Yeah. Exciting times. We are finally heading into the
mountains. I feel like the last time we've seen a mountain or
been on a mountain was when we were in New Mexico at Rock
Hound State Park like on our way to Florida because once you
hit like a certain part of Texas, there's like no more
mountains. It's like flat. You get to Florida, it's flat.
Coastal areas of Georgia, South Carolina flat but we're going
into Pigeon Forge today but first we have to leave here. It
is a couple minutes after check out and we are not on the road.
Hey, it's the Hanks is all I gotta say. I'll get back and
check the lights and I'll do a final walk around on that side.
Sounds good. Are we leaving our trash? No, I'm going to take it
to the dumpster. Okay. Yeah. Final walk around. Everything
looks good.
Is that what a mountain looks like? Yeah. It's a mountain.
It's a mountain. Wow. Wow. Look at you go. You just as excited?
Yeah, mom's excited too. This is really nice. I can't wait to
see the actual Smokey Mountains. How do you know
where they are? The smokey? You gotta look for the smoke. You
look for the smoke? Yup. What about Smokey The Bear? Is he
going to be standing up on top of it, like, what's up? Babe,
sometimes I don't know if you're asking like serious
questions or are you just joking like, is this a joke? Like,
duh, he's going to be there. What's wrong with you? It's
Smokey The Bear. Of course, he's going to be on the Smokey
Mountains. My mistake. Get away from me. Uh the sign just said
7% grade. Yeah. Alright. So I'm... Well our life is in your hands
now. Uh trial by fire here. What do I do? Tap those
brakes. Try not to ride them. Okay. Let the exhaust brake do
the work for you because that's what the whole purpose of the
diesel exhaust brake is. Let that do most of the work and
then you can just assist with some periodic braking. Okay.
Cuz I feel like... You're going to rock this. Okay. Listen Dee,
will take good care of you as long as you take good care of
her. Okay, that was cool that first part. They said this is
called the Green River Gorge. I wonder if it looks cool at the
side here. Okay, we're going back up a hill so I'm confused.
You know, it's bad when a big class A motorhome is passing me
on the left. If I was by myself... It looks like Phil
and Stacey. Oh. What are you going to say? If I was by
myself. Yeah. I would be not okay. I'd be screaming the
whole way down. Look at you're rocking it right now. And we're
not doing anything yet. I feel like we keep going up up up a
mountain and I feel like we're at the top. Eventually we're
going to have to go down. I know and I'm freaking out.
Don't freak out. Freaking out. Uh there's a rest area coming
up and in like 10 miles, you want to just quick pull over
and empty our bladders and stuff there. Sure. When you're
going to your final destination, you know you're
not going to make it to your final destination in like it
all in one shot. So, I always like to map like one or two hour,
actually like two or three-hour spurts of driving and I try to
find like a rest stop or I know we're going to need fuel like
ahead of time. I try to find a truck stop that we can go to.
Open roads truck stop. Thanks Hanks. I like it.
Nice and easy. Campers to the left. We're in Tennessee. Yeah.
Made it to Tennessee. Tennessee. Are you happy too?
Are you happy? You have a permit to park here, ma'am?
Hey. Okay. Hey, you go pee first. That's okay. I can hold
it. Listen, I drove so well that the soap dispenser I left
on the counter and it didn't move. I just want you to know
that. You should know better after 5 years. Unacceptable.
Come here. I'm going to give you a high five anyways. Just
because I love the honesty. Oh I bet you're going to like mess
with me. No I don't mess. I never mess with you. Oh goodness. Ney Ney.
Alright. Moment of truth here. Let's see if she was
lying. What the? I don't see a soap dispenser. Where is it?
I didn't see a soap dispenser in there. I put it away. Oh.
I know you probably don't believe me.
You're right. I don't believe you.
We made it to Pigeon Forge, area, I think. We're at, we just arrived
to a campground called Douglas Tailwater Campground. It's
outside of Pigeon Forge area. There's basically the Douglas
Dam that releases water, you could see it from here. I'm
excited about our time here. It's going to be a freaking blast.
And of course we're parked next to our awesome friends Keith
and Raini, from the channel Keith and Raini. Sir are we on
50 amp or 30? 50. Wow, so it's 50 amp, water, no sewer but we're
only here for a couple days so that's fine. And we get to like use
our tank that's like newly replaced, so like let er rip.
Let's fill er up and we'll be good to go, there's no issue
with that. We've actually made our grey tanks last more than
four days so this is going to be like nothing. We're just
going to go crazy with the water. Somebody's really excited
about being in Tennessee. Hi. You made it to Tennessee. Are you a
Tennessee boy? You hear our friends Mark and Kim are coming?
Yeah, I said I'll see you next fall. There's no trees over us
so that's good. If you have no idea what I'm talking about. You're like,
who's Mark and. Kim? We stayed on some friend's property like
last, was it last summer? It was just, yeah, like a year
ago. And a tree in the middle of the night, like five
in the morning, fell on the camper. Had to get the entire
roof replaced. I thought we were going to die. We're still
alive. So, that's a win. So, we give them crap when we see
them? Of course. I'd expect nonetheless from the Hanks. We
always do that. You look so good. How are you? Hi, It's been
a long time. There he is. I know. Wow. What is that?
Whoa. That's a big box. Hey, do you have some extra firewood I
can have? You didn't bring the tree.
The downed tree exhibit. It's pretty popular, huh? People are buying
pieces of that downed tree. Oh, really? A memorabilia?
I want a necklace.
Looks good. Ran through. Nothing should break.
What's up? Alright, we're cool. We're cool up here.
One tip I have for you guys is if you're traveling with pets,
get your cat or your small dogs
loaded up in the car or the crate before you start
putting slides in. Once these things start like going in and
retracting, you just don't want to have to worry about
your pet getting crushed. Like there's no safety feature that
if your animal is like stuck under the slide that it'll just
stop. So, prevent a catastrophe from happening by just having
your pets, your kids, safely away from the slides when
they're going in. Same thing when they're going out. We
don't let Dexter come out of his cage until the slides are
completely out when we get to our new destination. Also,
when the slides come in, I can't really get to the back
and you know exactly where he wants to run. Wow. You look
good. Just rocking it. I feel like I'm at at a parade
but no one's waving back at me. Should I just start throwing
candy at people? Yeah. Alright. Of course. You have an extra
bag of candy. I got plenty of room in here so. Wow, you see
how close that bird got to you? That was a butterfly.
Let's hit the road.
Got my little notebook. Little behind the scenes for you. While
we're driving to our next destination... Today is Thursday.
Carl has the video pretty much ready to go but I'm going to
watch it through and take notes on things that he might have
missed or things like, hey, I think it'd be really funny if
you popped up something here or the sound effect or just little
ways that we like to spruce it up to make it really
entertaining for you guys. So, while we drive our really long
30-minute drive to this next destination, I'm going to take
notes. I'm going to be like... You need to make people laugh
more. They need more Ney Ney and Carl or sometimes Dexter.
It's time for the Hanks to just to head to another rally. Take
our advice. Go hit up some rallies whether it's like your
own RV's manufacturers or there's like some kind of
membership event going on somewhere. It's just a great
way to meet friends. Great gathering of fun, like-minded
people. Are you guys like-minded with us? You feel
like? You feeling it? I mean, it's not even the afternoon yet
and I'm already hyped. One cup of coffee. So, can you guys
relate to that or you like Ney Ney, calm down. Actually, by the
time you guys see this, we have probably already had our first
rally and the people who get access to these rallies are the
people who are subscribed to our Email newsletter. That's
it. There's no membership, there's no payment, or anything
like that. So, all you have to do is sign up for our weekly
newsletters. Every Thursday, it comes out 6:15 Eastern Time, 5:15
Central and then you get the scoop on where we are, what's
going on, you can first access to merchandise things like that.
You know Carl's behind me doing all the work packing up so I
guess I should chime in and help, maybe, or I could just keep
talking to you guys and look like I'm busy and he won't
notice. Whatever, let's help him pack up.
Alright, babe. I think we're all packed up here. I want to
hurry up because we got a long drive to the dump station.
Yeah, wow. This dump station is really far away. I'm glad...
I'm trying to tell everybody. I'm glad we made it from there to
there. Babe, I told you, we need to start accounting for
like getting the dump stations like this. When we have a long
drive like that, I need you to be on your A game with me,
okay? Okay. Like, we gotta work together because those are
long drives. Well, you know what I forgot to pack a
lunch for the long dump station drive. We're going to work on
this together as a family. I just want you to know that.
We're in this together. Alright.
I slid my phone at her like thinking that's cool. I'm like,
let's go tomorrow and she's like, okay.
Well, it's the last day of the rally. We're heading over to
say bye to Keith and Raini. Yes. Kinda bummed out about
that. Actually, on the bright side today, at least we only
have a ten-minute drive. But it's coordinating the time of
checkout which is eleven and the time of check in at the
next place which is one. So, there's a two-hour gap and
we're just going to make our way over very slowly. That
kind of is more annoying sometimes when you have a short
drive because of that checkout difference. Right. Maybe we'll
just stop over at Wally World, our second home and pick up
some. I can go shopping. Groceries. It's funny because
Carl just went through the RV and got rid of stuff that we
don't need that we haven't been using. I went on a rampage this
morning. Yeah, he went on a rampage and I think that I
should just go restock a bunch of things at Walmart. No, they
said no. They literally are just screaming it. They're
like, please, no, Ney Ney. Maybe one person in the back is
like, yay, Ney Ney. Yeah. But everyone else is like. Anybody.
Please help Carl. Carl's fine. No, you don't get to hug Keith.
This is amazing. It's gentle. I'm ready for it. We'll do
this. We'll go this way. Wow. We just had the dancing with
the stars with Carl and Keith.
That was glorious. Made my day so far. Nothing can ruin this
day now. Sun Outdoors, Pigeon Forge to Creekside RV Park.
Sure. Still here in Pigeon Forge. We have a whopping what?
Ten-minute drive? Yeah. Whoo. It's a long one. Get your
snacks but what I want to say is usually you can't check in
to these places until like one, two o'clock. I think they're
checking is at one. We're leaving here. It's like 11:30.
So, we're just going to show up and hope they let us in. You're
going to pull a Ney Ney, aren't you? Yeah, because somebody said, oh call
and see if they'll let you check in but then they're most
likely going to say no but my thing is if we just pull up,
pull up hot with the RV. You're going to lay the pressure on.
Yeah, then it's like, I'm here. Don't say no to this face.
How can you say no to that face? So, that's the plan. Let me get
the door for you. I'll get that trash too. Dexter, let me in.
Go. Go. You gotta go.
Alright, let's rock and roll. I got the trash but got trash
juice on me. You ready to go try this out? Yeah, let's if... we
are an hour and 10 minutes early and let's just see what
they say. You said it. Good. We're a little early but we
just thought we'd see if we were able to check-in. Hanks.
Yeah, it's no problem. Sweet. Well, they let us check in. How
awesome. Are you just walking down or what? You getting a
little exercise today? It's too far. Get me, I'm coming in. No.
No. This door is locked. You lost your chance. New space
cars. They don't let you do this. He said you can come in. Okay.
I'm so surprised for how touristy Pigeon Forge and Gaitlinburg or
Gatlinburg, however you say it. How popular it is that this
place is not jam packed. Now it is Sunday but still. 17, 18,
19, 20, 20, 21, right here. It's going to be a little tight.
Like it's a, it's a narrow site. A little bit more
driver side, just because you got a sharp... Perfect. Keep that
a little bit more. Perfect. Hello. I'm going to look at
this other side here just to make sure. Oh, it's good. Yeah.
Yup. Come back more.
Okay, I guess stop right there and see. I mean, you can come
back a whole lot more, I guess. Yeah, I just want to see the...
Yeah. The issue is going to be the steps again on a place, on a
pavement like this. What did we do before?
Now, these steps do not allow the door to shut.