Tennessee!

I was very excited to get to Tennessee, not only because I love the way it’s spelled, but because I wished to be fascinated by its ‘Southerness’. And I was not disappointed…

These are my Tennessee observations 🙂

1. The Great Smoky Mountains are great and smoky and blue and cold and awesome and scary to drive along, though not as scary as some of those mountains in California we drove along in the summer!

Amazing views

At the start of the trail

2. Tennessee toilets have ‘such American flushes’, according to Harry (you have to push them back, rather than down…. 😉 )

I don’t have a picture of the toilet flush, but here is a picture of our cabin, in which the offending toilet flush resided.

3. Tennessee has a Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. Really.

For real!

4. Tennessee is home to the ‘mom jean’, and I don’t mean the trendy Rihanna-type jean, I mean bad jeans, made badly and worn badly. 😉

This = bad.

5. Tennessee women must use the most amount of hairspray in the world, ever.

We saw A LOT of this….

6. Cracker Barrel restaurants in Tennessee are great for people watching, and for eating shocking desserts.

Noooooo!

7. Dolly Parton is from Sevierville, which, to be frank, is a bit of a shit-hole.

Legend.

8. There are a lot of Baptist Churches in Tennessee.

Like this one.

9. Many of the towns in Tennessee seem to be stuck in a 1981 time-warp.

Gatlinburg

10. There is a ghostly plantation in Tennessee that is totally haunted.

Wheatlands Plantation

11. Remote Cabins in the Woods are as scary as they sound, if also very idyllic when it’s not dark!

Our cabin in the woods…

12. I once gave myself Tennessee as a middle name. Fact.

🙂

And that concludes our roadtrip ‘down south’. Hope you enjoyed it muchly!

Downton Abbey frenzy

It would be hard not to be aware in this country that this Sunday is the USA premiere of Season 5 of Downton Abbey, and Americans go ga-ga for it! I’m off to a Downton party, so expect the next blog post to be all about that very thing!

Ta-ra ducks!