Surviving Blood Mountain

     One of the blogs I enjoy reading is called Simply Suthern (http://simplysuthern.blogspot.com).  His post today called The Honeymoon and the Deliverance Gang brought back memories of a trip to Atlanta Georgia a few years ago.  Picture this:

      It was February and seven women set out in two cars to go to an Avon leadership conference in Atlanta GA.  With GPS thing-a-ma-jigs in both cars we feel perfectly safe and sure of finding our destination.   We head south on the interstate, stopping here and there along the way until mid-afternoon when the GPS tells us to turn off onto a 2 lane side road.  Against better judgement, we decide the GPS is supposed to know the best route so we take a left and off we go.

      Things go along smoothly until it starts getting dark.  Next thing we know it is pitch black and we are in the middle of nowhere land.   We haven't seen a town for miles and few houses.  Suddenly, that little box tells us to turn and we turn onto this rough narrow path that looks like we are driving through the middle of a junkyard.  When we finally get back out on a 2 lane highway there is not a house in sight, it is so dark you can't see anything, it is now snowing hard, none of us could get a signal on our cell phones and even On Star was out of range.  Talk about scary!    And all the while this irritating little box tells us to proceed.

     Around midnight we finally reached a civilized town, although, at that time of night it looked pretty deserted and snow was falling harder.  The only place in town that was open was an allnight convenient store.   As if we didn't already feel like we were in the middle of a nightmare that we couldn't wake up from, things were about to go from bad to worse.  We walked out of the nightmare and right into a B movie horror film.

       The clerk in the store looked like one of the characters right out of Psycho or Deliverance.   We told him where we were trying to go and he immediately proceeded to scare the living daylights out of us.  "Noooooo", he screeched.  "The only way to get there is over Blood Mountain and there's no way you women can make it over that mountain at night!  Roads are slick and you'd slide right over the edge!  No one makes it over the mountain at night!  You need to get a room in the motel just down the street!"  (Visions of the Bates Motel put us all in a panic.)  We decided we would take our chances with Blood Mountain.

      As fate would have it, our guardian angel appearred out of nowhere.  While Bubba was trying to get us to go to the motel, in came a truck driver who overheard the conversation.  He was headed over Blood Mountain.  Assuring us there was no danger he said we could follow him and he would lead us to our destination.  He gave us his cell number so we could stay in contact in case of a problem.  Without any doubt we knew he was our guardian angel sent to rescue us from some terrible fate, never to be heard from again.

      Sometime in the wee hours of the morning we arrived safe and sound at our warm, cozy cabin located at the resort where we were staying.   The conference was good, but not what made the trip memorable.  For the rest of our lives we will be able to say...we survived Blood Mountain!

Until next time...that's my view.

Kat