SeaJack #6 The Smoky Mountain Detour…

We left Hendersonville, Tennessee after a stop at Starbucks and filling up our gas tank at a Kroeger Grocery store Station. Kroeger in Washington is either our Fred Meyer stores or our QFC stores.

Right about here on the road our clocks turned forward an hour and we were now in the Eastern Time Zone!

We really weren’t prepared for our drive through Sevierville and Pigeon Forge and the strange sights we would see.

This was promising but then we drove into the bizarre world of Pigeon Forge.

What!?

The Hatfields and the McCoys!

The Titanic?

We weren’t able to make it to Rushmore but this did not make up for it!

A Bavarian Denny’s? This town had an amazing amount of dinner theaters of different genres to experience. There were some great looking miniature golf properties but so many other ~~tacky~~ unusual properties.

We did not divert our path further to go to Dollywood.

Now this was more like it. This was the scenery we were expecting on our Smoky Mountain Detour.

This was in the town of Gatlinburg. This town had a lot of candy shops, donut shops, fudge shops, taffy shops and Whiskey shops.

Ripley’s Aquarium was also located here. I’m scared to think of what kind of creatures you would see in there.

We bought a sandwich here and headed out to our destination on this day which was Asheville, North Carolina.

We laughed real hard when we crossed this river 8 times during our detour!

We made it to Asheville at 5:30, checked into our hotel and then got ready for our dinner reservation at the Omni Grove Hotel on their Sunset Terrace. That experience will be a future post!

We are so happy to be here in Asheville for a two day stretch. We spent most of the day at the Biltmore Estate properties today and walked our feet off. We are chilling in our hotel room tonight having a picnic in our room instead of heading out to eat. The weather was beautiful today. Tomorrow we drive our final miles on this road trip across the U.S.A.

Thanks to all of you bloggy friends for following along with us on this journey across the U.S.A.

SeaJack Road Trip Day #5

On day 5 we started in Illinois and backtracked to St. Louis, Missouri so we could investigate the Bellefontaine Cemetery. It was worth back tracking for. We spent about 3 hours at the cemetery and I’ll devote a whole post later to this beautiful place filled with so much history. When we were done at the Cemetery we headed east again to Illinois and then crossed into Kentucky and made it to our Tennessee destination for the night at 5:30. Here are a few shots from the road.

I have so much to share from Bellefontaine.

Our day #5 on the road was Thursday May 1st. We started in Illinois, traveled back to Missouri, back to Illinois, then to Kentucky and finally ended up in Tennessee.

Kentucky

Tennessee

On Thursday evening we had dinner with Andrew’s best man’s mom in Hendersonville, Tennessee. We were given a nice place to lay our heads and headed out on Friday morning for Asheville, North Carolina via a scenic route that took us through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg next to the Great Smoky Mountains.

We are thankful to be so far into our journey safe and sound. Tomorrow we stay put right here in Asheville. I’ll be sharing all about our time soon. We traveled from the central time zone to the eastern time zone today.

Hope May has started out well for all of you!

The 2nd Half of SeaJack #4!

After our fabulous barbecue lunch in Kansas City we headed on east to just beyond St. Louis for the night. We crossed from Missouri into Illinois.

We crossed the Missouri River and in St. Louis we crossed the Mississippi River.

The Mississippi River.

After we settled into our hotel in Illinois just outside of St. Louis for the night this restaurant was recommended to us for dinner. This is a one of a kind restaurant. We found out that this restaurant was featured on Man vs. Food. The portions are huge here so I ordered a small salad still feeling full from our huge lunch. These rolls are served at the table whether you order them or not with a wonderful butter cinnamon honey spread and just plain butter. The rolls were just the perfect temp and softness to please my palate. Delicious!

I’m saving our stop at Calvary Cemetery in E. St. Louis and the Bellefontaine Cemetery for posts after I’m settled into our hotel at our final destination.

Today was day #5 and we are now in Tennessee. I’ll be catching up with my posts soon. We are staying with a friend of Andrew and Katie here. Tomorrow we continue east to Asheville, North Carolina where we will be spending two nights! I’m looking forward to two nights in one picturesque spot! Finally the weather has settled down for us and we have had no challenges on the road.

SeaJack Day #4

Wednesday was the fourth day of our road trip and because of the special event on this day I’m going to have two separate posts breaking the day into two halfs.

The first post for Day #4 can be called, ” I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come.” We started in Nebraska, crossed a bridge into Iowa and then continued on I-29 crossing into Missouri and on to Kansas City.

Our route to I-29 took us through this quaint Main street in Plattsmouth where we continued on crossing the Plattsmouth bridge over the Missouri river and which had a $1.25 toll.

Did you notice we have sunshine and clouds? We had mostly dry weather on this day. There were pockets of rain but they didn’t last long.

After two and a half hours on the road we spotted Kansas City in the distance.

We had a very important lunch date in Kansas City and I’m happy to say we weren’t late. We found our way to Fiorella’s Jack Stack Barbecue where we were meeting up with a long time bloggy friend Pam and her daughter Whitney.

Over my blogging years I’ve always appreciated Pam’s thoughtful words and prayers for me and others. She’s a gem.

Pam’s husband sent Pam to lunch with instructions to pay for our meal. Thank you Pam’s hubby. We really appreciate your generosity. We had no problem with conversation throughout our meal. The food was delicious and filling. Pam gave Katie and me a bag with homemade cookies to take along our journey. Pam! The cookies are delicious and we do want the recipe…as close as you can get it! 🙂

We are so happy it worked out with timing for us to be able to meet up for lunch. This was the end of the first half of day four on the road. I’ll share about the second half of day 4 tomorrow as we continued east through St. Louis into Illinois.

SeaJack Day #3

I might be sounding like a broken record but we woke up to some more severe weather conditions in Rapid City, South Dakota. When the sun broke through we were brave enough to make a run for it. While we waited for the car to warm up and melt off the ice/snow on the windshield the wind was so strong that our car was rocking. I’m so sad I didn’t get a photo of the snow blowing horizontally. Very little snow accumulated on the ground. It accumulated on signs, windows, one side of the tree trunks, etc.

These are the welcome and information signs at a rest area stop in South Dakota.

We saw whitecaps on irrigation ponds as we continued east on I-90.

Today we crossed the state of South Dakota heading East from Rapid City. We smiled as we passed an exit that said this was the home town of John Thune, senator from South Dakota. His brother Bob was our pastor for a few years in Huntington Beach, California. Bob Thune is an exceptional teacher of God’s Word. We also passed the exit for the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. We waved, Willow! Wish we could have gone out of our way the 50 miles to see it.

We headed South at Sioux Falls, S.D. and finally made it into Iowa.

The Missouri River in Iowa.

We traveled in three states again today, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. Tonight we are staying south of Omaha, Nebraska.

It was a very long travel day today and we didn’t get to our hotel until after 6:00 P.M. Since it was Tuesday our regular day at home to go out for Mexican food we found a Mexican restaurant close to the hotel for our later than usual dinner. We are beat and happy to have been carried along by the prayers of our friends and family today. Bless you all. We have a nice place to lay our heads. We are really looking forward to meeting up with Pam a dear bloggy friend and her daughter in Kansas City tomorrow for lunch.

We have learned that we need to be flexible with our plans when we have to deal with changing weather patterns. We had planned to see Mt. Rushmore today before we hit the road to Nebraska but the weather proved to be too severe to enjoy that extra side trip.

Our hearts go out to all those who have suffered in the path of tornadoes and other severe weather this week.

SeaJack Day #2

Today, Monday, is the second day of our road trip from Seattle to Jacksonville, N.C. We woke up to quite a surprise in Bozeman this morning, snow!

We listened to the news and decided to leave a little later than usual hoping the roads would be good for our travels across Montana, Wyoming, ending in Rapid City, North Dakota. The snow ended up being a non issue once we were on the road. The more extreme conditions we dealt with on this day were wind gusts up to 45 mph.

Driving in snow scares me so I had to put my big girl pants on and hit the road asking for prayers for a safe journey for Katie and me. Soon we had views like the following. I drove until we got to Wyoming so the following photos are from Wyoming and South Dakota while I was free to take photos from the car.

We arrived to our hotel at 5:30 and got ready to head out to dinner. I bookmarked the spots for dinner before we left Seattle. The restaurant we went to in Bozeman and in Rapid City were both located on Main Street.

Murphy’s Pub and Grill downtown Rapid City

Both Sunday and Monday we drove through 3 states. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we plan to make it to Omaha, Nebraska. On Sunday we listened to an Agatha Christie ebook, And Then There Were None. When we finished that book we started Brian Jacques’ Redwall and continued listening to it today. We are reaching the conclusion of this unabridged ebook. Listening to books while driving really helps me to enjoy the road more.

What do you like to do on road trips?

I hope none of my bloggy friends have had any damage due to the tornado activity in our country right now.

SeaJack Roadtrip Day #1

I decided to name our road trip from Seattle, Washington to Jacksonville, North Carolina…SeaJack.

We traveled across Washington, Idaho and halfway across Montana on Sunday, the first day of our road trip (677 miles). We are now settled into our hotel enjoying a relaxing evening. Here are some highlights in photos of day one.

My favorite part of today was meeting up with Dan and Jamie in Spokane Valley for brunch.

Such a joy to see their faces and spend a little time together.

Katie took the wheel for a while after we made it into Montana and the next few photos are from the car on Interstate 90 in Montana on our way to Bozeman. Did you know that the speed limit in Montana is mostly 75 miles per hour? Woohoo!

After we arrived in Bozeman shortly after 6 PM we found historic Main street and had a light dinner at the Copper Whiskey. I enjoyed the beet salad and Katie had a pulled pork sandwich.

Tomorrow we head to Rapid City South Dakota watching the weather reports closely.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: U.S.A.