#once in school i watched a chef set off the smoke detectors by cooking right under them. no fire or anything bad.

[wander-lustier]

14.03.17

WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA!

Well, our only stop in West Virginia was the New River Gorge Bridge which was an hour and half from our cabin.  Jake was poking fun at me the whole way there about wanting to see a bridge that was so far out of the way.  He shut up when we got there though.  It was an epic view over the gorge from the visitor center, with a little walk down to an outdoor overlook with an awesome viewpoint of both the gorge and the bridge.  The bridge was impressively big.  It was the largest single arch bridge in the US!  

We stopped in South Charleston for dinner at a Korean BBQ restaurant called Red Fire.  We were seated at a large Hibachi table (the middle section of this table acts as a flat stove top with a vent in front of the chef).  We were seated at the opposite end to an old couple and made jokes about how it was as though we were watching the future us!  After placing our orders a chef came to our table and performed a bunch of tricks with his utensils, before cooking our rice, vegetables, teriyaki chicken and shrimp.  He also gave us a white sauce that he called “yum yum” (I think?) which was super yummy as the name suggests!  Our chef also performed a couple of tricks with fire.  The first made me jump back as a huge flame burst up into the air right in front of us!  His second trick involved creating a volcano from onion rings, flames rising from the middle.  It was a very entertaining dinner!

Our KOA cabin was in a town called Huntington.  It was a super cute set up but we ran into some unfortunate circumstances.  Whoever had been staying in the cabin before us had obviously spilt alcohol somewhere as the stench was very strong.  That combined with the cigarette smoke we smelt in the room was a big let down.  We knew they had been smoking in there because they had covered the smoke detector with a plastic bag and forgotten to take it down! Blatantly ignoring the NO SMOKING sign!  Still no internet - and also way too busy to get my blog completed!!  I’ve been getting as far as I can while sitting as a passenger in the car but there’s only so much I can handle before getting car sick!  The lengths I go to just to keep you all informed!

WELCOME TO KENTUCKY!

Next up was Williamstown, Kentucky where we had tickets to see the life-size Ark Encounter.  It was pretty amazing to see the huge ark as we were approaching on the shuttle bus.  The ark was made of timber and was 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 81 feet high!  This is supposed to show the actual size that the ark was believed to be.  The inside of the ark was a museum which talked all about the different views people have of things such as how Noah could fit all the animals on the ark, what those animals were, and the systems they had in place for feeding them all.  Neither of us are religious, but I think it was incredibly interesting either way! Before continuing our drive to Nashville, we thought it was more than necessary to have Kentucky fried chicken for lunch, from KFC of course.  Basically it tasted the same as anywhere else, and the service was actually crappy!  Nevertheless, KFC is always a good idea and our big bucket filled our sandwiches with delicious fried chicken for the next few days!

WELCOME TO TENNESSEE!

Nashville was definitely one of the favourites out of all the places we’ve been so far.  We stayed in another KOA cabin.  Thankfully we’ve been happy with all of our accommodations so far!  We’re both pretty low maintenance so I guess that’s easy to achieve.

We spent our first night in Nashville at the Grand Ole Opry.  If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s basically where country music was made famous.  We’re both big fans of country music so we were super excited to see what all the buzz was about!  Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country concert which began in 1925 as a one-hour radio “barn dance” on the WSM channel.  It’s where Johnny Cash fell in love with June, and all the most famous country music stars have played.  The original Opry House was damaged in a flood but a circle of the original stage was preserved and placed in the new Opry House.  We thought this was pretty incredible - imagine how many country music stars have stood there singing on that circle!?  I’m sure my Grandma Arnott would be excited to know that Elvis once played there too!  

We only knew one of the artists who played - Chris Jensen.  He sings a song called “Buy Me A Boat”.  It’s a very catchy song, you should look it up!  He closed for the show, so it ended on a high note, and so did he.  He told the audience at the beginning “I’ve had 4 Mountain Dews, 2 packs of Sour Patch Kids and 4 packs of Mike & Ike’s, so you could say I’m pretty excited for the show!”  FYI Sour Patch Kids and Mike & Ike’s are lollies (candy) over here.  He was super hyper and basically bouncing off the walls, he also had a super goofy laugh and played the harmonica like an absolute champ!  Another group who stood out for us was a group of 4 old men dressed in old school Nudie style cowboy suits and hats.  Nudie was a designer who made all the glitzy colourful cowboy suits back in the day.  They were a comedy country group so all of their songs made us laugh.  Especially their closing act where they had a “face playing” battle!  Making their mouths into an ‘O’ shape and then slapping their cheeks into the microphone.  They had us in tears!

The KOA had a cheap downtown shuttle which we caught at 10pm after getting home from the Opry.  We had to seriously push ourselves to stay awake, but it was our one opportunity to see Nashville nightlife since we needed to get to bed early the following night.  We were dropped off out front of the Country Hall of Fame and walked a couple blocks up to the main street lit with neon lights.  After grabbing a burger and dog (not the pet kind) at the first place we saw serving food, which were seriously goooood, we moved on to a place called Nudie’s Honky Tonk which I’m guessing was named after the cowboy suit designer.  There was a pretty sweet band playing there so we ordered a couple beers and grooved along for a few songs.  Literally every bar on this street has a live band of some sort.  Eventually we were both struggling to keep our eyes open and made the decision to call it a night.

We were able to sleep in the next morning which was BLISS!  After getting some laundry underway, for 8 BLOODY DOLLARS, we made our way to Boot Barn.  It was a MUST for me to buy a pair of authentic cowboy boots in Nashville.  Jake insisted that I stop looking at prices and ended up buying me a gorgeous pair of boots that I’m so in love with.  They are super comfy and look great with literally everything.  My husband sure knows the meaning of happy wife, happy life!  It was a very quick boot shopping trip because I had hunger pains like never before and needed to eat BADLY.  Thankfully my husband also knows hangry Kelly all too well and we wandered over to Burger King for a couple of Rodeo burgers (sticking to the cowboy theme).  Next we visited the Ryman Auditorium.  This is where the original Opry House was.  They’ve kept it pretty well intact and it’s now a museum, which still constantly hosts performances from famous artists on a weekly basis.  Throughout my reading I learnt that even people such as Carlie Chaplin and Houdini used to perform their acts there!!  To finish off our day in downtown Nashville, we went to a dive bar called Piranha’s which we’d seen a glimpse of on our way in.  The thing that caught our eye had been there sign announcing the famous “donut burger”.  Of course being the burger connoisseurs that we are - we had to try it!  Boy was it delicious, and all sorts of other goodness.  A meat patty, cheese, egg and bacon stacked in between two glazed donuts!  YUM!  Well worth the heart attack.  Finally to close our final night in Nashville we had a silver bullet (Coors Light beer) and roasted marshmallows in a campfire out front of our cabin.

We have just arrived in Kansas and finished a huge feed of Mexican food!  We’re driving to Colorado tomorrow after a couple of activities!  Stay posted!

With love from KANSAS! xx

P.S. I’m hoping to put together another video from the GoPro in a couple of weeks, of our US travels… but I must warn you, it will mostly consist of Jake and I rocking out to the best tunes in the car!