Road Trip: Tennessee

Day three saw our trip move over to Tennessee (Every time, I think of that I keep hearing Jimmy Hart screech "Memphis, Tennessee Babay!) and our almost annual visit to Corey White and the Tennessee Smokies.
Fred, of course, had met Corey a few times in the past, but Lefty had yet to have the pleasure.
I told Corey later that he had met all of my autographing friends, but one (Mike Oravec) and I will have to take Mike to Sevierville soon to finish the set!

When you go over to Tennessee from Asheville (about 90 minutes away), you have to plan how you'll spend your day.
You either stay in Asheville and go closer to game time or spend your day in the Knoxville area to kill the time because doing something in the middle of those choices aren't an option.
The choice made by Fred was to visit Knoxville and check out Neyland Stadium for some Tennessee Volunteer items.
This followed his choice not to last year and he's regretted it ever since, so I knew that this was going to be the outcome!

Fred wanted to go inside Neyland and look around or at least grab some swag.
The problem that there is very little parking around the stadium, even when school isn't in session and after some failed attempts to find the parking lot and a memorable exchange with a passer-by ("you can park here, but if they catch you-they will tow you"), I dropped Fred off and while he looked around in the store, Lefty and I stopped in a space, ever vigilant for the parking czar to avoid a ticket!
After a handful of minutes of this, Lefty began to look for Fred in the store as I waited outside.
Fred and Lefty emerged with a beaming Fred with a new Rocky Top shirt among others and we wove our way out of Knoxville and back towards Kodak, home of the Smokies.
I snapped a picture of the Sunsphere, the symbol of the 1982 World's Fair that was held in Knoxville, as we sat at a traffic light.
I could not tell where any World's Fair has been located since 1982, but if you were alive in 1982, the relentless pounding of constant commercials for that World's Fair was constant and with the Sunsphere being the symbol, I remember that to this day!


With still plenty of time to kill, Smoky Mountain Knife Works obviously sells about every kind of knife that you can imagine among other gimmicks for hunters and fans of various genres like Game of Thrones, but the highlight for me was the Relic Room with tons of collectibles from many many countries.
Now how many of the items are legitimately what they say they are is open to conjecture, but there are lots of interesting display cases that would take a significant amount of time to see everything and even just looking can be fun.
Fred even bought a limited edition Tennessee Volunteers Swiss Army Knife.
I've always been a fan of the multiple-use knives with Swiss Army and other companies and I'm pretty sure that had they had an Ohio State version, it may have been going home with me!

We hadn't eaten lunch yet and we began to process of looking for lunch and riding through the strip of Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge was very similar to riding through that of Myrtle Beach.
The same types of touristy stores (Everything 9.99!), gaudy hotels, things to do, and tons of places to eat in a long traffic line on both sides of the street.
It was kind of fun to see all the stuff and even though I still wonder about a large number of pancake eateries around the area, it was cool just looking around.
Still, I had seen a billboard or two for some interesting places and I just wasn't seeing them, although some of the places did make me consider them, I wanted something different.
Finally, I saw it in Captain Jim's Seafood Buffet.
I pondered and looked at the buffet and reluctantly chose the non-crab leg version over the more expensive with crab legs.
It was very good and Lefty graciously paid for everyone's meal over Fred and I's objections.
Very nice of him to do and I must admit it was fun going to these places and looking them over.
Sure, it was everything cliche' that you can think about "tourist trap', but there is a reason people travel to areas like this- because they are fun.

After our drive back through Pigeon Forge etc to the home of the Smokies after a stop at the beef jerky outlet, where surprisingly I didn't buy anything for me, although I did buy some pepperoni sticks for the ladies at home, my good friend Corey White was waiting for me with the cards that he had worked on me throughout the season.
Lots of great stuff that included several additions to the top 100 sets and a team set of the Mobile Bay Bears (Angels), who are in their last season before moving to a suburb of Huntsville, Alabama and change their name to the Rocket City Trash Pandas among many great cards.
As we sat in the parking lot, I ordered two team sets of the next team to play in Smokieland, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (Marlins).
I usually buy one set for me and one for Corey for him working on them.
Not sure how many times I can do that each year due to expense, but I'll certainly try for that for the initial season of the ahem Trash Pandas next year.

We enjoyed the game as I worked on the visiting Biloxi Shuckers, the AA team of the Brewers and
one that even though they didn't have a top 100 card for the set as Corey Ray was promoted a few days before the trip, I still had the team set and some cards from the Carolina Mudcats set that I didn't finish for various reasons.

I was able to get most of them finished, but I did leave a few for Corey to finish up for me and we waited outside for quite a while for rehabbing pitcher Brent Suter, who now is back with the Brewers.
Suter took over an hour, but once he left the locker room, he was very accommodating, signed everything for everyone and talked for a bit as well.
However, I got Suter's cards signed and talked to him, but the conversation that I really enjoyed was with Shuckers batting coach Chuckie Caufield.
Caufield had played for the West Virginia Power back in the early days of my autographing hobby back in 2007 with players that still play in the bigs today such as Michael Brantley and Jeremy Jeffress, and prospects of the time such as Matt LaPorta.
Chuckie and I must have talked for about fifteen minutes about that team, their players, the SAL and of course his memories of Hagerstown.
It was really cool talking about those times and I got the feeling that Chuckie enjoyed being remembered too.

We didn't return to the hotel in Asheville until about one in the morning, but what I carried with me is Lefty telling me that no matter the autographing in Tennessee, the trip still would have been a great one because he met Corey and Corey's other friends Wayne and Delmar.
That's always the fun part of doing anything- being with your friends and the people that you meet on the way.

Next time, we move to Hickory North Carolina and my return after 12 years.