I'm on vacation in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

[ChoppinBroccoli]

9. We Were There About 5 Years Ago

We rented a cabin in the Smokies, literally on top of a mountain. The drive was perilous (super-steep hills with super-sharp turns, huge drop-offs right next to the road, and no guardrails anywhere), but we enjoyed our time there. We even had a bear walk down our driveway our first night there. We also went to Cherokee in NC and got to see some elk on our way home.

It was about 2018, so the mid-term election ads were all over the TV then, and my wife and I commented to each other almost every night just how frightening they were. The current Governor (I think it's Bill Lee?) and the horrible female Senator, and another guy were in a 3-way race and were constantly running ads about how they were the Trumpiest Trumper who ever Trumped, and how THEY were WAY more Trumpy than everyone else in the race, and how they loved guns more than the other ones, etc. It was really shocking.

When you got into town, the wax museum had a wax statue of Trump right out front with a white board next to it of all his "accomplishments," and throngs of people in red MAGA hats would stop to get their pictures taken with it. I was going to get a picture of myself giving it the finger, but I was afraid I might get lynched if I did. In a huge contrast, the following year we went to Niagara Falls in Canada and the exact same wax museum had the exact same statue of Trump, but had him holding a little Russian flag and posed between statues of Putin and Kim Jong Un. I love those Canadians.