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November 30, 2008
Christmas in October
As I mentioned last time, Sarah, Nicole, and I stayed at The Inn at Christmas Place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee where we had "Christmas Morning" the next day. When we went to bed, we all put our Secret Santa presents under the "tree" to be ready for the next morning:
When we opened presents (with Christmas music blasting in the background) we discovered two things. One, we all definitely took the "tacky and ridiculous" theme to heart, and two... Sarah and I think very much alike. Sarah got me the exact same keychain that I had gotten for Nicole! The craziest part about it, was that this store had thousands of random things, and one rack of personalized name keychains with little wooden pocket-knives attached and Sarah and I both bought the one that said "Bubba." Of all the names, of all the items in the store, we both went for a Bubba pocket-knife keychain. In addition to that, Sarah also gave me a Hillbilly Cookbook, and I gave Nicole a "Ho Ho Ho!" pencil and a sticker with a Native American and a Hillbilly sitting together. Nicole got Sarah a lighter with a leather lighter case that said "Sarah" on it (from the Fudge, Knives, Swimwear, and Leather store, of course).
I took this shot of our messy room while Nicole was filming a scene with Sarah:
Our room even came with a kitchen!
The main lobby:
The Grand Lobby:
The giant (working!) cuckoo clock!
This Santa (in one of the lobbies) has a mailbox where all the kids can put their "letters to Santa" and they'll hear back the next day!
Me, Sarah, and Nicole on "Christmas":
The back door:
We were really sad to leave that afternoon, but we had to get to Washington, DC for our next interview. We filled up on the most extensive complimentary brunch I think I've ever had, and piled back into the car to head to DC.
Goodbye Smoky Mountains!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 05:56 PM | Comments (2)
November 27, 2008
Smoky the Bear
In the afternoon of our second day in Pigeon Forge (well, really our first day... we arrived at night the previous day) we decided to go for that hike we had never really taken earlier that morning when it had snowed. After finishing up at the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, we stopped at a pancake house for lunch (one of at least 50 pancake-only restaurants in the area) and headed towards the mountains. Along the way, I snapped this picture through the car-window. It's a terrible photo, but this picture alone sums up Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (tacky, Christmasey, and completely fantastic):
Snowy mountains ahead of us:
Of course we had to take this picture:
We happened to be in Tennessee right when they had their best foliage, so we got to take amazing mountain pictures with beautiful fall colors. This is actually the same shot I took early that morning, just later in the day:
Look familiar?
Another one from that afternoon:
Well, we never did make it on that hike. Instead we drove around for an hour looking for our hiking spot (we had one circled on our tourist map, so of course we couldn't stop anywhere else). We eventually gave up, but on our long drive out of the park, we stumbled upon something even better than a hike... a huge black bear! And what do the What Now Wanderers do when we see a bear? We follow it into the woods with our video camera (PBS, you can thank us later for our awesomely dangerous footage). I only got a few blurry pictures (it was dark and there was no time to set up a tripod), and here they are:
He ended up wandering off down this stream somewhere, probably in search of pots of honey:
Sarah, Me, and Nicole by the bear's stream:
On the way back from our "hike" we picked up dinner in one of the cutest shopping centers ever (everything is Christmas-themed and adorable in Pigeon Forge), and we even saw another bear!
At this point, we were ready to turn in for the night at our Christmas-themed hotel. It's called The Inn at Christmas Place and it is ADORABLE. It's worth driving all the way to Pigeon Forge from wherever you live just to stay there. I think we can unanimously say it was our favorite stop along the way (although Motel 6 in Effingham, IL was a real contender).
But... what would a Christmas Inn be without Christmas morning? We decided to play Secret Santa so that we'd have gifts to give each other the next morning, which we had designated Christmas morning. For those of you who don't know how Secret Santa works, everyone picks a name out of a hat and gets a gift for just that person. With only three people, it wasn't much of a "secret," but we still had a lot of fun. We set a $5 limit and vowed to get each other the weirdest, tackiest gifts we could possibly find at one of the local souvenir stores. For weird tacky stuff, we decided to stop at the Fudge, Knives, Swimwear, and Leather store. Talk about a one-stop-shop! It's everything I ever needed all at one store!
Oh, and a quick note to our film editors at PBS - we filmed a delightful scene for you in the parking lot, in which Nicole is looking for a leather swimsuit and I'm looking for specialty fudge knives and we get into a big argument about where to go until stumbling across the Fudge, Knives, Swimwear, and Leather store. This is one of many "reality" scenes we're surprising you with.
Anyway, you'll all have to wait until my next entry to see what we got for each other!
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)
November 22, 2008
Believe It
I know it's been a little while since I last blogged (I've had the flu) so if you've forgotten where I left off with my RTN posts, it was on the Chairlift to Heaven.
After coming down off the mountain, Sarah, Nicole, and I walked across the street to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum:
The museum is filled with all sorts of crazy, exotic things from around the world, and I managed to take a few pictures of some:
First, this is an actual piece of the Berlin Wall:
Two-headed animals:
Can you guess what this is?
It's a gigantic chain made entirely of gum wrappers:
This "New Guinea Penis Sheath" provided amusement for the rest of our trip:
An actual shrunken head:
This Tibetan Skull Bead Necklace was especially cool since Brent actually owns one! When Brent and I were traveling through Europe, Brent bought one of these at a gypsy market, not knowing it's a witch doctor necklace used for demon exorcisms. He's going to be so excited:
An old vampire slaying kit:
This is a painting of Brad Pitt on a cow turd:
And a Spider Man painting done entirely on a canvas of spiderwebs:
The next room we were in was very dark and had a big wall that you could pose in front of. A bright flash would go off and it would leave a silhouette of your bodies on the wall! It lasted for a really long time, too, so I was able to get a picture of ours:
Next was the tipping bridge tunnel. It's basically a tunnel with a wooden bridge going through it, and the walls of the tunnel are spinning back and forth, giving the illusion that the bridge you're walking on is violently tipping side to side. It was so believable, that we were all grabbing the edges just to steady ourselves from falling off. Even knowing that it was a mind trick, we couldn't get over it and took a funny picture of our reaction to the tipping bridge:
This might look like just a tree stump, but it actually has animal horns in it too! Many, many years ago, some sort of bull died next to a tree, and its bones and horns were slowly enveloped by the growing tree:
Remember the mosquito trapped in amber from Jurassic Park? Well, this insect in amber was actually mined at the site where Jurassic Park was filmed. Dino DNA anyone?
Well that's all for the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum. There are a lot of them spread out across the country and they're a lot of fun, so check it out if you have one nearby!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 10:17 PM | Comments (4)
November 19, 2008
Sick
Sorry I've been seriously slacking on The Blonde Excuse lately. Somehow I managed to get the flu not once but twice in one month. Lucky me!
I'll be back soon, though, with the rest of my trip pictures!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2008
Chairlift to Heaven
After our failed attempt at seeing the sunrise over the Smokies, Sarah, Nicole, and I drove back down the mountain to the town of Gatlinburg, Tennessee to do a little shopping and sightseeing. We started off in a little section of town called The Village, which was unbelievably adorable:
The Village must have hired a particularly eloquent writer to come up with a description for their part of town - "A charming reflection of yesteryear, a bit of the Old World... offering unique and quaint shops... a place that is like an enchanted memory of a by-gone time."
Here we are, stepping into "an enchanted memory":
With an introduction like that, I'm not going to lie... I kind of wanted it to be really tacky and ridiculous... but I have to hand it to these people, it really was enchanting.
This can't be Tennessee:
The Candle Cottage:
The Cheese Cupboard:
Everywhere we turned it looked more and more like The Village had somehow popped out of Medieval Europe or something:
The Donut Friar - home of the best donut I have ever had in my entire life (and that's really saying something):
Inside The Donut Friar:
Nicole in an old phone booth:
Cute scarecrows:
Sarah, Nicole, and Me on a bench in The Village:
One of the streets in Gatlinburg:
Another attraction worth stopping at in Gatlinburg - the chairlift! For those of you too lazy to take the stairway to heaven, Gatlinburg has a chairlift to heaven that definitely did not disappoint. The chairlift takes you all the way to the top of the mountain where there are amazing views and a cute little store that sells souvenirs and hot chocolate.
At the bottom of the mountain, there's a chairlift chair set up for people to take pictures in. This is one of many "bad decision" photos taken along the trip - Nicole and me pretending we're on top of the mountain looking down off the Chairlift of Terror. I guess it doesn't look so authentic when you can see the sidewalk two inches beneath our feet:
We got on the actual chairlift and rode it all the way to the top. Here's Sarah in the chair in front of us:
At the top, this animatronic hillbilly takes your picture as a keepsake. I love Tennessee:
The view at the top was spectacular.
Me, Sarah, and Nicole with the looming snow clouds in the background:
Using the binoculars:
One of the most amazing things we saw up there was that the tops of the mountains, where we had just been a couple hours earlier, were starting to get "frosted" with snow:
I think seeing the snow covering the mountaintops made us all realize how freezing cold we were, so we headed into the mountaintop shop to get hot chocolate and buy some gloves (we all have super-cool matching gloves now that we wear at the same time to look extra awesome).
While wandering through the shop, I stumbled upon the coolest souvenir idea ever. A personalized postcard! It was basically a photo-booth where you get your picture taken and your face is put on a postcard with other pictures of the Smoky Mountains. I decided to make one (how could I not?) and send a printed copy to my parents and an e-mail copy to Brent. For the e-mail copy, I even got to record a voice message. I recorded something stupid like "Hey Sweetie! I'm here in the Smoky Mountains... and I'm making you a postcard... and I miss you and love you!!" What I didn't realize was that after recording, the machine plays it back to you, on surround sound speakers, at top volume... twice. Sarah was outside checking out the view and even she heard it. In fact, it probably echoed across the entire mountain range.
I was completely embarrassed so I quickly pressed "send" and got out of there. We got back on the chairlift, this time descending the very steep mountain. I'm pretty sure it got significantly steeper on the way down than it had been a mere twenty minutes earlier on the way up. I was too terrified to take any pictures. Actually, I was almost paralyzed with fear (I don't do well with heights) but Sarah grabbed my camera and got this great shot of Gatlinburg (only after I yelled at her for moving and possibly causing our chair to tip over and send me cascading down the mountainside):
Next on our agenda for the day was a trip to Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, so make sure you check back and don't miss it!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 12:50 AM | Comments (2)
November 07, 2008
Let It Snow!
Early in the morning of Day 7 of our road trip, Nicole, Sarah, and I woke up before dawn to get to the top of the Smoky Mountains and watch the sunrise. We drove in the dark for at least a half hour until we got near the top of the Smokies, but the road we wanted to take was blocked off! We couldn't figure out why, so we drove around frantically, racing the sun, until we found a good place to watch the sun coming up over the mountains. Then we realized it was cloudy.... Oh well. We still had a beautiful view of the mountains in the early morning "light":
Then, something even more wonderful than sunrise over the mountains happened. It started snowing! Apparently that's why the road to the top of the mountains was closed - there was too much snow blocking the way! We hadn't seen snow in months, so we were very excited when the flakes started falling all around us. You can see a few in this picture here:
We were especially excited about the snow because we had hotel reservations that night at The Inn at Christmas Place (an amazing Christmas-themed resort) so having a snowy morning really rounded out the whole Christmas-in-October experience.
Here we are with the Smokies in the background and the snow starting to fall around us:
Nicole really wanted a jumping picture, and it's for her that I'm posting these amazingly unflattering photos:
Anyway, I thought our "sunrise" photo-shoot needed its own entry, but I'll be back later with the rest of Day 7 of our trip!
Posted by lauren at 04:26 PM | Comments (3)
November 06, 2008
The Smokies
We arrived in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee on Day 6 of our trip and rolled into a town that has been called The Redneck Las Vegas by three different people I've spoken to. They're absolutely correct, by the way, but we still loved the place. Here in Connecticut we don't have a lot of neon signs, and we definitely don't have upside down buildings:
We were completely overloaded with things to see and do, but off in the distance were the Great Smoky Mountains and we had to get a taste. We drove into the mountains where we took a couple pictures before it got too dark:
I guess this is really obvious, considering the name, but the mountains really did look smoky. The clouds that hung around them weren't at all like the clouds I see at home, they actually were... smoky-looking. Ok, I guess I've adequately established that the "Smoky Mountains" is a good name. Here's another picture:
It finally got too dark to enjoy the mountains, so we headed back into town where we walked around for a while, looking for a place to eat. Here's some of the fun stuff we saw in Pigeon Forge:
Not only did the Jurassic Boat Ride have fake dinosaurs...
But it had fake people waiting in line to get in too!
We had the whole next day ahead of us to spend in Pigeon Forge, so we decided to turn in early and get some sleep for hiking the next day (which never really ended up happening, by the way). Back at the hotel, though, Nicole and I decided to get drinks at the vending machine, and I got this great picture of Nicole's awesome footwear that she wore under her pajamas as we walked to the soda machines:
Anyway, more pictures of the Great Smoky Mountains coming up on Day 7 of our trip!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 12:08 AM | Comments (3)
November 04, 2008
Nashville
Next stop on our crazy whirlwind of a road trip was Nashville, Tennessee! The whole time we had been on the road, all Nicole could talk about was getting to Nashville and how amazing it would be, and Sarah and I were very concerned that she was going to be terribly disillusioned... but we were wrong! Nashville is such an amazing city and I'm so glad we got to spend a night there.
Nashville:
Nashville looks like a little country-style Las Vegas with neon signs everywhere and street performers at every corner:
I love any city where there are horse-drawn carriages at every stop light:
To me, Nashville is like an explosion of the CMT channel, but even tackier (I mean that in the best way possible).
No dancin' on table with spurs on!
As we walked up and down the streets, every single bar had country performers, which was a lot of fun:
All along the street there were Elvis statues, and we each decided to get a picture with one.
Nicole:
Sarah:
Me:
One of the funny things about traveling around with a lot of fancy camera equipment is that everyone wants to know who you are and what's going on. This guy was completely drunk and really really badly wanted to be filmed for our show while he demonstrated how to play a guitar....
Along the road, we had a lot of pre-arranged interviews, as well as a few impromptu ones. In Nashville, we decided to interview a few street performers like these guys:
As we walked down the street a little more, we interviewed someone named Darby, who writes his own music and hopes to make it big some day. Here he is with one of his street performer friends whose name I don't remember:
Darby was looking for a wife and thought I might fit the ticket. What I think is funny is that here in Connecticut, when a guy starts hitting on you he asks if you have a boyfriend, but when guys hit on us in other parts of the country, their first question is whether or not we're married.
We wandered around Nashville a little longer and checked out a few bars, all of which had walls covered with country music singers who had likely passed through at one time or another:
We ended up hanging out at a club called B.B. King's where we watched a live band play:
At one point, the band members came out and played while walking around the tables:
Painting of Jerry Lee Lewis:
After having a drink and listening to the band for a while, we walked back to our car to head to the hotel. Along the way, though, I took a couple pictures of the less "neon-ized" streets, which had really cute trees covered in Christmas lights:
Also on our way back to the car, we saw a lot of bloody handprints all over. Does anyone know what those things were for? Hopefully they weren't real....
And last but not least, on the drive to our hotel we passed this strip club, advertising "100's of beautiful girls & 3 ugly ones":
Anyway, we all absolutely loved Nashville and I can't wait to get back there some day. Pigeon Forge, TN coming up next!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 02:57 PM | Comments (7)
November 01, 2008
Metropolis, Illinois
As I mentioned in my last entry, we spent a night in Metropolis, Illinois, home of Superman. After going to the casino and trying to feed all the cats in the parking lot, we still felt like we hadn't taken in enough of the town, so we spent the first half of the next day exploring Metropolis:
The first stop was back to the giant Superman statue so that we could get our picture taken with it during the day. Everything around the giant Superman is Superman-themed, so you literally can't turn in any direction without seeing something like this sign, which looks like it has been around for a while:
Nicole, Sarah, and Me with Superman:
Nicole and Me:
Sarah and Nicole:
Thor's Gym:
Mural of Metropolis from "back in the day," which looks very much like present-day Metropolis, as well:
At this point in the trip, our laundry bags were getting full so we decided to stop to do laundry at the local laundromat:
While there, we met Mr. and Mrs. Stouffer who, by coincidence, were originally from Rhode Island. Practically neighbors! They were really friendly and wanted to invite us over to dinner, but we had to be in Tennessee that night, so we couldn't. Here they are with their adorable dog, Pepe:
After laundry, we drove to a Big John's (which is apparently a grocery store, of some sort) where we bought cat food for our dumpster kitties. What was funny about Big John's, was that on the drive into Metropolis at night, we actually thought Big John was Superman. He's really more of a SuperHusband, though, carrying the groceries home in his little apron:
Some more weird stuff on the way to the dumpster:
A freight train:
We got back to the abandoned Maintenance building where the dumpster kitties lived, but couldn't find any! We looked around in the dirt until we found cat tracks (how weird are we that we did that?):
Found them!
These cats were climbing in and out of a hole in the roof:
We also discovered that someone else has been putting out food for them, so rather than pouring more, we just left the bag of food we bought for whoever has been feeding them:
After leaving the food for the cats, we went exploring around the area and found a little baby frog!
Sarah wanted a picture kissing him, but somehow it came out very angry looking....
A few random pictures of the stuff around us where the cats live:
Sarah with a huge grasshopper that landed on her arm:
Look how big that thing is!
Some sort of plant growing by the river:
Once we said goodbye to the cats, we decided it was time to be on our way to Nashville, Tennessee, the next stop on our road trip.
One last picture of a cute building in Metropolis:
Driving through Kentucky, one of the many, many states that claims to be the hometown of Abraham Lincoln:
Random building in Kentucky:
We spent the rest of that day driving through Kentucky and into Tennessee, which I will be posting about next!
-Lauren
Posted by lauren at 02:48 PM | Comments (3)