Drinking holes

"I'll have a hamburger shake and French-fried frappe with that."

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The Official TravelBlog of the Twelve Days of Christmas in July North American Road Tour

I'm home. I'm tired. I'm happy. I'm rested. I saw new places, met great people, ate new food, tried new experiences. I traveled with two great guys for 12 days in less-than-private quarters and emerged still liking them both a whole big lot, maybe even more than before.

I missed Luis, and my friends and family. This trip made me appreciate my hometown of Brooklyn. Although I didn't have my ruby slippers with me, I always knew I had the power to go home.

• Day 1: We gotta get outta this place


• Day 2: From the bottom of the snake pit to the top of the snake ride


• Day 3: O-bye-o


• Day 4: Little else on the prairie


• Day 5: Gateway to corn, highway to porn


• Day 6: Okie is OK


• Day 7: Jesus saves...at Target


• Day 8: Chicks and chick peas


• Day 9: If it's Thursday, this must be Arkansas


• Day 10: Poorboys and pilgrims...and Bucksnort


• Day 11: Dolly lame-a


• Day 12: Some folks call it a zither, I call it a lap harp...mmm-hmmm

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Day 12: Some folks call it a zither, I call it a lap harp...mmm-hmmm

There are worse things than waking up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains on a sunny Sunday.

Glenn stepped onto an elevator full of Christian (?!) swim team boys at the Best Western this morning. They'd been rowdy and loud until he stepped in. Then, utter silence. What shut them up? His shiny but pleasantly shaped head? His authoritative teacher's stare? Or the confusing incongruity of a gay man wearing a Hello Titty shirt?

We stopped for gas across the street from the hotel, aware that a bearded man in overalls was eyeing us. He didn't look dour or menacing; he was just sort of looking at us curiously. "Where y'all from?" he asked Glenn. "New York City," Glenn said, in the slowly fading drawl he had reacquired during our road trip. "Have a safe trip," the man said, probably wondering why the car had Texas plates. But, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a cigar-smoking redneck is just a cigar-smoking redneck.

We took some back roads along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, dead-ending twice in some parts that had us humming "Duelling Banjos." Even Mother, our navigation system, had no idea where we were. We didn't show up on a map.

After arriving at a sign called Arcadia Leadership Academy, we were convinced we might be killed by protectionists out big gay hunting. I later found out that Arcadia is "a motivational school for at-risk youth using experiential education and wilderness therapy concepts." In other words, they take you out in the woods and beat you and leave you for the wolves.



When we finally got back on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we followed a long, serpentine road that ascended higher and higher, popping our ears and making us lightheaded. We'd had the air conditioning on the whole time, and it occurred to us well into the drive that we should turn it off and open the windows to breathe real fresh air.



The air was refreshing and cool, and the vistas of the mountains, romantic, misty, dreamlike, were majestic. We zipped along the winding road. Sheila held on for dear life.



We encountered an intriguing sign for Peaks of Otter, and saw a knife and fork icon, hoping for food. "Wouldn't it be funny," Simon said, "if we got there and there was just a giant knife and fork?" "It would be," I said, "if I weren't so friggin' hungry."



Peaks of Otter is in Bedford, VA. The peaks consist of twin mountains--Flat Top, almost 4,000 feet above sea level, and Sharp Top, at about 3,875 feet--and Harkening Hill, at 3,375 feet. There are no otters in the area, but there are salamanders, deer, and a lush panoply of oak, birch, maple, pine, ash, cherry, dogwood trees and other foliage. I didn't see as much kudzu as I did in other parts of the southeast. The setting is idyllic. In the fall, between October and November, the traffic along Skyline Drive backs up for miles. I did it only once when I lived in Virginia, and I plan to do it again.

We arrived at the rest area as a park ranger lectured on "The Forgotten Instrument": the lap harp, a form of zither. My only previous exposure to the zither was Ruth Welcome on The Lawrence Welk Show. Today I saw a lap harp in the lodge bookstore with something that looked like a character from Evil Dead carved into it.



Peaks of Otter has a lodge and restaurant with a buffet, where Simon had a garden burger and Glenn and I had all-you-can-eat fresh turkey and ham, deviled eggs, fried chicken, sweet potato pie, and cherry cobbler. I think we both went back for seconds



The lodge has a spectacular view of the mountains...



...and of Simon's and Glenn's uvulas. (Note: Those wacky boys took pictures of each other while I was away from the table.)



The view from the Blue Ridge Mountains is breathtaking. Riding along the crest of elevations of about 3,400 feet, we took a twisty road through the mountains before getting back on I-81.



The rest of our trip along I-81 and I-78 was uneventful, except for the sighting of the Florida-tagged Odontobus, evidently a dentist drilling his way up north.



We drove through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and back into Brooklyn in about 12 hours, including our detour and lunch in Bedford. Simon best illustrates how we felt on our last leg of the journey.



The patron saint of the road trip, Jack Kerouac, smiled on us: the traffic back into the city was not hideous. We sailed through the Holland Tunnel and over the Manhattan Bridge, arriving just before 11:00 p.m.

The success of this trip depended largely on our having compatible traveling styles. We were spontaneous. We went with the flow. We went off the beaten path. We were willing to try new things. We had great fun.

I think we had a pretty damn good road trip.

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Different states

Our road trip will be coming to an end tonight. Right now we're staying near Roanoke, VA. We've logged 3,500 miles over 16 states in 12 days, circling Kentucky like a donut hole. Here are all the states we've passed through:

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Day 11: Dolly lame-a

Dolly, I will always love you, but I do not love Dollywood.

Visitors to Ocean City, MD, or Queens Boulevard can relate to having all five (or six, if you count intuition) senses relentlessly assaulted by the roadside scenery. But those places can't hold a candle to the senseless and criminal overdevelopment of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, TN. Pigeon Forge is the home of Dollywood, Dolly Parton's nutty cheese ball of a tribute to her home-grown mountain girl roots and subsequent sequined, busty career. Gatlinburg, The Heart of the Smokies, is more like The Black Lung of the Smokies. Glenn tried to elicit some meaning out of the name Pigeon Forge, but the images were too disturbing.

Routes 411 and 441, the roads leading to Dollywood, are one giant, snarling traffic jam, worse than any I've experienced in New York. Like Dolly's bazooms, the eponymous parkway named for Pigeon Forge's most famous product is busting out with outlet malls, discount bible warehouses, wedding chapels, and wacky attractions.



Along the way, you can Get some fishnet stockings (and maybe some fishing line) at Sexy Stuf (leave off the last "f" for)...



...stock up on mint-flavored chaw at Fatman's Discount Tobacco (is William Conrad still alive?)...



...and shop for a waterbed at a furniture store named for a nonperforming (or maybe naughty) phallus.



The "Welcome" Welcome Center has good information on area attractions.



Once you get past Gatlinburg, you go straight into the mouth of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It took us 2 hours to drive about 10 miles from Sevierville, where we stayed, to Gatlinburg.

Our first stop was the Sevierville courthouse to pose with the statue of the young, ingenuous, barefoot, guitar-playing Dolly. After the Hooters experience we were practically straight, so rubbing Doly's bronze breasts wasn't such a big deal.



Mind-numbing traffic and inch after inch of tack and trash allowed us to absorb but not necessarily understand a lot of the sights. Hillbilly Golf ("World's Most Unusual") conjures images of yokels in overalls trying to lob their teeth over the green, which, given the local population's edentate nature, means you need to be a pretty good shot the first time. The nearby Hillbilly Village (formerly Hee Haw Village) reportedly has a real moonshine still and hillbilly habitat. Sadly, we didn't go.



"Pigeon Forge Wedding Chapel," says the literature, "is one of the newest and most elegant chapels in the Smoky Mountain area." The I 'Commit' Wedding (for two) [sic] includes a candlelight ceremony, twelve 4 x 6 photos with album, a Just Married sign, and a garter. The emphasis on "for two" apparently precludes Mormons. We considered trying to see if all three of us could get married to each other.

Weddings are quite popular in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. The main drag has stores for tuxedo and wedding dress rental, next to wedding chapels, next to honeymoon hotels such as A Big Chalet. On the way we saw a Nissan Altima bearing a "Just Married" sign in the back window.



The first thing you see upon entering Gatlinburg is: "Welcome to Gatlinburg. Home of the Highest Number of National Merit Scholars in Tennessee, 2002-2003"...nope, too easy.



Our main reason for making a pilgrimage to Gatlinburg was Christus Gardens, a religious attraction.



It depicts the life of Christ, as a white man, of course, in painting and diorama. In this stunning velvet tapestry, we see Samson doing isotonic exercises to beef up his chest.



The other three scenes depict...

Abraham giving his son Isaac a haircut as a boat sails under the Gateway Arch and a bored attendant fondles a crooked staff.



Moses waiting for a pig pull to start while a bored, shirtless attendant sporting a manpurse caresses a long sword.



Jesus appearing to the cast of Rent. (Note: the seated redneck in the foreground is not part of the tapestry.)



The pièce de resistance of Christus Gardens is the 6-ton block of Carrara marble sculpted into the face of Jesus. The face is sculpted so that Jesus' eyes and face seem to follow you no matter where you look. Imagine the fun of playing hide and seek with it. Jesus would always see where you are. We resisted the last temptation of Christus to pay the $10 admission fee to see scenes of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion in wax, even though Glenn said the guy on the cross next to Jesus looked hot on the postcard.

Gatlinburg is home to Cooter's, an establishment owned by Ben Jones, the actor who played Cooter on The Dukes of Hazzard. The 1969 orange Dodge Charger known as the General Lee (or one of its facsimiles) was parked in front. A sign outside announced that Rick Hurst, who played Deputy Cletus, was appearing in person!



Louise Mandrell, the "Lost" Mandrell sister, appears in person at her own theater...



...and the Ripley's franchise (as in Ripley's Believe It Or Not) has five attractions, including Ripley's Davy Crockett Mini Golf. Jack Palance appears at none of them.



In a nutshell, Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are simply too exciting for me. I'm not alone.

When we arrived at Dollywood shortly after 1:00, the first available parking space was near the exit, more than half a mile from the entrance. We waited what seemed like forever in 95-degree heat for a tram that looked like an open prison bus. Had we not been already there we might have turned around and left. But like any car accident, it was impossible to look away. We had to see what Dollywood was all about. Admission was $42.40.



Nestled among the Smoky Mountains, Dollywood is a redneck's dream theme park. Take some water rides, add sandpainting, glassblowing, and Parton Family jams, and stir for a moonshiney good time. Dolly's Chasing Rainbows museum chronicles Dolly's life, from childhood to country starlet to diva. The photo gallery of Dolly posed with stars such as Carol Burnett, Grace Jones, Oprah, Carol Channing, and the Carters demonstrates the depth and breadth of her illustrious career.



Moral of the story: If you have a lot of crap in your attic that you don't want to throw away, become famous and open your own theme park and you won't have to invest in a self-storage space.

Glenn and Simon went on two rides. My stomach was not up to thrill rides today, so I wandered around, taking in the Far Side gallery of characters and sights. The gene pool in these parts is so shallow it's cracking.



Hillbillies, take note...



Disabled visitors must drag their wheelchairs through the park...



Glenn was itching to wear his Hello Titty shirt to Dollywood, but we strenuously advised him against it. We later discovered, however, that it was perfectly acceptable for rednecks to wear offensive T-shirts.



On the way back to the car, we admired a local redneck shading himself with his pink parasol. As one might expect, irony never quite made it all the way up the mountain.



All in all, I was disappointed in Dollywood. I know...I know...how can I say that about Dolly? What kind of gay man am I? What makes it so different from Graceland? I'll tell ya...$24.40.

After a day of hillbilly "culture," we headed through the Smokies and into the Blue Ridge Mountains before stopping in Asheville, NC, for dinner.



The annual Bele Chere street festival, similar to Seventh Heaven in Park Slope, was going on.



One building had an inflatable Titanic bounce ride in front of it.



We ate on Haywood Street at Flying Frog Cafe. I had a North Carolina BBQ pulled pork sandwich and a local brew, Highland Gaelic beer.

We'd hoped to maybe stay overnight, but we were still about 11 or 12 hours from New York. Asheville is an interesting mix of college students, rednecks, artsy types, gays, and--gasp--even minorities. I remarked to Glenn that I saw a few Asian people walking around and he said, "Oh, they must be engineering students." "Really?" I said. "Even that Asian mother and grandmother walking down the street?" "Advanced engineering," he said.

There were even some religious fanatics, for a change.



Luis's friends Justin and JP live in Asheville, but coincidentally they're in New York this weekend. It looks a nice place to come back to. The Vanderbilts' Biltmore Estate is nearby, and there's a downtown architectural tour that looks interesting. Many of the buildings appear to date from the Art Deco era. There also appears to be a plethora of Irish stores and pubs in town and in the area, including, and I am not making this up, Bubba O'Leary's General Store in nearby Chimney Rock.

We decided to move on along I-40 and I-81 to our next destination, Radford, VA. We plan to drive the rest of the way to Brooklyn on Sunday.

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Day 10: Poorboys and pilgrims...and Bucksnort

One of the amusing artifacts at Graceland is an article by Frances Melrose from the Rocky Mountain News titled "Rage Over Elvis Presley Is a Bit Sickening":

There's a new rage of the age--Elvis Presley. I hope this rage passes into oblivion as quickly as it has sprung up....Elvis made his Denver debut at the Denver Coliseum Sunday in two shows that added up to 16 thousand admissions. Two thirds of the night crowd were under 20, I'd guess. It's a toss-up which was worse, Elvis or his fans. I'd say the edge goes to Elvis....

Elvis is listed as a 'singer.' I couldn't be sure, because the squealing of the crowd drowned out most of the noise he was making. I can guarantee that it wasn't his singing that sent them.

Fun gal, that Frances Melrose.

We were lucky enough to get on an 11:30 tour before an onrush of tourists. It was a blisteringly hot day in Memphis, about 98, which may have accounted for what I thought was a low turnout. The tours are well orchestrated. You get a ticket (for just the mansion tour it's $18), wait for your tour number to be called, get on a shuttle to go across the street, and go on a self-guided audio tour. About 90 minutes later you end up in the Meditation Garden, pay your last respects, and get on the shuttle to go back across the street.



From the outside, Graceland is more tasteful and smaller than I imagined. Once inside, that image slowly diminishes. From the red velvet sofa to the white fur-lined bed with mirrors, Graceland is not merely a snapshot of perhaps the most tragic period of style in American history, it also lends credence to the inequality of wealth and taste.



Even by 1970s decorating tastes, Graceland makes Versailles look spartan and tasteful. Elvis had ol' Louis beat by a long mile in ongepatshket design. The Jungle Room at Graceland is a vomitorium of primitive things: zebra-patterned curtains, feathers framing a mirror, a lacquered coffee table fashioned from a tree stump, animal skin sofas and wall hangings, and the topper--green shag carpeting on the floor and ceiling. A stuffed panda sits atop an animal-print-covered chair and ottoman. The room looks so much like The Flintstones home, I almost expected to see a wisecracking bird turning to the audience and saying, "Oh brother."



The rest of the house is tasteful by comparison...

the living room...



the pool room...



the kitchen...



the TV room....



The bloated, karate-chopping, leather-clad Elvis of the early 1970s upsets me. I prefer the boyish, trim Elvis who wore military uniforms and played a boxer in Kid Galahad...



The racquetball room, which now houses a number of Elvis's sequined outfits...


The Meditation Garden, which contains grave sites of Elvis, his twin brother Jessie (who died at birth), and other family members...

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