Traveling Kings

We are headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and leaving on Father’s Day.  We have never done either of those before, so hey, new experiences!

Fun Fact: It is “Smoky”, not “Smokey”.  I misspelled it every time until I finally realized Google was correcting me continuously.

This is going to be a camping adventure.  Our first vacation in a tent since 2012.  Last week, we setup the tent in the backyard to confirm we still had those skills.  All Systems Go.

Unfortunately, this is not the complete set of Traveling Kings we are used to vacationing with. It is Steve, Stephanie, Mallory and Marissa.  But getting 4 people and all the camping gear in one vehicle did prove to be a challenge.  In the end, we only left one thing behind that we said we could buy in Tennessee (bag of charcoal).

To help me properly celebrate Father’s Day, the family kept the stops to a minimum on the trip, and we properly logged the mileage during fill-ups.

Our stop tonight is in Nashville.  With only having one evening to spend in town, the highlight is eating Hot Chicken for dinner.  The obvious choice was Hattie B’s, which is more or less synonymous with Hot Chicken, but they close at 4pm on Sundays.  Dangit.  So we found a place named Party Fowl (incredible name) not far from the hotel.  We all selected “mild” as our heat level, and it stayed true to its word.

(Several years ago, Stephanie and I were in Nashville and ate hot chicken at PepperFire.  We ordered “mild” and it resulted in my eyes watering, and Stephanie being sick the next day. Party Fowl was much better!)

Driving the few miles from the hotel to Party Fowl, we drove on Donelson Pike.  We saw signs for other roads named Pike also.  That got us wondering what this was all about.  Pikes started out as privately-funded toll roads, around the mid-1800s.  These pikes played a pretty large role in how Nashville is laid out today.  That concludes today’s history lesson.