This past Wednesday, our family got to take a little vacation. We went to Pigeon Forge, TN, where our band was playing on Friday night. We thought it would be cool to go somewhere neither my wife nor I had gone, and we had all three kids with us. Plus, we got to stay in the sweet cabin for free – as a bonus.

One of the first things I noticed while driving through Gatlinburg was that there were quite a few tattoo parlors and pancake houses. I’m not sure what exactly this has to do with Gatlinburg, or Tennessee in general, but I’d love to find out. I tried wikipedia briefly, but nothing.

While we didn’t make use of any tattoo parlors, I did see quite a lot of tattooed folks. And we did eat at a pancake house. It was fairly good, though I’m not big on breakfast as a general rule. The rest of the family really liked it. More on that in a bit…

On our way home on Saturday, we experienced something that ranks near the top of my “I hope this never happens again in my entire life” list. We left the cabin around 9:30ish in the morning, and decided to take a scenic drive through the Great Smoky Mountains. It was breathtakingly beautiful. However, once we got deep into the heart of the National Park, my GPS decided it didn’t want to play nice with me anymore.

For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to refer to my GPS as “Gretchen,” as that’s what we call “her” in real life. We came up with the name basically because we both thought she sounded like a Gretchen. But I digress.

When Gretchen speaks, you listen. She knows her stuff. This small grey box knows about roads you never even dreamed of. However, when she was directing us on how to get out of the park, I started to get a bit skeptical. It seemed as though she was leading us directly into a campground. There were people sitting outside of tents watching our car wander aimlessly through their little sanctuary of wilderness.

We charged on, however, and eventually heard that robotic voice say “turn right.” Looking to the right, there was a gate and a sign that read “official use only.” So we turned around, passing by the campers yet again, clearly looking lost. All I could say was “Wave to the campers, kids!” I felt a lot like Clark Griswold, sans the dead grandma on the roof.

We finally made our way out of the campground and out of Gatlinburg, when I began to notice a “shimmy” when I would apply my brakes. Not good. I’ve had new brake pads for a while now, but haven’t actually got around to getting them put on. So I would get a bit nervous going down a steep hill, but once we got to the bottom, it should have been mainly smooth sailing. That was until…

…the return of Gretchen the Evil.

We came down the hill and got to a T-intersection. Thanks to Google street view, here is exactly what it looked like:

Had I turned left, and gone back the way we had come, things would have been wonderful. Unfortunately, we decided to go back the way Gretchen was telling us by turning right – we figured we’d take the scenic route.

So we make a right. That oh-so-familiar voice says “Continue…. 7… point… 8… miles…. then… turn left….”

About three miles down the road, we start a steady uphill climb. I’m getting a bit worried because of the situation with my brakes, but I figure it will probably only be a bit of an uphill climb. Wrong again.

We keep going uphill, and to make it worse, we’re traveling on a road that is very narrow, on the edge of a mountain, and is winding the whole way. There was never a point I was able to drive straight. For another visual, this is what it looked like the entire way up the mountain:

If you looked to the left in this picture, you’d see that it drops straight down the mountain, and there’s no guardrail.

So as you can imagine, we’re pretty nervous at this point, not to mention the fact that I’m getting a bit nauseated by the constant curves in the road. My main worry is that if we’re going this far uphill, we eventually have to go that far back downhill. Our state of temporary panic and fear was quickly interrupted by “turn left…”

I wish that Google Maps could show you the picture of the road we were supposed to turn onto, but the tiny, gravely nature of the road prohibits it actually being seen with anything less than a first-person eye. That being said, it was STRAIGHT down. When I think about what happened next, I’m reminded of the Kübler-Ross model of dealing with death and tragedy:

1. Denial – There is no road there. This can’t be the road Gretchen is talking about. I refuse to accept that this advanced piece of technology would have me risk my safety on this road by making such a stupid call.
2. Anger – Are you serious? I want to throw my GPS down that road, just to see if it can survive. And if it does, I’m going to go down there on foot and destroy it.
3. Bargaining – Just please don’t let me hear a banjo.
4. Depression – So it looks like my only option is to go all the way back down that hill. Good game, universe – you win. I want to cry right now.
5. Acceptance – Oh, well. Nothing more to do at this point than a blind 3-point turn and coast all the way back down the mountain. I’ll learn next time.

So on our way back down the mountain, we’re turning and turning and turning again, and finally my daughter Riley’s stomach had had enough, and her breakfast from the Pancake House came rocketing out of her mouth. Since we were on this mountain still, there was little we could do. My wife tried to turn around and clean her up a bit, and then Riley spewed again, much like a shaken can of soda. We had to face the fact that we were just going to have to wait until we got to a place where we could stop, and pray for a bathroom.

Finally we got down to the bottom of the mountain after what seemed like an vomit-filled eternity. My brakes held up, thank goodness. We found a little place right by that same T-intersection called the “Smoky Mountain Welcome Center,” so we stopped. Bad sign number one was when there was a sign on the window that read “We will be closed November 21-24th.” I’m not sure what year they meant. Next to it was a sign that said “Closed – bathrooms around back.” So I run around to the back to use the bathroom and get paper towels for the massive puke-cleanup effort, and find a port-o-potty, covered in wasps, guarded by a family of aquarium-sized lizards, looking at me as though I’d done something really bad to them, all next to this large black box that looked like a makeshift casket. I decided not to use this restroom.

If you have a weak stomach, you may want to skip this next paragraph.

After we got cleaned up and were back on our way, the final catastrophe came upon us. My wife happened to look in the back seat to find that our precious daughter Riley, yet again, had decided to reach into her diaper and smear “number two” all over herself. So we had to pull over on the side of the interstate to clean her up.

We made the 6-hour trip home in nearly 10 hours. We were exhausted, physically and mentally, but overall we had a great time in the mountains. I’m still not on speaking (or listening, I guess) terms with my GPS, but I’m sure I’ll get her back out the next time I feel the need to fear for my life.

As a side note, when I started typing this, I was craving pancakes. Now, not so much.

-jon