The Road Home

After Zorbing the drive to South Carolina seemed like it would be an easy one. It was the opposite.  Driving through South Carolina was a daunting task, despite my claims that an 8-hour drive no longer seemed that difficult.  It felt as if the state would never end and our destination was on the coast, all the way in Myrtle Beach.  However, we did have an opportunity to see why they are called the Smoky Mountains and we also drove through out fourth National Park.

Smokey Mountains

We detoured a bit away from the beach to visit Mike at work in Conway, SC.  Of course, we ate some much-needed pizza, even if it was Dominoes.  We also had some much-needed cocktails when Mike finally got off work.  After telling as many stories as we could to fill Mike in on our trip, we went to bed after 5am.  This was fine with us because we did not plan on getting out of bed anytime before noon.  It’s that key word ‘bed’ that made us so excited.  No longer would we be sleeping on an air mattress.  And sure enough we did not rise until the afternoon was well underway. 

The day was spent in a relaxing fashion.  There were no National Parks or Historical Archives to explore.  We didn’t have to drive 800 miles to get to our next adventure.  We just simply sat on the couch and watched Cars. Yes, the Pixar movie and then Cars 2, it’s thrilling sequel. 

At one point we went to Wal-Mart, our new favorite store, to try and get Josh’s film developed.  However, you can no longer get film developed in less than a week.  1-hour photo developing no longer exists in this country.  After doing some research, Josh also came to the conclusion that because the pictures are valuable and possibly irreplaceable, we are going to send the film out to a professional company for development.   So you will have to wait to see those pictures, but I can guarantee it will be worth the wait.

We finished our stay in Myrtle Beach and headed towards New Jersey.  It was a surreal moment when we realized that we were heading home.  We were only 12 hours from completing our journey.   North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were the only states that stood in our path. 

The highlights of the drive included Josh NOT getting pulled over in Virginia, getting gas on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C., and realizing that we could stop off in Belmar to catch some of the Shots and Goggles show at Connelly Station.

We arrived in Belmar around midnight.  Needless to say, Chuck and Sean were pretty surprised to see us.  We made this stop the official last stop on our tour of the USA and neither of us would have had it any other way.  We were evacuated from the bar at one point due to someone pulling the fire alarm.  Despite it being amusing, it was also at that moment I realized I needed to tinkle.  Soon enough we were let back into the bar and the music continued.  We had some beers and sang some songs.  It was awesome, but left us quite tired.

When we got to Josh’s apartment, the only thing on my mind was sleep.  And that’s what we did. 

Zorbing: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

We awoke in Tennessee and drove into Pigeon Forge for Zorbing. We were surprised to see that Pigeon Forge is actually a big tourist town. There are resorts, restaurants and all sorts of fun things to do. I’ll have to come back for the other stuff. We were there for one thing and one thing only. Zorbing. 

After a hilly drive we arrived at Zorb HQ. We entered our information into the touchscreen kiosks, changed and waited for our van. Yes, there is a van that takes you to the top of the hill. In a way that you would expect if you were on safari, this maroon van came barreling down a gravel path to pick us up. We got into the van (who needs seatbelts?) and proceeded to speed up the hill. 

Jaimie and I are in these balls

This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while and to be honest, I was quite nervous. It’s not every day you get zipped into a bubble with water and pushed down a hill. Of course, I volunteered to go first. The way it works, for those of you (read: most of you) that don’t know what Zorbing is, is as follows: You have the choice between two tracks, straight or zig-zag, and two types of rides, strapped into a harness and rolling with the Zorb or unharnessed. Unharnessed means you sit in the Zorb with some water to reduce the friction and they push you down the hill. Simple. Awesome. It was pretty hot and stuffy inside the Zorb, but the water was nice and cool. I must say, there is something pretty calming about being inside these things. That is, of course, until you start rolling down the hill. It wasn’t long before the gate was opened and I was off. (The guy that launches you yells Zorb on every run. It adds a nice touch.) It’s difficult to explain the sensation of Zorbing, except for the fact that it’s a controlled fall. For me the fun of going downhill without being strapped in is that you end up in some pretty interesting positions on your way down the hill. One of the guys working there informed me that they were opening a location in Boston, but there’s no info on the official Zorb site yet. As of right now, Pigeon Forge is the only place in North America you can do this. At the end of the run, the handler at the bottom of the hill opens the Zorb and takes some pictures, both inside and outside the ball. 

Once we were finished, we were given the option of buying some of the pictures. In the spirit of saving money and not making decisions, we had them put all of the pictures on a flash drive.