Day 9 & 10: Knoxville, Maryville, Gatlinburg, Morristown, Bristol and Home

Well after our night in Chattanooga, we got on the road to Maryville to visit my Aunt and Uncle, along the way we found the Mars factory and distribution center and so we got our picture with Yellow, unfortunately they are not yet open for public tours, but we still don't regret stopping!

Then we headed into the city of Knoxville!  We saw yet another World Fair site and got to visit the Sunsphere (see picture below), which was built for the Knoxville World's Fair in 1982.

The Sunsphere is actually open to the public free of charge, so you can take the elevator up and see the beautiful aerial view of the city.

We also found the World's Largest Rubik's Cube in Knoxville, so that was a fun find and an obvious stopping point.  While in Knoxville, we also checked out the Koxville Chocolate Company and was excited to try out a few varieties (it was AMAZING--check out the sea salt caramel and chocolate covered oreo, you will NOT be disappointed!)

After our afternoon in Knoxville, we headed onto to Aunt Betty and Uncle Allen's house for dinner and for the evening.  It was so great to catch up and to be able to stop in for a visit!

After a wonderful night sleep and breakfast the next day we were on the road again, stopping in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge since CJ had never been before.

But first, let me take an "Elfie" at the Christmas Store in Gatlinburg

CJ's Elfie

We had a great thought that we would pick up sandwiches, drive to the top of the mountain, walk a trail then have a picnic lunch.  Well that was an epic fail cause the weather was Rainy and so we ate in our car half-way up the mountain before turning back around again.

Since we were not able to make it up the mountain in the car, we decided to take the Ober Gatlinburg so CJ could see views from the mountain anyway.  We also got to see some friendly black bears attempting to visit tourists or maybe they were looking for their next meal!

Ober Gatlinburg

Moonshine!

Biggest Cookie EVER!

After spending the day in Gatlinburg, we were able to meet up with my friend, Amy for dinner in her town of Morristown, TN on our trek back home!  I FINALLY got to see her house and was able to catch up with her, which was awesome!

We had a nice long dinner and then headed off to our last stop on the trip, Bristol, VA for the night.  The next day we got up and slowly but surely made our way back home to RVA!  It was a fantastic trip with much better food than the last time around and amazing experiences to boot!  Now to start planning the next road trip, do you have any suggestions?

Day 8: Birmingham, Huntsville, Chatanooga

Welcome back to Birmingham as you go vicariously on our trip with us!  We started off the day doing the Civil Rights walking tour through Kelly Ingram Park.  We picked up a brochure that allowed us to dial in for additional information and to explain the various statues and art around the park.  I would highly suggest it if you are going to be in the area.  We started by seeing the 16th Street Baptist Church, this was the site of a bombing in 1963 that killed four little girls while they were in Sunday School.  

The park is home to some beautiful sculptures and amazing art by very talented and inspirational artists.

This is a memorial to the 4 little girls that lost their life in the bombs.

After we saw the park we did the self-guided tour of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute/Museum. Pictures were not allowed inside, but it was moving.  There was an amazing photography exhibit that showed real pictures from the Civil Rights Battle.  I think that was the most moving part for me.

Next up was an added bonus. From the start we were not sure if we would get to make it to Huntsville cause it was about a 90 minute detour (plus I was not overly excited about it), but boy was I wrong.  This place was awesome!  I think CJ and are both convinced it is a place we need to bring our nephews one day.  There was tons of hands on stuff and lots of cool space things to see, definitely worth checking out!  Don't forget to use your AAA card here, it saves a bunch!

Astronaut Laura

Moon footprints!

After leaving Huntsville we were back on the road for Chatanooga.  We had planned it perfectly that we would get to Rock City with about 75 minutes to see everything before it closed at 5pm.  Then we would head over to Ruby Falls which did not close until 7pm.  What a wonderful plan, that is until we realized we would enter back into the Eastern time zone, thus loosing an hour before we made it to Rock City.  As it turned out we arrived at Ruby Falls about 4:45 Eastern time (since we jumped from 3:45 to 4:45 because of the time change--don't forget about these things when traveling people!)

Popped into Georgia ever so briefly!

Well Hello Tennessee!

And Hello Dolly!

Well we made it to Ruby Falls with plenty of time to see the falls and enjoy the views around there.

Ruby's Fall!

Breathtaking Views of the mountains and city

After we toured the falls, we had dinner at Aretha Frankenstein's for their world famous pancakes and overall yummy food.  (Hint: spilt the pancake order, they are HUGE).  It was then back to our hotel for the evening before beginning our journey home the next day.

Day 7: Oxford, Tupelo & Birmingham

As per usual, we were up early once again so we got on the road once we packed up the car.  We knew we had a big day ahead of us (think Buffalo park).  We wanted to at least drive through the Ole Miss campus (when in Rome Oxford) and I have to say it was a beautiful campus.  Not as beautiful as say Virginia Tech, but who can be!  After we saw the campus and attempted to see William Faulkner's home (it was not yet open for the day), we headed out of town just a short ways away to Tupelo.  

Tupelo is most notably known as Elvis' birthplace but we had far higher expectations for the Tupelo Buffalo Park.  So how this all evolved was like this: On our previous road trip, my goal was to see a Buffalo, I figured it would be easy, we were going through North and South Dakota and half of the mid-west, should be simple enough, right?  WRONG!  We searched high and low and I finally found my buffalo in the zoo?  Seriously?  I could do that in Norfolk.  Not to be discouraged, we were planning this trip and initially planned to go through Jackson,Mississippi (a la "The Help"), but realizing there was not a ton to do there and it would take us an additional 4+ hours, we were looking for cities more North and I found Tupelo.  When a google search revealed there was a Buffalo Park, where you could actually feed Buffalo's, I was sold.  CJ took a tiny bit of convincing but I think she was pretty sold as well.  Thus, I present Tupelo Buffalo Park (and Zoo)....

a ZONKEY--a Zebra/Donkey mix

Hello Deer!

So you pay admission to go to the zoo and then can pay an extra $3 for a tram/bus ride that takes you to the Buffalo fields to fed the Buffalo and other exotic animals--PAY IT!  In fact give them like $10, it is totally worth it.  The day we were there, there was, of course, a school group or 4 (seemed par for the course at this point in our trip), so we could have gone on the earlier bus ride with about 1 billion children (okay maybe it was more like 50-70, but still), but we decided to wait for the next ride out which was going to be another hour or so.  So we had to kill some time, but man it was worth it.  When we got in line the next time around, it ended up being just CJ and I.  The guy was super nice and took us out on the open car train instead of the bus--I wanted to have better pictures and he was really great to answer all our questions and let us spend extra time feeding the animals.

That's what I'm talking about!

Turns out Buffalo do not really like to be hand-fed, crazy right?  So we got to put food in their troughs and watch them up close.  Though the zebras nor buffalo like the hand fed method.  The horses and camels did not mind so we made fast friends with the horse and camel.  It was by far one of my favorite things from our trip and I would highly suggest this to anyone even remotely close to Tupelo!

After leaving the buffalo park we went to a local restaurant, then of course drove by Elvis' childhood home before heading onto Birmingham for the night!

Hello Alabama (another new state for me)!!!

We got to meet up with another of CJ's friends in Birmingham where we had some epic chicken barbecue with "white sauce" (Virginia needs to get this white sauce action) then grabbed ice cream before heading back to the hotel for the night.

You can bet there is more Civil Rights History coming your way tomorrow....