An update is on its way...

Yes, we really did go, and yes we took photos and yes we had a great time and yes I kept notes... More news soon!

Racing the clock to Nashville

Thank goodness for coffee! At 5.30ish we were up and (staggering) about, and best of all, just about on time. So far so good. Jo locked up the cabin while I psyched myself up for another epic drive. The worst part of it was going to be the first 5 minutes, gingerly inching down that bloody hill in the dark. Not much fun in daylight, so you can imagine how it felt when you couldn’t really see the edge of the road you were about to drive off.

We made it down without incident, the satnav lady gave us the quickest route to Nashville, and it wasn’t looking good. We had about 3 and a half hours to get there, if all went to plan, and while we weren’t convinced we would make it, we definitely pointed in the right direction, so not much to do other than get on with it. Besides, everyone drives so fast, and it was still early morning, and we probably wouldn’t need to stop for McDonalds…

With Jo keeping an eye on the satnav and me keeping both eyes on the road, our ears were listening out for country music on the radio because our big plan for that night was a show at the Grand Ole Opry, and we had no idea what to expect!

Humming along to the radio and probably driving faster than we should have, we got a bit of a surprise about two hours into our journey. It turns out that when you cross into Middle Tennessee (where Nashville is) from East Tennessee (where Cosby is), you move into the Central Time Zone. And it also works out that it was in our favour, we got an extra hour! At first when the timecheck was done on the radio I thought the announcer was doing a John Humphries and getting mixed up with his hours, but sure enough the clock on our clever wee car changed as well.

We were still cutting it fine, though, and after a bit of trouble just outside Nashville where we hit the tail end of rush hour, we hit Nashville Farmers Market with 10 minutes to spare. Thank goodness you can’t miss the big pink bus in the car park!

A spare day in Ridge Retreat

With our extra day in the area, we decided to take another drive along to Gatlinburg, specifically the arts and crafts area. Both Jo and I are very crafty, in the best possible way, and were looking out for new ideas, as well as souvenirs and gifts to take home. I loved the quilts and wall-hangings in the cabin, and was interested in trying to find something similar for back home – in fact I’d been talking about it before I even set off for the States. After lunch in the area, we quickly discovered that the do it yourself versions of quilts were more in our price range than the pre-made versions, we stocked up on patterns and fabrics, had a bit of a potter around a few of the different areas (looking at candles, woodcrafts, paintings and more pottery, all made locally, if not onsite) and headed back to the cabin to get packed up, tidied up and have once last shot of the hot tub on our last day of luxury!

In our haste to book an extra day at Ridge Retreat, we forgot why we had intended to drive to Nashville a day earlier, because we were due on a tour bus at 10am in central Nashville the next morning! And Nashville is a good 4 hours’ drive from Cosby.
There was only one thing for it, fire up the barbie, load up the car, finish the beers and get an early night!

Hooray for Dollywood!

Today was Dollywood day! I love theme parks and I love Dolly, so today was always going to be a fun day. Up bright and early again, we saw the crowds at Rockefeller Center on NBC’s morning show, and looked forward to getting morning coffee at Dean and Deluca’s in a couple of weeks’ time. Then we snapped out of it and jumped in the car because we knew Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge were bound to be busy on a summer weekend and we wanted as much time in the park as we could get. If I’d known quite how bad Pigeon Forge was going to be (traffic-wise, we’ll get onto the tourist tat in a minute…), I think we’d have parked the car in Gatlinburg and hopped on the Dolly Trolley. We ended up bumper to bumper and even the sat nav lady was confused by the road layout of the tackiest place on earth. It was like as if a giant sat down for a meal of Blackpool, the “attractions” at Niagara Falls, the cheap end of the Vegas strip and that rancid shopping mall where the DMV is in Herald Square then sicked it all back up again.

And yes, we did kind of realise it was going to be like that, but we didn’t bank on the sheer scale of it all. The Gatlinburg sky ride, which we’d also planned to do, was a bit too vertiginous for our liking, as well – some things you just can’t get the scale of from the internet. So by the time we got to Dollywood, we were settled into just the right kind of tacky, and ready to have some serious fun. Everything from the uniforms of the staff down to the architecture of the buildings was lots of fun, and of course, Dolly’s butterflies were on everything! We started off enjoying the thrill rides, and the wet rides, and wandering around getting a feel for the place. We saw the eagle enclosure and took in part of a bird show, then wandered around the showcases of traditional local crafts and business. By far my favourite part of the day, however, was (and this won’t come as a surprise to many people) was lunch! I’d seen some great reviews of Aunt Granny’s, a traditional meat-and-three cafeteria onsite, and we weren’t disappointed. The aircon meant that even while it was 90 degrees outside, inside there was plenty of sweet tea and down home cooking, give me roast chicken, spuds, cabbage and gravy, and I’m more than happy. We didn’t even have room for dessert.

After lunch we took in a few more rides, did a bit of shopping and saw a magic show, before taking the steam train for one last look around the grounds. I would recommend a day out at Dollywood to everyone, even if you hate country or traditional music, there’ll be something you like here. The gift shop is an experience in itself, we came away with Dolly t-shirts, postcards, a few Dolly emery boards, a cookbook, the ubiquitous pencil (I’m a collector), some fragranced potholders and all kinds of other stuff. Fantastic!

Then it was back to the cabin for a good rest after what turned out to be a long day – we only just made it back before it turned dark. And we didn’t want to be out in that!

The Smoky Mountains and home sweet home

Up bright and early for the next day of our adventure, we pootled along the Cosby Highway to the rental office for our original cabin. Greeted with the remark ‘so you girls had a bit of an adventure last night’ we realised just how small the community was! The owners of Cosby Creek Cabins did us proud by not only waiving the charge for the previous night’s rental but also offering us an alternative, more Mazda 6-friendly cabin. It was with some trepidation that we set off for another back road, uphill all the way (and yes that means more sheer drops either side), but to our amazement, we arrived at one of the most stunning buildings I’ve ever seen, let alone stayed in. They’d done us proud, I think they gave us one of their best units and we were on a mission for the rest of the day to enjoy it. After 10 minutes, we decided that 2 nights just wasn’t enough and got on the phone to change our plans. We decided to knock a night off our visit to Nashville and add one to our stay in Cosby.

Everything about the house (Ridge Retreat) was amazing, the building, the view, the location, the sun flooding onto the porch, the hot tub, the enormous fridge, the outdoor grill, the games room, the lawn, the quilts and wall-hangings, the mezzanine en-suite bedroom, the bathroom on every floor and the cubby-type bedrooms. We were even pleased to see a washing machine! We decided to scrap our plans for the day, hit the supermarket and stock up on magazines, nibbles, barbecue food and beers – rock on! The news of the floods at home and the almost incessant rain we’d had earlier in the year made us want to make the most of our good fortune and enjoy the weather.

Of course you can’t send two girls just to the supermarket when there are other shops in the vicinity. A few blocks away from the supermarket is the Gatlinburg arts and crafts community. We felt like we were getting the full down home experience by dropping in at a couple of outlets, selling reclaimed and recycled just about everything, shops making pottery, wall hangings, goats milk soap, lye soap (a local specialty) and we even met one of the area’s hardest workers, Willy the kid, kitted out in a trendy studded collar and happy as anything to see visitors. A few dollars lighter, we headed back to the cabin and set about the serious business of hot-tubbing, drinking, relaxing and barbecuing.

So the sunshine was the highlight of the day, but oh my goodness, when darkness falls in the Smoky Mountains, it falls hard! City girl that I am, I have never been so glad to sleep with a light (and a Bridezillas marathon on TV) on in my life! It’s not just the absolute pitch darkness, but the creepy bug noises that go with it – I’m with Jo on this, who goes camping in that? I had already been bitten by something awful as well as being bitten by at least a dozen slightly less awful things, and I have to recommend the Savlon spray we had with us, over any of the repellent we used. It’s going to happen, you’re better to try and make yourself feel better afterwards instead of trying to prevent the inevitable. Settled down on the couch with the night outside and the doors very firmly locked, the house even started making creepy noises – at least I hope it was the house, we started to wonder if we had done the right thing by extending our stay. Believe it or not, we managed to find Most Haunted on one of the more obscure cable channels and that didn’t improve matters either. Once we’d gotten over ourselves, we had a relatively early night looking forward to the next day of our holiday.

On the road

Thanks to the time difference and a general air of excitement, we were up and about bang on time at 5am (the more socially-acceptable 10am on UK time). We waited patiently for the first hourly shuttle bus of the day, we weren’t going to miss that baby and face the wrath of an NY cab driver on a short fare again, to take us to the JetBlue terminal in time for our 7am flight to Charlotte, North Carolina. We boarded the plane after enjoying a quick (and so cheap!) breakfast in the terminal. Anyone who knows me, knows how much I hate airports, hate leaving for the airport, hate waiting at the airport etc, and it went like a dream for once. JetBlue was amazing, we got to watch real time actual live telly! How does that work? Why can’t they put it in trains or other people’s planes. JetBlue should start transatlantic flights, I’d never fly with anyone else ever again. At the time, the airline was also sponsoring the Simpsons movie, so we spent the flight flicking between the dedicated Simpsons channel (with loads of ‘new to us’ episodes) and MTV for the truly atrocious and utterly addictive My Super Sweet Sixteen.

After only 2 hours, we landed at Charlotte, picked up the first of many souvenirs at the airport gift shop, reclaimed our luggage and hopped on board the Hertz courtesy bus to go and pick up our shiny new car. We were expecting a Toyota Corolla (I drive an Aygo at home), and were shocked to find a big shiny gold Mazda 6. Luxury! Having only driven without instruction about 10 times, the shine of the lovely car was slightly dulled by an abject terror of driving. Thank goodness for SatNav and Jo keeping me on the straight and narrow, one less thing for me to worry about while we were on the road. So after kind of getting lost on the outskirts of Charlotte (which was not an unpleasant experience, except for when I did about five miles with the handbrake on), we pointed the car in the direction of Chimney Rock and went for it! As the suburbs turned into the wilds of North Carolina, we had plenty to look at outside the car, and not just the sheer drop on either side of the winding roads.

We stopped off at Chimney Rock for a spot of hiking, but between readjusting my legs to drive without a clutch pedal and doing a fair old climb up to the top of Chimney Rock, my legs were aching and a wee bit shaky when we got back to the car. No time for malingerers though, we had a luxury log cabin to get to! It wasn’t quite lunchtime and already we felt like we’d achieved loads. Next stop was Bat Cave (what a name!) and an unscheduled pitstop at Lake Lure for some lunch, a look at the beach, and the local wildlife. En route to Cosby, TN, we had our first taste of freeway driving, including along a stretch sponsored by Al Gore, and quickly learned that nobody BUT NOBODY sticks to the speed limit! You get beeped at by other motorists until you break the law. Things had gone like clockwork all day, but just as we were almost at our rental in Cosby, we took one turn too far on a road which was a little too inaccessible for my newbie driver status and ended up having to call out a recovery service while night started to fall around us. Thank goodness we could get reception on my mobile! Anything less than a 4WD wasn’t going to get up that dirt path, and I ended up wedging the car across the road with the back end in a tree and the front end pointed at the murky drop to the river. I know when I’m beaten, and our knight in shining headlights, Sonny, turned up and got us out of that particular tight spot! Not only that, but he also offered to escort us up to the cabin in his monster truck (no chance, I wasn’t sure how I was going to drive back down again) and instead found us somewhere a little more accessible to stay right on the main road. This one still had a hot tub, and as we hadn’t bought any groceries, we were more than grateful for the free bags of microwave popcorn provided!

On our way!

After so many months of planning, researching and saving we were finally off on our big trip! Jo set off from Birmingham via Amsterdam and I packed up my ginormous case and headed for Madrid to catch my Iberia flight to NY.

As soon as my mobile started working once we’d taxied to the gate, I phoned some friends with very ambitious plans to get a cab into the city and so some catching up. As soon as I stood up, I realised just how tired I was, and the realisation of just how nuts that plan was stuck me. So despite protestations from people I hadn’t seen in months, I settled down for an hour or so in T4 waiting for Jo. A few UK-originating flights landed as I waited, and one mother greeted her teenaged son’s concerned ‘why didn’t you call us, you were away for weeks?’ with the funniest thing I heard all day ‘it’s Europe, sweetie, you know they don’t have phones there’.

Some hours later we finally met up at JFK’s terminal 4 and hopped in a cab to our airport hotel. After some tired shenanigans with the hotel lift alarm, we woke refreshed the next morning, brewed the first of many in-room coffees, and boarded the first courtesy bus of the day back to the airport for the next stage of our journey.