Tennessee y'all!

On Monday morning, Joe, Lucas and I headed out of Arkansas, across the Missouri teabag (look at a map and you'll understand), and into Tennessee. We arrived in Nashville in the early evening, and the boys decided to KGB the best pulled pork sandwich in town. We ended up at Hog Heaven, a little shack behind the parking lot of a McDonald's near Centennial Park.

I've heard many horror stories about being vegan in the south, so although there were several vegetable sides listed on the menu, I was skeptical of their preparation methods. To my surprise, the guy who came to the counter to take our order was a serious vegan punk dude! He managed to scramble together some greens and black eyed peas for me, as well as the most amazing spicy bbq pickles I've ever had. While we were sitting outside eating, we were joined by two drunk hobos named Jerry and Hacksaw. Jerry played us some music on his guitar, including some sweet bic lighter slides, while Hacksaw kissed my hand and told me how beautiful my freckles were. I'd like to think that this was a true Nashville moment.

Because we had scheduled only 4 hours in Nashville, neither Joe nor I had bothered to do any research about what there actually was to see there. I decided to ask the punk vegan Hog Heaven employee for some ideas, and he suggested we go swimming in a salt water pool. When Joe realized this plan would involve trespassing, he decided to go off on his own. So while Joe explored the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Pantheon replica, Lucas and I broke into a Vanderbilt dorm complex and swam in their pool.

That night, we drove on to Knoxville and arrived at my friend Joseph's (not to be confused with my road buddy Joe) around midnight. Joseph was sweaty and shirtless and had just finished chopping wood for a fire. He gave us a tour of the community garden surrounding his house, which included about 15 different kinds of tomatos, each plant at least 6 ft tall. I was completely smitten.

The next morning we went into downtown Knoxville to scope out the scene. Having lived in either New York or Shanghai for most of my life, I am not easily impressed by other cities. However, I was blown away by the fact that everything in Knoxville is either free or dirt cheap. We went up in the World's Fair Sunsphere (free) and checked out the art museum (also totally effing free!). Then we headed back to Joseph's and made an amazing salad and pasta dinner with all of the veggies from the gardens. Later, we all went out to a great microbrewery downtown for $1.50 pint night. I thought I was dreaming.

On Wednesday we headed up to the smokies for some hiking. It was really beautiful, even though we were told that the mountains were way smokier than usual. First we drove up into the mountains and hiked to Andrew's Bald, which was a meadow on the side of a moutain with a beautiful view. Then we drove down to a creek lined with magnolias in full blossum. The water was so clear that we refilled our bottles with it.

The next morning we said goodbye to the south and drove all the way to Baltimore. Baltimore wasn't really a new place for me, but there was a pretty cool art festival going on. My favourite booth featured a man badly singing kareoke with a girl dressed as a turtle by his side. The booth was decorated with fake rocks and seaplants, and there was a banner which read, "Underwater Kareoke Adventure."

This morning, Joe dropped me off at my mom's place in Montclair, and tomorrow it's back to Brooklyn. Our final routing looked more like this:


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Chicago really set us back, but we still covered a lot of ground, and I'm definetely happy with my first southern experience.