It was Another Early morning for the wild and crazy bunch of cocks. We left at 6 am for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel in Knoxville around 8 for breakfast, and we found out that Tennessee waitresses also thought that it was too early. After breakfast, we were back on the road again. After Knoxville, we drove through Weirdsville, USA (aka- Pigeon Forge, TN, but really a fun town), where we saw such places as Sexy Stuff (with one f), Wonderworks, and Dixie Stampede. Every theme ride and putt-putt course you could imagine was in this town. It was a Las Vegas for the young.

40 minutes and 1500 t-shirt stores later, we finally arrived at the Great Smoky National Park. We went to the information to plan out our day’s events at the park. We decided to hike Elkmont, one of the shorter trails (1.7 miles one way), to a roaring, but small, waterfall. Only dressed in our iconic sweatpants and sweatshirts, we were still chased by the bad weather as it began to snow about halfway up our hike. By the time we got back from the waterfall, we were soaking wet and covered in snow. After that, we drove a little farther into the mountains; however, the whole clan’s visibility was impaired due to fog on our windows, courtesy of our breathing after our exhaustive walk in the snow. Since we couldn’t really see much of the mountains, we turned around and headed back out of the park onto a different road weaving us up to North Carolina’s Newfound Gap (5046 feet). When we finally gained visibility and were able to see the snow covered peaks, Jason peed his pants with excitement lol. After reaching the top of the gap, it felt like we were in Iowa again with the snow and cold winds.

Nascaring our way back to Richmond, we thought, in our “cultured” minds, that it would be a good idea to stop in Corbin, KY for the original KFC….we were Kentucky-Fried.

With our bellys full of the Colonel and his spices, we made our way back to Richmond. However, there was still enough downtime left to watch movies and bum around in McDonalds for their free wifi before going to bed, excited about the idea of getting to sleep in until 8 am.

Jason & Kayla