Ameriblog: 7/8-7/9 Great Smoky Mountains

So we left Baltimore and got on the highway, and we had this sort of nonspoken agreement where the person in the passenger seat would grab the picture of the "Welcome To" state signs as we passed them.. Samantha was driving from Maryland to Virginia, and when the sign came I couldn't ready the camera in time which was hailed by a litany of 'fail' 'fail' 'fail's.
I did the next best thing and got this awful photo which represents nothing:

Anyway, the drive through Virginia is absolutely beautiful. The landscape is, shockingly to me, utterly stunning:

Which, I guess, is what I was thinking in this photo:

And then we got to Tennessee, and I'm pretty sure Samantha was taking pictures at this point:

It seems I was thrilled beyond belief to be in Tennessee:

Or maybe it was because I saw cows:

Or a lake:

Evidently Tennessee sweats Christ. Hard. They have enormous crosses EVERYWHERE:

Eventually we got to the Smoky Mountains, all sorts of enthusiastic, only to find that our tent did not have a zipper for the part of the tent-door-flap situation that keeps the bugs out. And it was pouring fucking rain when we got there. Once it slowed we found our solution. We used duct tape:

And then we made a fire; a fire which really was not true to the following photo:

But much truer to this photo:

When we un-duct-taped the tent to get inside of it, the whole situation resulted in failure, and we had to (clearly) re-tape it from the inside. This excited Samantha:

I was thumbs-way-up-in-the-air at the prospect of not having a secure camping situation that involved no bugs flying in during the night. To be truthful, we both woke up a few hours later to find the tent's "door" wide open (at 4am) meaning that there could be all sorts of insects and snakes and whatever else the fuck is in the woods crawling into our tent. I spent the rest of the night curled up like an infant on the air mattress, waking up every half-hour in supreme terror.

So, we woke up the next day and decided it was time to explore the Smokies. Samantha is a good outdoorsman:

I am not:

But, the views in the early morning were gorgeous (that we shot on our way to buy Velcro to keep the tent fucking shut):

After getting the tent situated and changing into hiking attire, we stopped at the Park Ranger's office and asked for suggestions. He told us the first thing that we should do was an 11-mile driving loop around Cades Cove, which is overrun with wildlife where we'd see plenty of turkey & deer and almost certainly see a bear. We left at 11:30, we didn't get back until 3 in the afternoon. Three and a half hours and we saw:: a blurry-assed deer-ass:

And a swarm of butterflies:

I wanted to beat him something unmerciful, but we also saw this along our travels:

So we're all proud and freedom-feeling after we get out of the 3.5 hour torture chamber circle of driving death (I mean, we had actually seen a bunch of awesome shit as the pictures before show), and we're like "Fuck yeah, let's do some motherfucking hiking" and we find the trail that we had wanted to hike that leads to the Laurel Falls in Smokies.. honestly, I shit you not, we walked 30 paces onto the trail and it started pouring. But whatever, we were happy, torrential downpours or not:

Samantha, fucking thrilled that we finally got there (can't you tell?):

And that was pretty much a wrap on the Smoky Mountains for us.. we drank a bottle of wine at the campsite that night after making a wildly more successful fire and just hung out until it was time to fall asleep in order to drive to Nashville in the morning. But one more note about this particular area of Tennessee: They have a shitload of weird, gimmicky establishments.. the following should speak for itself: