Day Two

Costume Day
So the theme was set about a month ago and the verdict? Astronauts. Yup. We’re all pretty much rolling down south with no AC in June, and they picked Astronauts. So kind. So with help from Corey’s mom (she’s a mad master at making costumes and even has a big ol’shop…comes in handy all the time!) we were well prepared. Corey went in a fun shiny suit labeled Major Tom (resembling the one worn in the original video) and I went as a plain old astronaut, but with an awesome old style helmet…It looked great!
Everyone met up in the hotel parking lot dressed to the nines. I’ll post pics of some of the better costumes soon. Completely hilarious. The hotel employees all came out with their families and were taking everyone’s pictures. The scene was really quite surreal.
The horn sounded and we were off. Our challenge was handed to us through the window on our way out once again.
Challenge: Costume day. Our paper had a list of 3 columns with 4 towns in each one. Pick one town from each column and get a …..Holy shit we’re getting pulled over. …. crazy. Anyway, moving on…. and get a picture of the whole team in full costume, with team car in view, with a local, in front of a public building that clearly shows the town name on it. So three pictures in all. You get a larger percentage of points for towns that the least amount of people visited. So you try to play a guessing game on which ones no one will go to and which ones they will. This is really mostly fruitless as everyone is doing the same thing and there is no logic to any of it. Some of the towns are easy to get to – like only 20 minutes off the country roads we’re traveling and others are more like 3 hours up winding mountain roads. Still …we could all be thinking the same thing…so where’s the logic? Well, we still tried! We chose a little bit of in between. We started with a crazy long winding (BEAUTIFUL) drive up to the little town of Warm Springs (Hot Springs was down the road). We found a great couple our age who were visiting the guy’s home town. They loved it and even took pictures with their own camera because as he said, “My friends are never gonna believe this.” We got the picture in front of a cute little bed and breakfast sitting up on a hill by itself boasting the much needed phrase “Warm Springs Inn”. Then the guy was like, “Yeah, that’s so cool we ran into you. I was just up here to show my girlfriend the monkeys behind this place.” Mind you we are in the back country of the Appalachians. What monkeys?! Sure enough we all walk back behind the inn (I never did ever see a guest or proprietor) and there was a huge cage with swinging ropes, water play tubs, fruit, toys, and shelves for these monkeys. We could only see one, but the guy said there were like 3 and that the guy that opened the inn was from South Africa and had brought them with him. Very strange.
Then we took a roundabout route to 2 more tiny little towns that probably added a few hours to our trek but weren’t as far out of the way. The second town was Tazewell and we found a farmers bureau store with the town name on it. The man was reluctant to help at first as I’m pretty sure he thought I was a madwoman (keep in mind I am still dressed as an astronaut). After a little explanation he dragged his wife out of the store and made her get in the picture too, and a local man had come over to see what was going on and took our picture for us.
Third was the town of Norton which was tiny and at the hour in all small towns where everyone has disappeared from the streets (dusk). We found the local “Norton Fire Department’ and practically dragged these two business men over for the picture. Once again perceived as crazy people, but they came around. Strangely most people were very hesitant at first, but it always ended with long conversations, wishes of good luck, and everyone waving us goodbye while shaking their heads in laughter and wonder. Good day……. Oh, update. The scores are back and we kicked ASS on day two. In the top scores for that day. Hurrah. Team Manwall is winning. They’re a veteran team and doing fantastic.