The Longest Yard Sale 2012

August was pretty busy, ya'll. I went to the Longest Yard Sale in the World. (You know - the garage sale that takes place on the first weekend in August and stretches from Michigan to Alabama? I've actually been twice before. I'm pretty much an expert at junk.) Spending four days straight looking at treasures is pretty much the stuff that genie lamp wishes are made of, in my opinion.

This year I roamed the outer fields of Ohio and Kentucky with four other ladies with impeccable taste:

There may have been a little worry at first that we'd all be competing for the same treasures, but I think it speaks well for us as civil human beings and for the immensity of the Yard Sale that we managed to come home without any missing limbs or bloody scratch marks from trying to claw finds out of eachother's hands, AND we still ended up with a luggage rack that looked like this:

Maybe you want to know what is inside all of those suitcases? You and the airport security both want to know. I'll tell you as long as you don't unpack my suitcase and hold everything up while laughing and showing it to your buddy who is working the x-ray machine.

There were old forgotten treasures like viewmaster projectors.

Pretty collars and pins and other things I like to wear.

And, maybe I picked up some decorative baby toys that I got a preemptive kick out of as I imagined future children using their iPhone to look up photos of what a telephone switchboard would have ever been used for.

(I posted a few more pics on the AHV blog if you'd like to keep looking at old things.)

One new addition to this year's adventure was a quick stop at Dollywood, aka the most patriotic and tacky of all theme parks, hidden right outside of Knoxville, TN.

There are a lot of all-American bald eagles around. While waiting in line for roller coasters, you felt a little like you were in a motivational calendar.

The sign posts in the park actually didn't give you any direction, but you did feel good about yourself as you wandered aimlessly in search of a bathroom.

There was also plenty of Dolly paraphernalia to peruse. Her hair reached epic proportions in many of the photos, and there was evidence of her being BFF with a lot of other famous people (like Rod Stewart, who incidentally in the 70s was dressed like every blogger in 2012).

Indeed, the whole experience left me motivated (to pursue bigger hair and more sequins in my life).