I chose to visit Kodak kind of on a whim. Initially, I was planning on making Asheville a day trip, where I’d go straight back to Atlanta in the wee hours of the night, but when I found out that the Mississippi Braves were playing against the Smokies, I decided to make my one day trip into a two day one, because Kodak is just 90 miles from Asheville, as opposed to driving the 290 miles back to Atlanta.
Despite the fact that Kodak is a small town seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I was still really excited by the idea of going there. There’s something ironically amusing to me about small towns in the middle of nowhere that I look forward to. I guess I like the experience of seeing what those deep out into the country are like, and if they can handle when an English-speaking Asian guy comes romping into their towns, trying to see what’s up.
I was a little incorrect about Kodak in thinking it was a sleepy little town, based on the fact that despite the fact that Kodak itself might be, the fact that they’re pretty much the pipeline into Pigeon Forge, Dollywood and the Great Smoky Mountains means that they’re no stranger to an influx of people passing through. Regardless, since I had no intention of falling into those tourist perils, I still got to experience a little bit of local culture.
Mainly, the Great Smoky Mountain Flea Market, where I was able to kill around four hours with minimal effort, looking through like two acres worth of the most comprehensive, random crap available ever. The best part was that where Asheville was all about beer and soap, I could safely say that Kodak was most certainly about ammunition and knives. Seriously, there would be merchants inside of this flea market that would sell leashes and beds for teacup puppies, as well as knives. Glasses cleaners; and knives. Ornate handmade jewelry; and knives. Socks and ammo. Guitars and ammo.
It was pretty incredible.
In fact, the minor league baseball park ended up being the least interesting thing to me on this particular trip, even though it was the primary reason to why I went to Kodak in the first place.
