Second day, post successful launch.

So, we launched. I hit the scrub button on the dishwasher and we hit the highway. We decided we'd drive from our town just outside of Atlanta to the place of our retirement, Murphy, North Carolina. The kicker is this: we utilize only back roads when we take our trips. That way, we can catch all the small town nuances, shops, mom and pop stores and home cooking restaurants. The Eisenhower interstate system means there are considerably easier ways of getting to and fro. We have decided to step back in time, travel wise, and meander our way to our future home.

We instituted a second proviso and its this. We do not use any device to help us get to our location. That means no GPS, no phone directions, no old timey maps...nothing but our instincts. Now my bride will tell you that her sense of direction is atrocious. I don't argue with that truth. The way she finds most everything is if I am chauffeuring her around. I guess you get the picture.  I like the adventure of the trips we take, it forces me to utilize every ounce of what little Boy Scout wisdom I accumulated in the very short time I was involved. I did three months when I was ten years old and I absorbed the basics, like making fire, using a compass, what plants to eat and even what plant to avoid wiping your ass with to avoid ring-sting from poison ivy or sumac. The best thing I learned was how to use the sun to determine what direction you are heading in. That skill really comes into play when you are driving.

This particular trip took us an extra hour to complete. It usually takes us three hours to make the trip. We purposely turned down a few roads just to see where they might lead. We wound up in the small hamlet of Talking Rock, in Notth Georgia. It's a really cool little town off the beaten path. I mean its so small it's has "Welcome to Talking Rock" written on both sides of the same sign. It has four antique shops, one mom and pop restaurant (closed when we went by) a park with an awesome trout stream running right thru it. Six churches and a convenience store that sold RC Cola in the bottle and all three flavors of Moon-Pies. That includes the single stack chocolate, the double stack chocolate, vanilla on both single and double, plus the rarely found banana double stack. That might not mean much, but I'm a moon-pie efficianato. These were so fresh you'd a though they made them in the back of the store. I bought two of each in case we got stranded and I needed to build a fire and survive for a day or so.  I'm not a full blown survivalist, but I keep provisions under the back seat just in case.

Tomorrow we'll set out for Knoxville Tennessee, home to the most loyal football fans in the United States of America, the University of Tennessee Volunteers. My now 27 year old son was/is a Vols fan. I'm convinced he became a Vols fan when he was still in diapers. I dropped him on his head and he was never the same. I've decided I'll go thru Tellico Plains on the Chullahua parkway, which also includes the ubiquitous "Dragons tail" section, 1.5 million hair-pin turns packed into eleven miles of asphalt, (OK, 1.5 million is a stretch, but its a buttload), but you are guarenteed to see more rice-rocket riders with a death wish risk the one life they've been allotted, just to see if they can wear the knees off their fancy racing leathers. I've seen more crashes and road rashed morons than I can say grace over. It's cool as hell.

Just past the Dragon, you'll hear distant banjo music playing and "Rocky Top" on every radio station. Tennessee fans will have it no other way. My cousin who lives in Knoxville and we are going to visit, is one of those legendary Vols fan. And nobody dropped him on his head. It's written in his genetic code. And I love it.

By the way, this entire post was done with my right finger on my iPhone. Again.

The adventure continues...