Anyone that lives in this part of the state knows never to listen to Mapquest or you’ll be going on a wild goose chase for days. But when a body can’t depend on Google or Rand McNally anymore, something has to give.
And so the journey began. Irish Hills and Brave Little Prancers are on the road once more for one of our infamous road trips. We’re going to deliver a horse to Georgia, one of my favorite states. Great peaches. And they have Jimmy Carter! The plan is to leave my place by 7:30am, deliver the horse to new owner by 11:00am, get breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and I should be back home by 3:00pm at the latest. Perfect. Horses safely in barn with extra hay and plenty of water to last them all day. Since I’ve never left Pup-Zilla my GSD, Amy, it’s my main concern that she will destroy the house, the part that she has access to, and loose bladder and poop control. Plus, she’s teething now so yes I fear for our belongings. Hus is willing to come home from work before noon to let her and other said killer doggy out for potty duty so hopefully things will go smoothly. What could go wrong?
IHF arrives approximately 35+ minutes late, horse in tow. We get down the road not even 1 mile when I think I left the back door of the house open. We have to go back and double check. Nope. All doors closed. As we are going down my not so friendly steep incline of a road, IHF informs me that she only has one eye. Says she has a boulder or some such debris in her eye so she is driving half blind. Lovely, a Cyclops is at the wheel, a weenie in the passenger seat, and a miniature horse on board the trailer
I like this truck, her daddy’s truck. It’s fully loaded and has a lot of buttons for me to play with, which I did. IHF says quit playing with everything but I want to, so I continue. She’s bossy. Soon I was becoming very uncomfortable like someone lit a match under my butt. What the heck was going on here? My rearend was on fire and I could barely sit in the seat. IHF then tells me that I have activated the seat warmer. Seat warmer? You kidding me? What the heck is a seat warmer? What the heck kind of a voodoo truck is this that burns your butt? Yes, turns out to be true. Some fully loaded truck this is. My modest truck has am & fm radio, and a cassette tape………no butt warmer…….
We enter the interstate and begin our trek through Chattanooga and in record time encounter heavy traffic. Everyone is in such a rush. Way too many semis blowing our doors off from both sides, everyone speeding faster than the vehicle in front of them, people changing lanes without using turn signals and weenie here is complaining about it almost non-stop. I profess my love of soft, quiet, country roads like a broken record while IHF fearlessly drives on.
Weenie was in charge of reading the directions courtesy of Rand McNally, and that is pretty much when the trouble began. We did what they said to do, get off the interstate, turn here, exit there, but it didn’t seem to make too much sense. Why? Because the roads were not there where they were supposed to be. They moved the roads? To the nearest gas station we go. Gas station people know everything. Horsey in tow is an experienced rider and is having a great time in her spacious quarters, wallowing in her hay and gets fresh water so she could care less that we’re a little confused. IHF gets gas and eye drops while Weenie asks policeman who is parked there for directions. Success. Boulder removed thanks to Visine. We now have two eyes on the road. Not mine though, I’m playing in my seat.
Some ten or so miles later and out of our way, we figure out said policeman goofed. He sends us west and we need east. IHF says this is wrong yet again and does a U-ey, pulls over, checks the map, backtracks, has a hissy, and goes to another gas station. Horsey is like “You having a problem?” and continues to munch hay. There we have a senior citizen who knows where everything is, so IHF is confident with her directions and follows what she said to do. She says some of the roads are no longer even in existence. No one bothered to inform Rand McNally. No sign of Jimmy Carter or a peanut.
On the road again, something still ain’t right and darn that seat warmer went off again roasting my rear. “Stop pushing the buttons.” “Leave me alone, this is fun.” Now how could one road have 5 names? US GA 2, Something Happy Rd, Lola Something Parkway, Limpy Birdy or something Rd. and Route 2 all are said to be the same road. And there’s one sign in town and it doesn’t include our destination hwy. So who’s stupid now? And how come now we are in the center of Dalton, Georgia when we didn’t even notice a Welcome to Georgia sign? Our destination hwy is at large. And why are we laughing? What’s so funny? Where’s the peaches?
Now we are riding around circling the court house in the center of yet another unnamed town, round and round and round. Where’s some road signs? Any road signs? How come these roads aren’t marked? I vote go left. IHF votes go right. We go my way a few miles. Wrong. Turn around. We go her way a few more miles. Wrong. Turn around. We go both ways for more miles and turn around over and over and over again because we’re both wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Let’s go 30 miles this way. We’re in a ghost town now. Where the heck are the signs? Boy, I am so happy I didn’t take my water pill. We approach an intersection with signs and arrows. Oh joy, they have hwys 52, 136, and 76 all on one post with no arrows to guide us which one is which. HUH? Lucky day. So we pick one! We continue on until the next intersection hoping that there will be signs and arrows with a better hint posted there. The next intersection doesn’t come. No. IHF now grabs the big huge road atlas, plops it across the steering wheel and accuses it of being one big fat lie. She’s right! The map says go this way, but the rest of the directions contradict the map.
Finally a road marked with an arrow so we’ll try this way. Hwy 52. That sounds right. That is what the map insists we do so here we go. It’s a narrow two lane country road. They are all narrow, two land country roads! We are driving for miles, more and more miles. We’re going far, far, far, away from civilization as we once knew it. Looks good to me; no big traffic and I see water. Must be the river. I want to pull over and swim. I’m hot. It’s like 90 degrees. IHF says “no swimming today,” Spoil sport. Bossy too. IHF drives on, getting us deeper and deeper into the boonies. We begin to go UP. And Up. And up. We fear we are heading up into the mountains. We fear correctly! This road is leading us up into to the mountains. Why are we heading up into the mountains on a two lane, deserted road? How did we get here? There’s no one else on this road. And it’s getting really, really, really, steep. And lonely. And scary. And way too curvy.
IHF decided we need to turn around and get the heck out of there. She’s right, but we can’t do a U-ey on a steep two lane like this; there’s cliffs on either side. We have to continue on this road going up, climbing higher and higher towards the heavens, we have no choice. And why is the temperature now dropping in degrees? And whoa! A sign! Oh great, seems that hwy 52 is the scenic route but why did it wait until NOW to tell us that when there is no turning back? And here’s another sign! We are in some kind of a National State Park or Forest? Which one? If we could figure out which one we are in, then we’d know where we were and get our bearings, but Bossy drove past the sign before I could read it. Oh, oh, do I hear a potty mouth? We’re alone up here. This is so not good. Where is a human? Where are we? We are lost. We are sooooooo very, very, lost.
It’s become quite obvious which one of us suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) because one of us is still thinking peaches, swimming, Cracker Barrel breakfast, pushing truck buttons and now is sidetracked and fixated with the wildflowers growing on the edge of the road, and notices more and more the roads signs warning of dangerous curves all over the pace.
Then for some dumb reason we begin to talk about all the true life movies that were made in Georgia and start saying stuff like “Isn’t this how Rambo got in trouble the first time?” No, that was Oregon, not Georgia. But “Did you happen to see Macon County Line?” and “Why are you imitating the guitar riff from Dueling Banjos? ” THAT was Georgia. “Oh my gosh, we passed the river, WE ARE IN DELIVERANCE!!!!! Someone is going to stop us, throw us into the back of the truck, steal the horsey, and do us in. “Shut up”. “You shut up”. “No, you shut up”. I’m so submissive. I shut up. I’m going to report this place to Jimmy Carter. Are we having fun yet? These roads are too curvy. Got vomit bag?
Trying not to get to frantic, but how worse can this really get? Well, you aren’t going to believe it, but just as we hit the next curve, there was a “scenic overlook” place to pull over, and I swear, there were the heck’s Angels parked up there. About a half a dozen biker guys in black leather vests, chaps, and headbands looking over the cliffs. Ok so they may not have been the heck’s Angels but geeze, they looked scary and did we really need to run into biker guys in the middle of our Deliverance like that? And stop humming that music! I tried to get a picture, but IHF hit the door locks, and gunned the truck a little, so all I could get was a pic of these other biker guys that looked more like Joe Citizen biker wannabes.
Anyhow, no one came after us, and we haven’t seen a peach yet. The law of gravity promises that what goes up must come down so some 10, or maybe even 20 miles later, we find ourselves descending off this mountain of Deliverance. YIPEE! Only to find ourselves yet again, miles and miles away from civilization on another lonely, long, deserted road. “My pepsi is hot”. “I want a new one”. “Stop complaining”. “You’re being a meanie”. “Shut up”. “No you shut up”. “Give me Rand McNally again………”
Eventually we come to a little country store where we’re visiting with the horsey who is still happy as a clam chewing hay, and drinking water without a care in the world. What a trooper she is! The little store was great. They didn’t have any peaches, but he had candy circus peanuts so I got those for breakfast. By the way, our plans for breakfast at Cracker Barrel flew out the window because now, it’s afternoon. IHF obtains wonderful, great new directions that would without a doubt will lead us to our destination and we are so overjoyed. Onward we go! I’m still feeling peachy!
Success may be only one hour away or with our luck, ten hours away. Here we go again driving aimlessly down yet another isolated and unmarked country road for the hundredth, millionith time. All these roads look alike. We need road signs. Visual aids, where’s the visual aids? We’re lost again, but if it’s any consolation, we think we are closer to not being lost than we were two hours ago. Once more, there are no road signs to tell you where you are, what town you are in, or where they keep the peaches.
Alas a sign of life. We found the residential area! One single wide trailer in the middle of no where. Looks abandoned, but it’s not because I see goats! Yay! Must be more estates coming up soon. We were so right! One trailer about every 5 miles, looking more abandoned than the last one, no more goats in sight. And oh, another river. Trying not to hum the Deliverance tune again because it’s irritating Old Bossy. Eventually we made it out of the residential area some 30 0r 300 miles later, but who’s counting, to the end of this seemingly endless road and low and behold, we have a road sign, complete with arrows that say we must go that a way. Bamm~! We’re on it. And son of a gun, it’s looking good. There’s houses and more and more of them the further we travel. Where there are houses, there has to be a town and son of a gun, there was. We are not only headed now in the right direction, but we are closing in on our destination. We could feel it, and I wish I could stop igniting my butt.
All of a sudden the cell phone went “BEEP” and activated. You are kidding! Cell phone service! Hurray! We have a signal. Let’s call somebody! How about the lady who is waiting on the horse? By now we are pulled over in a mall parking lot of some nameless town, and the lady is coming to meet us and bring us to her place which is a few miles up the road. This is a nice place, a pretty town, whatever it’s called. Hurray again. So the eagle finally landed in Georgia, horsey still happy, unloaded and making herself home in her new digs easily and new owner thrilled. Good customer service, that’s us! Oh gosh it’s so hot here. Maybe she knows where Jimmy lives? It seems that at one point we were actually ONLY THREE STUPID MILES from our destination, but because the road veered off to the right, we stayed with it, when we should have turned left and ended up going another bunch of miles out of the way and went into a huge circle that lasted more miles.
We were some place near the outskirts of Atlanta via all back roads and lived to tell about it. Now the real screwy thing is that in order to get back home via interstate, we have to drive even further down south more towards Atlanta before we could head back up north to catch it. Stupid, yup, but that’s the way we had to do it. Go further south to go north. A novel idea, but who are we to question anything anymore?
Now, all I could think about was the destruction that Amy had done during my unexpected and prolonged absence. Like a broken record I repeated “I’m afraid to open my door and look inside” probably 50 times. She can’t possibly hold it all afternoon long. We finally arrived home, sweaty, dirty, stinkin, and exhausted by 6:30 in the evening. I opened the door cautiously and was greeted by our older doggy Devin wiggling and barking in happiness followed by a great big old body slam by one very excited Pup-Zilla. Poor Amy, tried to leap into my arms, then rushed that backdoor to the yard and peed her brains out forever. That little pup must have had her front and back legs crossed for hours and did not destroy one thing in the house. I am so proud of her. The horses were fine and happy to see me and get fed one whole hour off schedule but forgave me.
IHF complains that the left side of her face is sunburned and she still has part of a boulder in her eye. I’m complaining that I didn’t get to swim or get peaches or visit Jimmy Carter, and my butt is feeling questionable.
Well, IHF and BLP have another road trip tentatively being planned and next time, we will get to bring our doggies! Possibly to be continued….if you can ever stand anymore.
PEACE!
And so the journey began. Irish Hills and Brave Little Prancers are on the road once more for one of our infamous road trips. We’re going to deliver a horse to Georgia, one of my favorite states. Great peaches. And they have Jimmy Carter! The plan is to leave my place by 7:30am, deliver the horse to new owner by 11:00am, get breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and I should be back home by 3:00pm at the latest. Perfect. Horses safely in barn with extra hay and plenty of water to last them all day. Since I’ve never left Pup-Zilla my GSD, Amy, it’s my main concern that she will destroy the house, the part that she has access to, and loose bladder and poop control. Plus, she’s teething now so yes I fear for our belongings. Hus is willing to come home from work before noon to let her and other said killer doggy out for potty duty so hopefully things will go smoothly. What could go wrong?
IHF arrives approximately 35+ minutes late, horse in tow. We get down the road not even 1 mile when I think I left the back door of the house open. We have to go back and double check. Nope. All doors closed. As we are going down my not so friendly steep incline of a road, IHF informs me that she only has one eye. Says she has a boulder or some such debris in her eye so she is driving half blind. Lovely, a Cyclops is at the wheel, a weenie in the passenger seat, and a miniature horse on board the trailer
I like this truck, her daddy’s truck. It’s fully loaded and has a lot of buttons for me to play with, which I did. IHF says quit playing with everything but I want to, so I continue. She’s bossy. Soon I was becoming very uncomfortable like someone lit a match under my butt. What the heck was going on here? My rearend was on fire and I could barely sit in the seat. IHF then tells me that I have activated the seat warmer. Seat warmer? You kidding me? What the heck is a seat warmer? What the heck kind of a voodoo truck is this that burns your butt? Yes, turns out to be true. Some fully loaded truck this is. My modest truck has am & fm radio, and a cassette tape………no butt warmer…….
We enter the interstate and begin our trek through Chattanooga and in record time encounter heavy traffic. Everyone is in such a rush. Way too many semis blowing our doors off from both sides, everyone speeding faster than the vehicle in front of them, people changing lanes without using turn signals and weenie here is complaining about it almost non-stop. I profess my love of soft, quiet, country roads like a broken record while IHF fearlessly drives on.
Weenie was in charge of reading the directions courtesy of Rand McNally, and that is pretty much when the trouble began. We did what they said to do, get off the interstate, turn here, exit there, but it didn’t seem to make too much sense. Why? Because the roads were not there where they were supposed to be. They moved the roads? To the nearest gas station we go. Gas station people know everything. Horsey in tow is an experienced rider and is having a great time in her spacious quarters, wallowing in her hay and gets fresh water so she could care less that we’re a little confused. IHF gets gas and eye drops while Weenie asks policeman who is parked there for directions. Success. Boulder removed thanks to Visine. We now have two eyes on the road. Not mine though, I’m playing in my seat.
Some ten or so miles later and out of our way, we figure out said policeman goofed. He sends us west and we need east. IHF says this is wrong yet again and does a U-ey, pulls over, checks the map, backtracks, has a hissy, and goes to another gas station. Horsey is like “You having a problem?” and continues to munch hay. There we have a senior citizen who knows where everything is, so IHF is confident with her directions and follows what she said to do. She says some of the roads are no longer even in existence. No one bothered to inform Rand McNally. No sign of Jimmy Carter or a peanut.
On the road again, something still ain’t right and darn that seat warmer went off again roasting my rear. “Stop pushing the buttons.” “Leave me alone, this is fun.” Now how could one road have 5 names? US GA 2, Something Happy Rd, Lola Something Parkway, Limpy Birdy or something Rd. and Route 2 all are said to be the same road. And there’s one sign in town and it doesn’t include our destination hwy. So who’s stupid now? And how come now we are in the center of Dalton, Georgia when we didn’t even notice a Welcome to Georgia sign? Our destination hwy is at large. And why are we laughing? What’s so funny? Where’s the peaches?
Now we are riding around circling the court house in the center of yet another unnamed town, round and round and round. Where’s some road signs? Any road signs? How come these roads aren’t marked? I vote go left. IHF votes go right. We go my way a few miles. Wrong. Turn around. We go her way a few more miles. Wrong. Turn around. We go both ways for more miles and turn around over and over and over again because we’re both wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Let’s go 30 miles this way. We’re in a ghost town now. Where the heck are the signs? Boy, I am so happy I didn’t take my water pill. We approach an intersection with signs and arrows. Oh joy, they have hwys 52, 136, and 76 all on one post with no arrows to guide us which one is which. HUH? Lucky day. So we pick one! We continue on until the next intersection hoping that there will be signs and arrows with a better hint posted there. The next intersection doesn’t come. No. IHF now grabs the big huge road atlas, plops it across the steering wheel and accuses it of being one big fat lie. She’s right! The map says go this way, but the rest of the directions contradict the map.
Finally a road marked with an arrow so we’ll try this way. Hwy 52. That sounds right. That is what the map insists we do so here we go. It’s a narrow two lane country road. They are all narrow, two land country roads! We are driving for miles, more and more miles. We’re going far, far, far, away from civilization as we once knew it. Looks good to me; no big traffic and I see water. Must be the river. I want to pull over and swim. I’m hot. It’s like 90 degrees. IHF says “no swimming today,” Spoil sport. Bossy too. IHF drives on, getting us deeper and deeper into the boonies. We begin to go UP. And Up. And up. We fear we are heading up into the mountains. We fear correctly! This road is leading us up into to the mountains. Why are we heading up into the mountains on a two lane, deserted road? How did we get here? There’s no one else on this road. And it’s getting really, really, really, steep. And lonely. And scary. And way too curvy.
IHF decided we need to turn around and get the heck out of there. She’s right, but we can’t do a U-ey on a steep two lane like this; there’s cliffs on either side. We have to continue on this road going up, climbing higher and higher towards the heavens, we have no choice. And why is the temperature now dropping in degrees? And whoa! A sign! Oh great, seems that hwy 52 is the scenic route but why did it wait until NOW to tell us that when there is no turning back? And here’s another sign! We are in some kind of a National State Park or Forest? Which one? If we could figure out which one we are in, then we’d know where we were and get our bearings, but Bossy drove past the sign before I could read it. Oh, oh, do I hear a potty mouth? We’re alone up here. This is so not good. Where is a human? Where are we? We are lost. We are sooooooo very, very, lost.
It’s become quite obvious which one of us suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) because one of us is still thinking peaches, swimming, Cracker Barrel breakfast, pushing truck buttons and now is sidetracked and fixated with the wildflowers growing on the edge of the road, and notices more and more the roads signs warning of dangerous curves all over the pace.
Then for some dumb reason we begin to talk about all the true life movies that were made in Georgia and start saying stuff like “Isn’t this how Rambo got in trouble the first time?” No, that was Oregon, not Georgia. But “Did you happen to see Macon County Line?” and “Why are you imitating the guitar riff from Dueling Banjos? ” THAT was Georgia. “Oh my gosh, we passed the river, WE ARE IN DELIVERANCE!!!!! Someone is going to stop us, throw us into the back of the truck, steal the horsey, and do us in. “Shut up”. “You shut up”. “No, you shut up”. I’m so submissive. I shut up. I’m going to report this place to Jimmy Carter. Are we having fun yet? These roads are too curvy. Got vomit bag?
Trying not to get to frantic, but how worse can this really get? Well, you aren’t going to believe it, but just as we hit the next curve, there was a “scenic overlook” place to pull over, and I swear, there were the heck’s Angels parked up there. About a half a dozen biker guys in black leather vests, chaps, and headbands looking over the cliffs. Ok so they may not have been the heck’s Angels but geeze, they looked scary and did we really need to run into biker guys in the middle of our Deliverance like that? And stop humming that music! I tried to get a picture, but IHF hit the door locks, and gunned the truck a little, so all I could get was a pic of these other biker guys that looked more like Joe Citizen biker wannabes.
Anyhow, no one came after us, and we haven’t seen a peach yet. The law of gravity promises that what goes up must come down so some 10, or maybe even 20 miles later, we find ourselves descending off this mountain of Deliverance. YIPEE! Only to find ourselves yet again, miles and miles away from civilization on another lonely, long, deserted road. “My pepsi is hot”. “I want a new one”. “Stop complaining”. “You’re being a meanie”. “Shut up”. “No you shut up”. “Give me Rand McNally again………”
Eventually we come to a little country store where we’re visiting with the horsey who is still happy as a clam chewing hay, and drinking water without a care in the world. What a trooper she is! The little store was great. They didn’t have any peaches, but he had candy circus peanuts so I got those for breakfast. By the way, our plans for breakfast at Cracker Barrel flew out the window because now, it’s afternoon. IHF obtains wonderful, great new directions that would without a doubt will lead us to our destination and we are so overjoyed. Onward we go! I’m still feeling peachy!
Success may be only one hour away or with our luck, ten hours away. Here we go again driving aimlessly down yet another isolated and unmarked country road for the hundredth, millionith time. All these roads look alike. We need road signs. Visual aids, where’s the visual aids? We’re lost again, but if it’s any consolation, we think we are closer to not being lost than we were two hours ago. Once more, there are no road signs to tell you where you are, what town you are in, or where they keep the peaches.
Alas a sign of life. We found the residential area! One single wide trailer in the middle of no where. Looks abandoned, but it’s not because I see goats! Yay! Must be more estates coming up soon. We were so right! One trailer about every 5 miles, looking more abandoned than the last one, no more goats in sight. And oh, another river. Trying not to hum the Deliverance tune again because it’s irritating Old Bossy. Eventually we made it out of the residential area some 30 0r 300 miles later, but who’s counting, to the end of this seemingly endless road and low and behold, we have a road sign, complete with arrows that say we must go that a way. Bamm~! We’re on it. And son of a gun, it’s looking good. There’s houses and more and more of them the further we travel. Where there are houses, there has to be a town and son of a gun, there was. We are not only headed now in the right direction, but we are closing in on our destination. We could feel it, and I wish I could stop igniting my butt.
All of a sudden the cell phone went “BEEP” and activated. You are kidding! Cell phone service! Hurray! We have a signal. Let’s call somebody! How about the lady who is waiting on the horse? By now we are pulled over in a mall parking lot of some nameless town, and the lady is coming to meet us and bring us to her place which is a few miles up the road. This is a nice place, a pretty town, whatever it’s called. Hurray again. So the eagle finally landed in Georgia, horsey still happy, unloaded and making herself home in her new digs easily and new owner thrilled. Good customer service, that’s us! Oh gosh it’s so hot here. Maybe she knows where Jimmy lives? It seems that at one point we were actually ONLY THREE STUPID MILES from our destination, but because the road veered off to the right, we stayed with it, when we should have turned left and ended up going another bunch of miles out of the way and went into a huge circle that lasted more miles.
We were some place near the outskirts of Atlanta via all back roads and lived to tell about it. Now the real screwy thing is that in order to get back home via interstate, we have to drive even further down south more towards Atlanta before we could head back up north to catch it. Stupid, yup, but that’s the way we had to do it. Go further south to go north. A novel idea, but who are we to question anything anymore?
Now, all I could think about was the destruction that Amy had done during my unexpected and prolonged absence. Like a broken record I repeated “I’m afraid to open my door and look inside” probably 50 times. She can’t possibly hold it all afternoon long. We finally arrived home, sweaty, dirty, stinkin, and exhausted by 6:30 in the evening. I opened the door cautiously and was greeted by our older doggy Devin wiggling and barking in happiness followed by a great big old body slam by one very excited Pup-Zilla. Poor Amy, tried to leap into my arms, then rushed that backdoor to the yard and peed her brains out forever. That little pup must have had her front and back legs crossed for hours and did not destroy one thing in the house. I am so proud of her. The horses were fine and happy to see me and get fed one whole hour off schedule but forgave me.
IHF complains that the left side of her face is sunburned and she still has part of a boulder in her eye. I’m complaining that I didn’t get to swim or get peaches or visit Jimmy Carter, and my butt is feeling questionable.
Well, IHF and BLP have another road trip tentatively being planned and next time, we will get to bring our doggies! Possibly to be continued….if you can ever stand anymore.
PEACE!
