Great Smoky Mountains

September 9, 2009

I am officially tired. We have done a lot of driving the past few days and have worked 35 hours in 3 days. This is looking to be another long week. I hate waking up tired.

We had a delay in the morning again due to rain. We were able to collect one 6 mile route and then the down pour started. One of our computers also decided to randomly turn off and not turn back on so we had to change the power supply. Changing the power supply isn't that bad but it happens to be the top computer in our rack so getting it up and down from the rack isn't much fun. We were soon on our way again to try to find a dry area of the park. We were lucky and were able to collect until about 5pm when it really started to down pour. It is weird being in a canyon and hearing really loud thunder, you can't see the sky. Any odd noise in my mind is coming from the truck so for a second I thought we got a flat tire or something...wouldn't that just complete our day nicely :). Since our collection day was over due to rain we decided to take a break from work and go to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museums in Gatlinburg. It was interesting. The huge tire in their entry goes on a huge mining truck (see photo)!!!! The tire is 12 feet tall, is 6,500 lbs and costs $25,000. Those are the trucks I'd love to drive some day, they are so BIG! The lady I took a photo of is outside a mini golf place and she moves from side to side, I thought it was pretty funny. That would be a fun place to play mini golf.