a couple of fire engines but no one is in them. Scary.  Occasionally we come across a random house with lights on.  A house where we would NOT go for help if our rental car failed us. We have no cell signal so our phones are worthless.  Any minute we expect to see a big black bear jump out of the woods, since there are signs for them everywhere.  No one is feeling safe.

After about 20 miles or so of treacherous, dark roads, we come off the mountain. And what greets us at the end is Vegas in the South.   I’m not kidding.  Bright lights.  Flashing signs.  Hotels everywhere.  A big casino. The juxtaposition of the sparsely populated mountain road with this neon wonderland is stunning.  We’ve arrived in Cherokee, North Carolina.

We decide to have dinner and spend the night.  We start knocking on hotel doors to find they are all filled.  Saturday night in Cherokee is a very busy place.  Finally, through a last-minute cancellation, we are able to get ONE room in the Inn of the Seven Clans.  Not exactly where we’d hoped to spend the night, but it’s still better than our car.

We check in, jump back in the car, and drive to a recommended restaurant where there’s a 20-minute wait for, at best,  mediocre food.  I get the local specialty:  broiled trout, which is over -cooked but edible.   I eat, but all I really want to do is go to sleep.  Even if it is with three other people.