Archive for August 7th, 2009

Run away!!! Run away!!!

So, today we leave Tennessee and head into Kentucky.  One state full of endless yardsales down.  Another night of camping before we hit the great rummage.

Or so we thought.

Start tuning your banjos, folks…

 Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs – Dueling Banjos

At first,  we thought the decline in the quality of the yardsales we were visiting was due to the lateness of the hour.  Things were sort of shabby, and, well, *junkier*.  Whereas the stuff for sale in Tennessee tended to be arranged by category at any given yardsale, things here in the next state were more jumbled…

Some stuff was actually dirty. Fairly nice antique carnival glass had dust and a free helping of dead bugs.  We supposed that the dust and bugs were intended to add to the “fresh out of grandma’s attic” ambiance.

One place made the Salvation Army As-Is store (see previous blog entry) look like Bloomingdale’s.  This not so fine purveyor of used goods had a heap of rocks on the ground next to an old tire, and each of them was priced at five dollars.  Perhaps thinking that they might be some interesting geologic specimens that she could tote home to Mr. Pea, your intrepid yardsaler picked one up to examine it…

Was it a geode? some sort of local mineral?

One of the locals ventured over…she *wishes* she could imitate the hillbilly twang in text.  Just imagine what the shallow end of the gene pool sounds like.  Then imagine it shallower…

“yew innerested in that?”

“Well, I might be…what makes this rock worth five dollars?”

“its a perty white rock…”

Now imagine PeaPod gently placing the rock back in its pile and backing slowly to the car…

It got worse as the evening waxed…it was definitely time to call it a day and follow our trusty GPS to our campground and a nights rest.

But first, we did have to make a small side excursion and get some supper to nosh while in our tent. We didn’t feel up to cooking, and we wanted something that would still be tasty cold, since we had a distance to travel.  We decided on KFC, because we were in Kentucky. 🙂

So, provisions secured, we headed off into the evening.  Which changed into twilight.  Which deepened to dusk.  Which became nighttime.

Still no camp ground in sight.

Such niceties as lane markers vanished…the road grew narrower, then became a gravel track…The GPS told us we had arrived…but we weren’t sure where…

Allegedly there was a lake out there, but we couldn’t see it.  Apparently streetlights hadn’t been invented in this part of the world…there were a few “houses” around that we could see only because there were lights on inside…but no campground in sight.   No tents, no campfires, no RVs. No office, no showers, no loo…

Finally, we saw someone light a fire and we bravely went to investigate…the, ah, gentleman in question apparently hadn’t never seen no city fold before, but he did tell us that the camp ground was on the other side of the lake, so, back we trooped to the care and prepared to wend our way back up the scary track in the dark.  Apparently the locals use the force when they drive these roads, because we were nearly killed by pickup trucks hurtling through the blackness at breakneck speed twice.

Long story short, we came to the other side of the lake and still didn’t see anything resembling a campground…

We found a pair of porta-potties, and a couple guys “fishing*…  We called the reservation office again and got a message that the manager was mowing the lawn…

Apparently the small patch of grass in front of the lake was the “campground” and the porta-potties were the “facilities” for campers…

It was time for Plan B.

Plan B was to hie us to the nearest interstate and drive until we found a nice safe hotel.

Hampton Inn, we love you.

Not as much as we love the Krispy Kreme Man, but purty darn close.

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And the second day dawns :)

Camping was nice…slept well 🙂

Peapod woke up at one point to the howling of coyotes which was all sorts of cool…and for those of you who know her well, no, she is not bringing one home with her.

And yes, for those of you wondering, we have purchased stuff 🙂

Glasses, a bit of china, a basket, some vintage tupperware.

We would show you, but apparently tech support has not yet read the addendum to *yesterday’s* blog, so tech support has no idea we are unable to upload all the nice pictures of bean pots we have.  And we *need* to have pictures of bean pots on the blog.  It is missi0n critical. Seriously.

*waves frantically at tech support*

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Bean pots 🙂 better late than never. 🙂

 

Another Bean pot 🙂  but, actually Pea covets the really nice enamelled metal table it is sitting on more…holy 1930, batman 🙂

This could be Art 🙂 “Yard sale still life, with Bean Pot”

Our stratetgy today is to wait out the worst of  the heat in a nice Cracker
Barrel we found by the side 0f the road, and then attack m0re sales.

We are still in Tennessee…and we hope to reach kentucky by tonight.

Keep watching…if tech support pays attention, and can sort things out, there might even be visual aids!

And, for those of you checking back, *thanks* lots to tech support, who did teach us how to upload the bean pots.  Yay!!

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Kismet :)

When we started out on the great yardsale adventure, we expected to find a lot the usual yardsale stuff, and we did 🙂

Toys,  broken and otherwise,  seriously out-of-date clothing, “vintage” jewlery…you know the stuff.

One of the staples of our yardsales at home is the appleseed necklace. Peapod seriously finds one in every box of old necklaces she roots through.  Apparently they were some sort of sixties fashion necessity.  Now, in spite of seeing these things all over, Kristin has never seen one.  In fact the whole notion of stringing appleseeds into necklaces puzzled her, so, Pea rashly promised to show her one on our adventure, sure in the belief that we would find tons.

We haven’t found one so far.  Luckily, Kristen is a dear friend, and is taking the existence of appleseed necklaces on faith 🙂

Still, we have found a ubiquitous item at all of the sales we have so far attended…the bean pot.

In an ideal world, there would be a really adorable picture of a bean pot, taken at one of the yardsales along the route, but, alas, the software is obtuse.  Peapod will consult with tech support tomorrow to try to resolve the issue.

a bean pot

So far, virtually *every* sale we3 have been to has had its bean pot.  In fact, a lovely McCoy pot was one of the first things we looked at at the first sale we went to.  The only reason it got left behind is that Pea already has three bean pots…

But we didn’t know than that bean pots were going to be the theme of the yardsales in Tennessee…

If the World’s Longest Yardsale were in Massachusetts it might be more understandable…but it ain’t…

Anyway, once we ralized that bean pots were the thing, we started taking pictures of them, to post, but we can’t do that just yet.  We will, we promise…sort of like the  “Bridges of Madison County” only this will be “The Bean Pots of The World’s Longest Yard Sale”

Now, where the kismet comes in…

We decided we wanted barbecue for dinner, and went in search of Lucky’s Barbecue, which we found, and it was yummy.  It was also on PEAVINE road 😀  How cool is that.

And, on the way to the restaraunt, we found a campground called…wait for it…THE BEAN POT CAMPGROUND.

No kidding 🙂

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