Day 6 - WHAT THE FRENCH?

We wake up in Pigeon Forge, TN. In the Smokies. Which apparently are mountains? It’s so tacky. I can’t even begin to explain it. But I will say this – I have never in my young life seen so many “As Seen on TV” stores in such close proximity. Basically its like if you put Las Vegas in the middle of nowhere and made Dolly Parton the Holy Roman Emperor.

We have been on the road so long that Jakke has started writing Civil War love letters just to cope.

“Dear Margaret,

Sorry I’ve been gone so long. War is hell. Thoughts of you keep me sane at night.”

We find a bagel place! OH MY GOD, MY KINGDOM FOR A BAGEL. We’ve been looking for bagels since Day 2! So bizarre to find a Jewish New York style Deli in the heart of Dollywood. We eat; I get a copy of the Mountain Press newspaper. The police log is discouraging.

I slam my finger in a trashcan that slams shut like a bear-trap. AWESOME.

We drive for a year and a half and finally get to Rural Retreat, Virginia. It is ridiculously rural. Its one of those places where no one can hear you scream but everyone has a barn you could potentially be buried behind. We have to find a way to ask the townsfolk where their cemetery was, like “Excuse me, Sir – Whereabouts do you keep your bodies?”

We find what we’re looking for on a lonely hill at the Mountain Ridge Cemetery – THE GRAVE OF DOCTOR PEPPER. Three graves one trip! That’s none too shabby. And we are making FANTASTIC use of these mustaches.

At this point there may not be any more giant shit to see. What a terrible feeling. Rock bottom. We stop at a random gas station somewhere and follow promising signs toward something haunted. We promptly abandon all plans to be haunted when we see a sign for Foamhenge. Seriously, it’s like we don’t even have to look for giant shit anymore. It just finds us.

It’s on this long, lonesome Virginia road. All there is a dilapidated old house and a giant Stonehenge replica made of packing peanuts. There are signs posted on the way up from the crazy guy responsible for it, informing us that he will key your car and eat your babies if you’re bold enough to damage Foamhenge. He will know you fucked up Foamhenge because he hides in the woods surrounding it and watches you. A balanced individual, to be sure.

Foamhenge is the shit. It is in no way an accurate, built to scale replica as the crazy guy in the woods would have you believe, but it is still the shit. BUT. There is this red clay that cakes itself onto the bottom of your shoes an inch and a half thick. It’s like walking on a brick and it is EVERYWHERE. The walk back down the hill is horrendous. Jakke and I stop 8 times to try to get the clay off our feet. We were scraping our feet on a rope when we find a dog’s nose. Seriously. The nose of a dog. We take a picture and back away slowly.

Kaitlyn is skating when Big Jakke and I get back to the car. Can you imagine living in that dilapidated old house across the street? You look out your stained, broken old windows and see Kait gracefully skating back and forth across the wet road, figure 8’s of red clay everywhere? Fannn-tastic.

We get back in the car and start toward D.C. At one point we politely ask Christopher Walken to find us a place to eat. He informs us that there is a Five Guys close by but proceeds to take us to an empty brick building in the middle of nowhere, because he’s a jerk.

I hate getting duped by the GPS. I HATE it.

We finally get to Alissa’s in D.C. We meet all her buddies, eat soup and hear all about the time Ryan Bien honked in his own oven.

We drink beer. We drink whiskey. We do shots. We drink all sorts of stuff. We go to Alissa’s bar. It apparently is under the crust of the earth. I make Kaitlyn cry in the bathroom. How sweet of me.

We walk back to Alissa’s. Kaitlyn is real quiet and is winking a lot. Jakke somehow gets herself in a position where Steve Ball can slap her ass. Steve Ball gets slapped in the eye. Kait Gobiel is drunker than me. I guess there’s a first time for everything. Things get kind of blurry from there on in. Something has happened to cause Big Jakke to scream that she is going to set Steve Ball on fire for an extended period of time. She is really, really set on setting Steve Ball ablaze.

When we finally get to bed Jakke and I are on the floor under like 42 bearskin rugs and we are still cold. Kaitlyn finishes up standing really still in a corner and winking to fall asleep on the couch. It is officially 5am.