Southern Road Trip Recap

I’ve milked this road trip enough to get a few writing exercises out of it. Now it’s time to put it to bed with an index of one-sentence reviews (with a few exceptions), which is an idea I took my friend Alex‘s travel blog.

States Touched

• New York. “Launching pad.”
• New Jersey. “They have cheap gas here, and a former/current conman/mobster will pump it for you free of charge! (or maybe it’ll cost you your life?)”
• Pennsylvania. “One hell of a bitch to drive across — endless, long, long! — but the parts of the farmland you’re awake for are New England-caliber beautiful.”
• Virginia. “I’ve been to Shenandoah National Park and The Blue Ridge Parkway here a couple of times before, so this time we just drove straight through it on the interstate.”
• West Virginia (barely). “I’ve never actually gotten out of my car in any of the numerous times I’ve driven through this state, but I always find myself humming John Denver tunes when I’m here.”
• Tennessee. “It was bone-chilling cold in the Smoky Mountains so we played ‘Quick! Your turn to run outside, read the sign, snap a picture, and then get back inside the car and let’s never do anything like that ever again!’”
• North Carolina. “The Native American town zoo of Cherokee (a.k.a. “land of unsold tchotchkes”) right outside of the Smoky Mountains is one of the saddest places I’ve ever been too — imagine Atlantic City with only one Ho Jo-quality casino, no ocean, and a million Burger Kings and Dairy Queens.” (Yes, we stopped for lunch at the BK.).
• Kentucky. “Where the birthplace of bourbon and Tanveer meet. And fall in love! And get married…etc.”
• Indiana. “An excellent location to play Guitar Hero on the Nintendo Wii.”
• Ohio. “I didn’t even know I was driving through this state until I was beyond it.”
• States intended to but not covered: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia. “Ah, well, there’ll be more road trips.”

Landmarks Visited

• Great Smoky Mountains National Park, via Dollywood, Gatlinburg, TN, and Asheville, N.C. “Scenic and pretty, but makes me wish the east coast had real national parks like Yosemite and the Badlands of the West.”
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, TN. “I wish I owned a vinyl copy of everything I heard on the 3rd floor (the pre-1960′s stuff); everything after that could burn down in a fire.”
• Tootsies Orchid Lounge, Nashville, TN. “PBR is totally an acceptable form of beverage here.” Read full recap.
• Jack’s Bar-B-Que, Nashville, TN. “It hurts me to write about it instead of eating about it.” Read full recap.
• Hatch Show Print, Nashville, TN. “If I lived in Nashville, I’d apply for a job here — and then seriously consider moving to New York or Paris or Addis Ababa.”
• Mammoth Cave National Park, Mammoth Cave, KY. “It doesn’t hold a candle to the amazing rock formations of the Luray Caverns in Virginia, but I appreciated the mysterious awe of being inside a damp and cool cave for a couple of hours. (How often do you get to do that?)”
• Abraham Lincoln Birthplace and Memorial, Hodgenville, KY. “The 15-minute visitors center’s video could’ve been, oh, about 12 minutes shorter.”
• Makers Mark Distillery, Loretto, KY. “Who knew the smell of yeast and whiskey was so filling and aromatic? The way they described the process sounded like a well-trained Parisian chef talking about the recipe for ratatouille.” Read full recap.
• 21C  Museum Hotel, Louisville, KY. “Louisville is cool, yo! Not only does alt-country demigod Will Oldham live here but it also has a contemporary art gallery built right into a Condé Nast Traveler Gold List hotel.”
• The Green Building, Louisville, KY. “Kelly’s good friend Amber works in one of the only platinum Green buildings (also an event space and art gallery) in all of Kentucky and gave us an after-hours tour of the amazing space.” Read full recap.
• Phillips Family Guided Architecture Tour of Columbus, Indiana. “Good enough to be ranked in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die! Good enough for me.”

Top Albums

• The Charm of the Highway Strip, The Magnetic Fields. “I listen to this album on every road trip. Or the opportunity to listen to this album is the reason I go on road trips.”
• Folsom Prison Blues + At San Quentin, Johnny Cash. “Inspired by our Country Music Hall of Fame visit.”
• The Queen is Dead, The Smiths. “Because, really, the greatest albums of your life were the ones you were listening to when you first started getting laid.”
• Oh You’re So Silent Jens, Jens Lekman. “When it’s 3 A.M. and the road is filled with fog and you feel like you’re one blink away from driving straight into the a lake/field/gorge that’s hidden in all the darkness on either side of the road, you’ll put on this album and sing all the way home.”
• Saturday=Youth, M-83. “I fell asleep listening to this album and had a good dream that I now can’t remember.”
• You and Me, The Walkmen. “The Walkmen are the quintessential music for when you’re blasting through raw country.”

Top Podcasts/Audiobooks

• How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie), by Junot Diaz via The New Yorker Podcast. “As soon as it was over, we listened to it again. Junot Diaz is of my favorite voices of our generation.”
• The B. S. Report With Bill Simmons. “Cos I gots to have me some Bill Simmonz!”
• This Week in Photography. “The 12-hour drive home from Indiana to NYC wouldn’t have been possible without this, my current favorite, podcast.”
• Just After Sunset: Stories, Stephen King. “A parting road trip gift from my friend Lexi Walters. Thanks, Lexi!”
• This American Life. “I’m not as big of a fan of this show as many of my friends, but occasionally it’ll pique my interest.”
• The Moth. “Quick 8-minute improv-style stories are the perfect way to break up intense, anthematic albums.”

Fast-Foods Consumed

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWS-FoXbjVI]

• Kentucky Fried Chicken, Bristol, Virginia. “We shared the four piece meal: two breasts, two thighs, half original (me), half crispy (Kelly), and topped it off with delicious 24-ounce cup of Dr. Peppers. No hate!”
• Burger King, Cherokee, North Carolina. “Spicy chicken sandwich with cheese (but the stupid redneck motherf@ckers! forgot the cheese)!”
• Pizza Hut + Taco Bell, Cave City, Kentucky. “After checking into the swankiest accommodation in town (Super 8 motel with hot breakfast included), I asked the sweet woman at the counter if they had any delivery menus. ‘No,’ she said. ‘But if you want, I can wake up my husband and ask him to pick up whatever you kids want to order from town.‘ Sitting on our respective double beds and sipping half-frozen Gatorade from the trunk of our car, we considered this as the cold wind howled. “Call her.” “No, YOU call her!” “Fine! I guess we’ll just go.” We put on our warmest coats and leather gloves and looked outside. There, a pebble’s throw away, like a shining beacon in a sandy, abysmal dune of emptiness stood signs for a Pizza Hut — and look! also a Taco Bell. We let the old couple earn their rest while us young people braved the cruel weather for our warm, delicious meals.”
• Arby’s + Taco Bell, somewhere off of Highway 70 in Ohio. “I’m not a huge fan of roast beef (so I got a mediocre chicken sandwich — this time WITH cheese) but they have great waffle fries.”
• Subway, Bardstown, KY. “Shared footlong turkey sub with every kind of vegetable they had available — our healthiest meal of the entire trip!”
• 7-11, location ???. “An air-tight plastic bag of nacho chips, hot liquid cheese, beef (?) chili, all topped off with two magic words: “Self Serve.” We are not worthy!”
• Several other undisclosed meals purposefully discarded from memory.

Most Nostalgic Moment

Driving the winding roads of the Smoky Mountains and arriving at the brown wooden sign for the Tennessee/North Carolina border. I was at the same spot only three year ago but as a very different person.

Most Memorable Quote

The night before Christmas Eve, Amber and Jesse took us to a restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, where you can order anything from tempura to tagine off the same menu. When the waiter arrived with my heaping platter of pasta topped with a pound-and-a-half of giant prawns in a thick, creamy white sauce overflowing from every side, I whispered under my breath, “Wow, that’s a lot of food.”

Jesse, overhearing me, stopped eating to place a firm grip of my shoulder:

“YOU’RE IN AMERICA NOW, TANVEER!”

Most Inspiring Moment

Driving all night through dense fog and a visibility of about two feet (“the car is moving faster than the road,” Kelly said) through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York with Kelly suddenly asleep on the passenger seat with a can of Coke in her hands and thinking to myself, “Man, look at all this great neon light reflecting off of the fog” and wishing I wasn’t driving and maybe I should just pull over and set up a tripod in the middle of the interstate that connects the two ends of our vast, incredible country. But at the same time, how I could not drive?