Today we bid goodbye to Gatlinburg and returned back home to Versailles. We packed the car and headed out to check out a few more things before we left town. We were in a bit of a silly mood. So we took selfies in front of the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum. We visited a jelly store and indulged in the samples. (Tomato jam, anyone? Corn cob jelly? Moonshine jelly? They were all surprisingly tasty!) We drove through the artists colony. We had no idea it was so big! We decided we really needed to come back and devote a day to exploring. But we couldn’t resist stopping at a concrete statuary place where John noticed a giant Sasquatch statue. (See him there in the background, under the Loch Ness monster on the roof?)
We had to pull in at the Buy One Pair, Get Two Pairs Free! Boot Store. We tried to have lunch at the tackiest place we could find in Pigeon Forge, but they were just closing as we arrived. So we settled for a buffet with copious wildlife statuary out front and a giant stuffed moose inside. And then we figured we’d better get on down the road.
I fell asleep somewhere just north of Knoxville and woke up as we were nearing Richmond, KY. I went to sleep in the mountains and woke up in the Bluegrass. It was a bit surreal, to be honest. I guess I never really gave much thought to how much the landscape can change in just a short distance.
The last few miles of our drive were through the horse farms on Midway Pike. I said to John that the mountains were lovely, but central Kentucky has its own kind of gentle, pastoral beauty. It was wonderful to visit the mountains, but I am so glad that I get to live in the Bluegrass.
I love what Charles Dickens said about homecoming: “Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.” How true! Tonight I get to drink tea from my own mug. I am writing from my usual spot on our sofa. The normal noises our old house makes as it settles, as the dishwasher runs, as the furnace turns itself on and off are soothing, almost a lullaby. And in a little while I will go to sleep in my own bed, snuggled into the hollows in the mattress my body has made over the years. As Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home!”
We will set out again in just a few days, but in the meantime, truly I am blessed to be home!