This Gal Lives Right On the WLYS Route...LUCKY!

Say hi to Alexa from Chattanooga, TN.  This lucky gal lives in a city that is right along the WLYS route.  Chattanooga is along the southeastern border of TN. 

I don't know if I mentioned that I grew up in Johnson City which is near the northeastern border of TN. 

Johnson City is where I will be jumping off from to begin my trek along 127.  It's not on the route, I will have to get up super early the first morning and drive about 2 hours to get to Crossville, TN where I am starting.

Alexa has been to the WLYS two years running and is definitely returning this year.

Alexa sent me a great note about her experiences.

Photo Courtesy of Alexa

I happened upon your "World's Longest Yardsale Project" blog....loved it. Anything that promotes the highlight of my year annually can only be my friend. Most of your entries are in regard to people that attend days of the junk extravaganza, but I live in Chattanooga and can only dedicate one day to my adventure.

I begin the day at 5:30am, drive directly to Dunlap, TN and take 127 all the way into Chattanooga. It takes about 14 hours of intense junk-a-mania! No stopping to eat: bring snacks....bring liquids...drive large vehicle. No small children or husbands. I like to fly solo, or I will now allow my 14 year old daughter, of which is becoming my yardsale apprentice. It is a day like no other. I'm now on my third year so many vendors have now become friends. Certain spots along the way are regular haunts and "must-see" destinations.

 

I'm with Alexa on the "no small children or husbands" rule!  I will have partners in crime though and we all know how to appreciate a great yard sale!

Alexa has a great blog and she has written about both of her trips to the WLYS.

You can read about her adventure in 2009 here.

For more adventures and LOTS more great pictures, read about 2008 here,  here, and here.

I love how Alexa refers to the WLYS as the Ga-Zillion Mile Yard Sale.

Photo courtesy of Alexa

Are we all getting excited yet?  August seems forever in the future. 

Nah, it will be here before you know it :->

Kim Says She Would Do It Again!

I recently heard from Kim  about her trip to the WLYS in 2008 and she was kind enough to answer a few questions. 

1) What year(s) have you been to the WLYS?

2008

2) What was your starting point?

Crossville, TN

3) Where did you end and how many miles did you cover?

Ended in Ohio-not sure on the miles, didn’t keep track. Many websites tell you that it continues to the Michigan-Ohio border, and that really wasn’t true. It was mostly over when you got to the Cincinnati area.

4) Were you looking to find specific types of items?

 Looking for Fiestaware, and amethyst and clear depression glass, and old tools, and anything that happened to catch our eye-but mostly it was for the adventure!

5)  Would you go again?

YES! J

6) What was your best “score”?

 That is a really hard question! They all were! The whole experience was probably the “best” score!

7) Would you go again and if so would you cover the same route or expand your route?

 YES!! In a heartbeat! I’d start in Gasden next time and work my way north from there.

8) Where are you from and how did you travel to get to the WLYS?

 Michigan, and we left home on the Sunday prior. We planned a bunch of stops at places we both wanted to visit. We stopped at the Homer Laughlin China Factory for a tour, tried to visit a Diner’s Drive Ins and Dives Restaurant, visited Smokey Mountain Knifeworks, the Smokey Mountains and Ober Gatlinburg and then started the sale in Crossville and worked our way toward home.

Photo courtesy of Kim

Kim also offered some more info and tips.

We took bagels and stuff that was easy to grab for breakfasts and lunches and only ate dinners out, that saved a lot of money and helped keep us on the road more instead of having to stop so much or waste valuable time sitting in a restaurant.

Since we started a day early the crowds really weren’t that big yet, and I would definitely start early again!

We took a roll of quarters each, like a lot of websites tell you to do, and we never used them! They were heavy and a pain to carry. We took a lot of ones and were glad that we did that.

We bought disposable rain ponchos from Walmart in case we needed them.

We took all of the back seats out of our SUV and put our car top carrier inside the car (to save on gas mileage) in case we needed more storage space for the trip home, and in case we couldn’t find a hotel and might have had to sleep in the car.

Kim wrote a great blog post about her trip and you can read all about it here.  She included lots of great pictures too.

Kim covered basically the same route that I will be taking so it was really great to here that she had a great time and experience.  Can't wait!

Have You Been? I want To Hear From You!!

I'm really interested to hear about your World's  Longest Yard Sale adventure and would love to share it here on the blog.

Photo courtesy: Alabama Tourism

If you like to share, and you know you do, shoot me an email  and I will send you a little list of questions and feature your story here on the blog. 

Can't wait to hear from you :->

The Route

Tennessee and Kentucky.

I will be jumping off from Johnson City, TN over to Crossville and heading north from there.  I did a little bit of research tonight about Crossville, Clarkrange and Jamestown. 

I found an interesting Thread about good places to eat along this part of the route. 

Someone mentioned in this thread that it will take about 2-3 hours to navigate the 40 miles between Crossville and Jamestown during the sale.  Ah ha, that's about what I expected.

There was a lot of positive reviews about the Hangin' Hog restaurant.  Hmm.  Not sure about that name.  Just doesn't conjure up the best mental picture of an appetizing meal.

Image:  TN52.com

After this past winter I am really crazy for some shopping like this under the trees :->

Getting Wound Up for the Sale

127 Yard Sale
Originally uploaded by georgiapeachez

This is it, 2010. The year of my (big) birthday and my celebration trek to the World's Longest Yard Sale. Woohoo!

I've been watching this slideshow of the Flickr Group, 127 Sale.

Check it out, this will really get you jonesing for the sale.  oh yeah.

Lots of Smalls

It's still a long way off till next August and my trip to the WLYS but already planning this trip has taken my mind off the fact that I am rounding the half century mark next year.  Instead I am having fun looking ahead to all the great stuff that we are hoping to find on route.

I can tell you right now it's going to be all about the smalls. 

I don't have room in my houses for one more stick of furniture.

(I absolutely won't be bringing home any crappy neon signs either.)

That is unless I stumble across this:

Then there might be a trailer rental involved or a lot of bungee cords.

I am certain, without out a doubt that we will be finding lots of these items. 

I think there will be a lot of ziplock baggies needed for this trip so we don't lose any good stuff between the seats, better put that on the list of things to bring.

What's On My List?

I am starting my shopping list for the big event and I know it will be a loooong one.

First on my list and I shop year round for this is vintage christmas. That is more of a category, because it can be almost anything. I collect vintage christmas items, the kitschy the better and I also acquire vintage christmas items that I use to repurpose into creations.

So I'm on the lookout for just about anything that's christmas related and old.

I'm really hoping to find alot of christmas items, especially some really old and cool ornaments.

The most special ones will make it onto one of my 9 christmas trees that I put up each year or they will become wreath creations for my etsy shop.  This year I collected enough vintage ornaments to make 8 wreaths for my shop. 

That's a lot of ornaments! 

Beginnings and the HGTV Special

While this little ol' blog is still in it's infancy I'd like to give credit where credit is due.  I certainly don't have the computer skills to put together a blog banner much less one as fabulous as the one at the top of this blog!  This banner and button are the genius of the creative guru that is Katie Runnels.  If you have never been over to Katie's blog, The Constant Gatherer, then it's your lucky day because I am pointing you in the right direction. 

One of the things that I am hoping to do when we get over to Tennessee next August to begin shopping at the WLYS, is to hook up with HGTV.   At the very least we hope to come across where they are filming for their annual special about the yard sale.  In my wildest dreams I would love to star in the 2010 Endless Yard Sale Special!!!

This year HGTV picked out 3 teams of shoppers and gave each team $500 to shop for a room makeover.  HGTV calls their special "The Endless Yard Sale" and this year's installment airs this Sunday at 8pm EST.

If you follow the link over to the Endless Yard Sale page on HGTV you will find several articles with lots of pictures.  You can be sure that I looked at every one of those and read all the captions.  One of the pictures mentions that it was taken in Clarkrange, TN.  So over to mapquest I go.

Clarkrange is north of Crossville, TN where I am starting and south of Jamestown, TN (official home of the WLYS) so YES, I will be traveling through Clarkrange, TN.

Also, I want to thank everyone that has stopped by and anyone that has left a comment.  I'd love to reply to your comments but I can only do so if you have an email link in your blogger profile.   You can email me anytime just by following the link over in the sidebar. 

Enjoy the show!

What is The World's Longest Yard Sale?

The World’s Longest Yard Sale (WLYS) is 654 miles long. It stretches south from Gadsen, Alabama up north to West Unity, Ohio. The WLYS follows Route 127 through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. It was begun by the Fentress County Chamber of Commerce in Jamestown, TN to stimulate tourism along this scenic highway. The sale always starts on the first Thursday of August through Sunday. During this weekend, traffic is congested as thousands of vendors rent spaces in fields, yards, and parking lots along the route. The lure of find that perfect treasure around the bend brings in yard salers from all over the country. Restaurants are packed and hotel/motel rooms along the route are fully booked several months prior to the sale. So book early!

I have already booked my room and have planned which section of the WLYS I am going to tackle. I chose the section which is geographically closer to where we live, if 9 hours is considered close! It is also the section which has the official WLYS headquarters, Jamestown, TN. I am hitting Route 127 at Crossville, TN and will travel 175 miles over two days north to either Danville, KY or Lawrenceburg, KY (depending on our mood on day three). That's my plan. Part of the fun is, of course, not knowing what treasures lie beyond the next bend. It may take hours to go several dozen miles, but so be it! I expect that.

As this blog unfolds, I will share with you the minutiae of planning for this event. I am going to research as much as I can, share what I find with you, and then share my personal travel tips. I can’t wait, and I'm so glad you are taking the journey virtually with me!