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DAY 3 – Tuesday, March 16
START: Elkin, NC
END: Cookeville, TN
MILEAGE: 403 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Boone; Ridgewood BBQ; Sneedville; hardcore Appalachia

Oatmeal.  What a good idea.  Lauren and I bought a couple of boxes of oatmeal for this trip.  It was a quick, easy and cheap breakfast, this we knew.  But I was surprised at just how GOOD oatmeal actually tastes on the road.  On a slightly damp and chilly morning, oatmeal really hits the spot.  Lauren and I started off this morning the way we would start off many mornings, emptying a packet or two of oatmeal into a Tupperware or paper cup, then walking into a gas station, adding hot water, swiping a plastic spoon, buying an orange juice to alleviate our guilt, and enjoying a nice warm, tasty and nutritious breakfast.  Lauren’s oatmeal of choice was Maple Brown Sugar while I opted for the Fruit-n-Cream variety pack.

While we didn’t plot out our route to the letter on this trip, we did highlight several places on the map that we wanted to see.  Blowing Rock, North Carolina was supposed to be our first “scheduled” stop.  Blowing Rock is a cliff overlooking the John’s River Gorge and is so named because of the strong updraft winds that can actually cause lightweight objects to be blown upwards rather than down.  In Native American legend a Cherokee brave flung himself off the cliff, choosing to die rather than be separated from his Chickasaw lover.  Instead of falling to his death, the winds lifted him up and blew him back into the arms of his lover.

Good news for him.  Unfortunately for us, during the off-season, the site of his triumph is only open Fridays through Mondays.  We arrived on a Tuesday.  Lauren and I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes stymied, disappointed.  Our first planned stop and it was closed.  We decided maybe we could check out Elizabethton, an underwater town nearby in Tennessee, but a call to the local chamber of commerce revealed that they no longer provided tours of the submerged city.  The day was already dreary and rainy and we had a hard time staying positive.  Even though the bulk of what we’d had planned for the day was now out of the question, we had to force down that feeling of defeat and just say, “Oh well.”  It was tough, but all in all we were successful.

Continuing west into Tennessee, we stopped in the town of Boone, North Carolina, home to Appalachian State University.  Named after Daniel, the most famous Boone of all, this was a very cool, hip little town with an interesting mix of lifestyles.  On the one hand, it’s a very vibrant college town so there are plenty of local bars, frat houses and record stores.  Being this close to nature also brings out a noticeable “hippie” element to the area with their own supply of shops selling tarot cards and hemp jewelry.  On the other hand, you’re also waist deep in the Bible belt, so there is a strong Christian influence as well.  It’s really strange, yet really cool to see these two different philosophies and lifestyles living close together in apparent harmony, with head shops and churches occupying the same street space.

We took winding U.S. 321 through the mountains into Tennessee, and were instantly in the depths of Appalachia.  Growing up in rural Maine, I’ve seen my share of shacks.  Usually they were just old barns, garages or storage sheds that the owners didn’t feel like spending the time or money to tear down, so they’d just leave them to rot and eventually fall down of their own devices.  Every town had a few of these shacks.  But here, in this part of Tennessee, they were everywhere.  On the side of the road, back in the woods, up on an overlook, there were literally dozens of these old rundown buildings looking like they came straight out of the movie Deliverance.  And not just old abandoned workspaces either.  Lots of these shacks, it was obvious, had at one time been houses.  The former owners had moved on, abandoning their digs years, maybe even decades ago.  And yet, in spite of their exterior appearances, many of these structures still seemed impervious to rain, wind and termites, and I daresay many of them will still be upright in another twenty or thirty years.  Just what kind of wood did they use in these buildings that makes them so durable I wonder?  I guess they really just don’t make them like they used to.

Since none of the attractions that we wanted to see that day were open, our next scheduled stop was for lunch at Ridgewood Barbeque in Bluff City, Tennessee, another suggestion from ROADFOOD.  According to the book, “If it is your first time, you will most likely get lost looking for it.”  We didn’t disappoint.  Ridgewood isn’t on the main road and if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never think to make the turn onto Old Route 19E.  We did know to make the turn and we still went the wrong way.  It took almost a half-hour, but we got our bearings back and it was all worth it. 

A lot of barbeque restaurants I’ve been to give you a few pieces of ribs and cartilage that they cook into leather, then slap a thin layer of pasty flavorless “sauce” onto and charge you twenty bucks for the whole thing.  At Ridgewood they hickory cook their pork in a nearby pit then slice up the succulent meat wafer thin and bathe it all in a salty-sweet and oh-so-flavorful sauce.  They serve it up with homemade cornbread and coleslaw and, being in the south, offer “sweet tea” to wash it all down.  Lauren and I split a pork platter for nine bucks and left full and supremely satisfied.  I also ordered a crock of beans which they simmer in their delicious BBQ sauce and lace with tender pieces of pork.  Our stomachs just couldn’t expand fast enough. 

After lunch, it was on to Sneedville. 

My reasons for wanting to visit Sneedville, Tennessee were admittedly juvenile.  I’d read about Sneedville in the book, LOST CONTINENT by Bill Bryson and decided I wanted to go there for the same reason he did: to see the Melungeons.  Melungeons are a group of people who apparently only live in this one specific area of the country.  They have distinctly European features, blue eyes, fair hair, lanky build, yet their skin is “Negro dark.”  Apparently nobody truly knows how these people came to be or to where their official heritage can be traced.  Many theorize that Melungeons are an amalgamation of White, Black and Indian as well as one or more sixteenth and seventeenth century Mediterranean peoples, including the Portuguese, Turks and Moors.  A more romantic theory is that the Melungeons are actually the descendants of the lost Roanoke colony.

I just wanted to take a look at these people and see if their appearances were as striking as I’d read. 

We drove up into the Clinch Mountains via twisting Route 70 with a sense of foreboding.  We were heading into deep, hardcore Appalachia.  We’ve all heard the stories.  We’ve all cracked the jokes.  This is the area of the country where the Civil War never ended, where fathers sleep with their daughters, where they don’t take kindly to strangers and where they’d just as soon make you squeal like a pig as shoot you in the back. 

I have never been so nervous because of a license plate as I was driving toward Sneedville.  We took Lauren’s Mazda Protégé, which was still registered in New Jersey.  That license place made me self-conscious all throughout this trip.  Had it been a Pennsylvania or a Maine plate, I wouldn’t have thought twice.  Maybe it’s all just in my head, but I believe there is a connotation that goes along with the state of New Jersey that is unlike any other state in the union.  Every time I got confused at a turn and had to change my mind at the last second, suddenly I wasn’t just a confused tourist.  I was the dumbass from New Jersey.  Anytime I accidentally cut somebody off, I wasn’t just a bad driver.  I was the jackass from New Jersey.  I felt that way in every rural area we passed through.  “Don’t mind us, we’re just from New Jersey,” became a common phrase uttered in our car.

Heading up the mountains toward Sneedville, that license plate felt like a big yellow target on my back.  I couldn’t help but imagine the xenophobic locals swarming the car and dragging Lauren and me out, saying, “So, y’all’ve come to stare you at some Melungeons ain’t ‘cha?”  I was taking the winding mountain roads with no guard-rails as fast as I dared and yet there were still cars lining up behind me, all of them no doubt sneering at this nosy city slicker from New Jersey. 

Looking back now, I know all my fears were just the result of too many bad movies and an overactive imagination.  It wouldn’t be the last time on this trip that that combination played tricks with my mind.  Most people didn’t even give us a second glance as we pulled over to let them pass.   

We got to Sneedville and met no Melungeons, just a couple of very nice white people at the local gas station where we stopped to grab a Coke and let Lauren pee.  They asked us how far along Lauren was.  When we told them we were from New Jersey on a road trip, they only smiled and said, “Oh that’s nice.”  We paid for our purchase and began our descent back out of the mountains with no Melungeon sightings.

The word “Melungeon” is of Arabic descent and literally means, “cursed soul.”  It was originally used as a racial epithet on the same derogatory level as “nigger.”  Upon later research, I discovered that after several hundred years of intermarrying with people of all races, the distinct Melungeon “look” has all but faded.  More often than not, you would never be able to tell if somebody was a Melungeon just by looking at them.  Now, “Melungeon” is more a word that its people call themselves with pride as a reminder of a common and unique heritage – albeit, one shrouded in mystery. 

After Sneedville, we had originally intended on continuing along the meandering scenic mountain roads on our way into Nashville.  But as the sun started to set on this day we decided that between the Blue Ridge Parkway and our adventures today, we had seen enough Appalachia.  It was time to move on.  We hopped on the interstate and drove about half the distance to Nashville, the next day’s destination.  We checked into our economy hotel and changed rooms when the first one smelled like cat piss.  The next one had no refrigerator or remote for the TV.  Oh well, what do you expect for forty bucks?

ONTO DAY 4