Day 10: The Tennessee Smokies

Since last night was a relatively early night due to the afternoon game and today’s destination was only a 1 ½-hour drive away, we got a late checkout and slept in. I got up and caught up on the blogging for Days 6-9 for your viewing pleasure.

Then we headed out for a late breakfast to a place recommended by Shamia, one of Julia’s Wash U peeps, called City Bakery Café 88 or something like that. I should have known it wasn’t going to be a positive experience when Julia called for the street address to plug into the GPS and the girl that answered the phone had absolutely no idea. I can still recall the phone numbers and addresses for every place of business and residence in my life and I’m the most A.D.D. person I know. To not know the address of the place you work on a daily basis seems odd, to say the least. But due to Shamia’s recommendation, we forged ahead with the hopes of a pleasant dining experience.

We got there and Julia asked if they were still serving breakfast.

Girl 1: No, I’m sorry. Breakfast ended at 11 a.m. and we’re out of eggs. (That was a legit and relatively friendly response which actually makes complete sense. Hey, you can’t get breakfast at McDonald’s after 10:30, so I get it.)

It was the next response that threw me…to the point that I thought maybe I misheard or simply made it up in my brain.

Girl 2: That’s why there’s the Waffle House.

Seriously? That was your teenage, “I don’t know jack about anything,” smartass response to a potential customer? And with that, we did an about face, left and said nothing until we got into the car. Did she really just say, “That’s why there’s the Waffle House” to us? She did indeed. She really should have been fired on the spot, but alas, there were only three teenage girls working there and she was probably the oldest of them. Let’s just say that if she worked for me and I heard about that, she would now be unemployed.

We then wandered downtown to a Mexican-Caribbean restaurant called Salsas we saw during our visit last night. And OMG, it rocked like a Jovi concert. We started with chips and three salsas, which were super tasty. Julia got a lava bowl of something that is probably still bubbling and my enchiladas were beyond amazing. Take that Waffle House girl.

Post eating, it was time for a visit to another used book store to see if we could stock up on more books dedicated to baseball, True Blood and cooking. Between the two of us, I think we’ve got about 100 pounds of new/used books in the car.

From there it was a projected 1 ½-hour drive to Kodak, Tennessee for the Tennessee Smokies (AA Cubs) game. About 45 minutes into the drive, we encountered a traffic jam. It was a slow crawl for about 15 minutes and I nervously watched as the minutes quickly mounted on our estimated arrival in Kodak. It turned out to be a jackknifed tractor trailer in the right lane, so the traffic actually moved more quickly than I would have expected. Once past it, we cruised into Kodak around 6 p.m. and it turns out that you can see Smokies Park from our hotel. After dropping off our stuff, we headed over to the game.

Who knew that it was Christmas in July night at the ballpark? Not I, but as I walked through the gate, who was sitting there? Santa himself complete with Mrs. Claus and a 10-foot Christmas tree! As Julia does, she struck up a convo with Chris Kringle and found out that he is the REAL Santa and works most days at The Incredible Christmas Place ™ in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I was also informed that the Santa I saw in North Pole, Alaska was nothing more than an imposter. Who knew? Since he’s off tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll be heading there on Thursday to add to the ornament collection and to give Santa my list. Might as well get him started on it early. It is quite lengthy after all. I’ve been VERY good this year.


Tomorrow we head to our cabin in Pigeon Forge and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

That’s it for today, so see the photos HERE.