We spent the night in Knoxville and went to Gatlinburg the next morning.  Gatlinburg is extremely touristy so after getting a room, we went riding in the mountains.  Actually I remember before going back out, I called my office and found out that the boss wanted to talk to me.  Luckily he wasn't in.  The one place I did see that might have been interesting to go in was the S & M Restaurant. (Insert your own joke here, this one's way obvious).  Anyway, we were riding along on some road and some cars in front of us came to a stop.  We sat there a minute and some people hung their head of the car windows and were pointing up into the woods beside the road.  We looked and didn't see anything and one of the people looked at us and said, "Bears!"  When you're on a motorcycle that's the code word for "go around...quickly".  Especially if you have a sausage and biscuit in your pocket.

    We went up to Clingman's Dome and walked the trail up to the top.  Did you ever notice that the people sitting on the benches get thinner and thinner as you go up?  But when you get to the top, you see people that you wonder how they walked all the way up there.  Interestingly enough, my cousin had no problem standing up on the observation deck.  After the stairs at the cave, I figured he would have passed out knowing he was that high up.

    We rode around for a while and came to a place where some guy was tending beehives.  Once again, not a good place to stop while riding a motorcycle.  It was becoming obvious that motorcycle vacations have drawbacks.  We went on over to Cherokee, North Carolina and hung out for a while.  That made seven states we had been in over a five day period; Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.  It rained on us again that day.

    The next morning we got up, tooled around Gatlinburg a little while longer and then headed back toward home.  We hadn't planned particular distance, so we just rode west.  I didn't realize how tired I was because while we were speeding along the interstate, I actually dozed off.  When I woke up, I was riding in the edge of the grass in the median.  That will scare you!  We got to Nashville and decided to spend the night there.  We went out and had a good time that night, but in order to protect the innocent, I won't go into any detail.
    We had a good time around Nashville the next day and drove on to Jackson, TN late that afternoon.  About 6:30 p.m. I called the answering service to get my messages.  The boss was livid and DEMANDED that I call him.  I hemmed and hawed around for a while but I finally broke down and called him.  He told me that I had to be at his house at 10:00 a.m. the next morning so he could tell me what I had to do next week while he was out.  His idea was that my vacation was five days long and that was up at midnight Friday night.  Bastard.  Well we got up and off around 7:30 the next morning and I made it to the boss's house by 10:00 a.m.  When I got there he asked, "Did you have a good time?" and smiled at me.  Bastard.  We drove 2500 miles that week and on Monday I had to go to the coast on business.  I figured my butt calluses were well established by now so I rode my bike down.  I ended up riding 2900 miles in ten days.  Is that stupid or what?