The Fourth installment of ‘The Trip’

Where I left off last time, we were leaving the Tennessee KOA camp, and our GPS told us to turn right. In the back of my mind, I was thinking “didn’t we come in from the left, or am I turned around?” We had left the camp several times and I had thought we turned left or did one time we turn right?

For a better understanding of their road systems, is that there is no logical road system. If you wanted to get to say Pigeon Forge (ugh) you had to go down the road for about 15 miles to find a cut over to hit another road to find another cut over. You would then find yourself miles from your hopeful destination and had to backtrack.

Anyway, don’t start doubting your GPS now, right? The next instruction was to turn left at the next intersection. Arriving at the spot, it was someone’s driveway, so we kept going thinking it was the next one. By the time we reached the next one which also was a private driveway, we were well on the way heading up a mountain and there was absolutely no place to turn around. We had to keep going. Up, Up and away we went on a curvy skinny road. Soon big red signs started to appear on people’s property saying “YOUR GPS IS WRONG! TURN AROUND” We would love to, but where? Each of those driveways was narrow and with steep drops. There was no way with a trailer would we be able to descend let alone climb back up. So on we went.

We reached the summit and started down the other side. By now we were somewhere in the backwoods of Tennessee with millions of trees packed in like sardines, and not a single place to turn around. If that wasn’t bad enough, a sign popped up saying ‘Pavement ends in 1500 ft.’ Great now we are on a muddy 1 and 1/2 lane road. My mind started playing the dueling song from Deliverance. Were we headed into moonshine country? Our anxiety mounted as the GPS wandered all over the place with no road markings at all.

Coming around a bend in the road the land opened to a little community of shacks, old rusted vehicles, and fenced-off driveways. There still wasn’t any place to turn around, but we could see that a few hundred yards ahead our road came to an end at a crossroad and posted on a tiny sign was an arrow pointing to I-40.

Praise the Lord!

We still had a couple of narrow bridges to cross, before we saw the I-40 traffic. I made a promise to myself that I would never complain about road construction again on a major highway. Driving 35 miles an hour, we had to have lost more than an hour. Our destination was just a few hundred miles away and we had the assurance that there wouldn’t be any locked gates, the rest of the drive to Aberdeen, NC was uneventful, which was a blessing.

Late that afternoon we pulled up in front of our son’s house and was greeted by a train whistle and church bells, plus a smiling face. Three years is too long!

Even though we made it to our son’s house the saga didn’t stop there. You don’t want to miss what happens next.