Countryside and Detours and Deliverance, Oh My!

I have decided that (unfortunately) I don't have the time nor the energy right now to write about all of our vacation but I will tell you guys about the scariest (and longest) part.

When we left Thursday morning, Tim wanted to be out of the house and on the road by 6am. We missed the mark by about 20 minutes but he made up for it by speeding so he cut down on our GPS-ETA by 15 minutes. We were doing so good we thought we were gonna be in NC by 1:30. Wellllllllll, I-40East had other plans for us. Evidently, there was some gi-normous landslide in the mountains that blocked off several miles of the highway and we were re-routed on this detour that took us an hour out of our way. We were slightly annoyed and disappointed but what were we gonna do ya know?

So we are somewhere in the mountains of East Tennessee on this detour route when all of a sudden we slow down to 8mph. Tim and I give each other this look like, "OMG. What now??" Turns out we are behind one of those trucks that paints the white traffic lines on the side of the road. Well, that got old real quick. Tim looks at me and says, "Well, do we try another detour or do we see how long we're gonna be behind this thing?" I say, "Let's just do another detour. Who knows how long we'll be on this road." Famous. Last. Words.

We turn right on this road and start on this scenic drive up the side of the mountain. It was nice... at first. As we got further and further up the mountain, the road went from two-lane to one and a half lanes, then to a one lane road ... and then -- just as I asked Tim if the life insurance policy was paid and up-to-date -- we are on a dirt road. In the Mustang. On an incline. Very scared. And did I mention we had no cell phone signal??? Yeah. I swear the banjos of Deliverance were playing in the background as we were driving up that mountain. I haven't been that scared in a really long time.

I seriously told Tim that I thought the GPS was taking us somewhere to die. All I got in response was, "That's not helping!! Just let me concentrate on driving and you take pictures over there so we have evidence of all this craziness." So that's what I did.

We finally made it to the top of the mountain thirty minutes later, got out and stretched and we saw this.

And I must say, I got some really great shots out of the whole detour situation but I do not wanna go through that ever again. And just in case you're wondering, we finally made it to Karl's house in Gastonia at 3:45. Definitely felt like the longest. trip. ever. but well worth it.