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We’ve been out of the state for two days now. First, we hit up Louisville, and now we’re in Gatlinburg. I woke up this morning to a gorgeous view of the mountainside near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I have another ten days here in Gatlinburg, and then we’re heading down to Ooltewah, near Chattanooga, to visit my aunt and uncle. We’ll have another two days on the road after that, but we haven’t figured out where we’re staying after leaving Ooltewah.

When we were in Louisville, we stayed at the 21c Museum Hotel. It doubles as a modern art museum, and the pieces were interesting. I’ll have other photos posted once I grab them from the other camera.

On our way out of Louisville, we made a stop in Bowling Green to visit the National Corvette Museum. It was so cool to see so many different pieces of Corvette history, including Zora Arkus-Duntov’s Corvette, the Indy 500 Corvette pace cars and the "Three Series" collection. Photos should be posted to Flickr soon. When we left the museum, we stopped by Wendy’s for lunch. While we sat there eating, we saw a transport truck moving more than a half-million dollars of Corvettes from the Corvette plant. It was surreal.

We relaxed on our first night in Gatlinburg, but today we ventured out to town. The town is too far away to hike to it, so we drove out there. Unfortunately, the town was too busy to even find a parking space, nevermind that we drove down in two cars. We decided to head back to the cabin, but we stopped by Food City. It was refreshing to see a busy grocery store that had all of its registers open. You’d never see that in the Chicago suburbs.

We all split up into pairs as we shopped for groceries. We have been paired up randomly so that each night one pair cooks dinner. I was paired with Emily for one night, and with Sam for another night. While Sam and I have not decided on what we are making, Emily and I took the smart route, knowing our lack of skill and motivation, and decided on "make your own pizza" night. It’s a good idea because it gets everyone involved, and it keeps the effort to a minimum. I’ll have to look up some recipes for pizza to get the ingredient proportions and cooking times right.

Well, I’d better get back to uploading my photos and reading. I’m halfway through My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King. Despite the lower reading level of the book, it’s an interesting read. I’ve already come across my old neighborhood in the story, which was run by the Latin Kings. I think it was a good thing that we left.