Bell Buckle, TN

Cassidy: Welcome to Bell Buckle, a.k.a my favorite town in the south (a close rival with Elkton, KY). Bell Buckle is basically my dream location, filled with fried biscuits and a toy store that I once purchased a display of Bill & Ted trading cards at for eight bucks. If you know me, you've probably heard me brag about the aforementioned toy joint: Alley 13. This town has glass bottled cokes, ice cream, chicken tenders, a furniture store with a PUG IN IT, and quite a few antique shops. PLUS, EVERYBODY WHO LIVES HERE IS EXTREMELY NICE. Bell Buckle is teensie tiny, but I will one day reside there in a house that is in walking distance from everything I'll ever need in life. Do you love Moon Pies? If you answered no to this question, leave my blog right now. If you answered yes, then Bell Buckle also hosts the annual RC-MOON PIE FESTIVAL! Caps lock because I'm obsessed.

Ben: A) I don't like Moon Pies. B) *Scroll down to the picture of Cassidy drinking soda. Cassidy said it was a small town. It was. I had to shoot all the photos with a 300mm lens. 

Cassidy: Phillips General Store is a must-do if you are going to go to Bell Buckle. 

Ben: Be careful. Within this building is a bathroom in which I casually walked in on an old man who forgot to lock the door. "Uuuauuggguuhhgguuhh," he moaned. 

Ben: *For a girl who is "obsessed" with RC-Moon Pie Festivals, I see neither a Moon Pie nor a RC Cola in her hands. In fact, I see a COCA-COLA bottle in Miss Cassidy Graves' hands. Do you trust her as the mayor of Bell Buckle? (Paid for by the National Coalition of Lunar Themed Snacks and Two-Lettered Sodas)

 Ben: These horse cookies were tasty, but be warned, they're not $1. The signs were confusing. I ended up having to spend not one, but TWO dollars. Prepare to be a big spender when it comes to buying horse cookies in Bell Buckle.

Cassidy: Actually, there was a sign RIGHT NEXT TO THE HORSE COOKIES that said they were two dollars. Ben likes to not read signs and then claim that he had to spend more money than he did. Let's not forget the great hamburger slider fiasco of 2014.

Ben: They don't know about that yet.

Cassidy: Oh, but they will. 

Cassidy: It's a universal truth that everything is better when fried. The restaurant in Bell Buckle serves up fried biscuits that come with apple butter, powdered sugar, and honey. 

Ben: I wouldn't call these biscuits, actually. Biscuits are something else. 

Cassidy: Hush.

 Cassidy: POWDERED SUGAR ALL DAY, EVERY DAY.

Ben: Ordered this puppy off the kid's menu. Good amount of food for a decent price. Get a good deal: Tell em' Ben Neal sent you.

Ben: And on the other side of the tracks.... Cassidy gambled all of her money away. No, literally on the other side of the train tracks.

Cassidy: Ben will not spend 87 cents on a large ICEE, but he once spent three dollars on one of these quarter coin machine thingies. Ben is addicted to gambling and we need to stage an intervention.

Ben: 89 cents was the ICEE. And the total comes to 97 cents. You get three cents change, which is pointless. You might as well throw those three pennies in the trash can. So it ends up being a full dollar. You could've bought a cheeseburger from McDonald's with that. Or you could just deny that urge one hundred times and save $100. Send that money to me using SnapCash. My SnapChat name is "ICEEYouSavedOneHundredDollarsOnICEES."

Cassidy: I bet everyone within a 100 mile radius could hear the gigantic sigh I just let out. 

Kelly, KY

On the night of August 15th, two intergalactic creatures invaded the town of Kelly, KY. Those creatures were Ben and Cassidy. This is their story.

Ben: When Cassidy told me about the Little Green Man Festi-

Cassidy: Little Green Men Days festival.
Ben: Little Green Men Days festival?

Cassidy: That's what it's called. 

Ben: Okay, whatever. When Cassidy told me about the Little Green Men Days festival, I automatically thought, "This is going to be hella dank." And to loosely reference something Joey from my screenwriting class said: Inflatable aliens? Kettle corn? Funnel cakes? I'm sold. 

Cassidy: I've made it my mission to visit as many things from the Roadside America website as possible, so it seemed obvious for us to go to the Kelly, KY for the Little Green Men Days festival. The festival spans August 15-16, so we loaded up my car with my inflatable infant alien (sadly no pics of him) and blasted Eiffel 65 (I GOT EUROPOP ON REPEAT, EUROPOP ON REPEAT) all the way there on the Friday night of the festival. 
Ben: In fact, we left the alien infant in the car. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. The lawyer doesn't really want us to talk about it. We're going to court this Monday. 

Cassidy: Luckily, the festival had plenty of alien wares to fill the void where he once resided. You know the prices must be good whenever Ben willingly spends money somewhere. We left Kelly with some of the 2012 shirts (we opted out of the 2014 simply because the 2012 ones are A. GLOW IN THE DARK, and B. discounted since they're older), alien clips, little mini UFO, and a LGMDF button. We stayed for a pretty good chunk of time, visiting a lot of booths more than once and staying for the UFO liftoff at the end of the night. And to top everything off, I got a (drumroll please) FRIED SNICKERS. I'm going to make a separate blog post all about the glory of a deep fried candy bar. 

I would like to give a shout out to my grandma for letting me have this shirt for the festival. Props to you, Margie Bell. 

Yeah, that's right, they had inflatable aliens with SILVER SPACE SUITS ON. If the big ones weren't your style, they had little mini aliens (you can see them hanging up in this photo) for $3. 

 

I begged these guys for forty-five minutes to let me into their ship. They refused.

"Would you like to buy some sunflower seeds or candy for twenty-five cents?"
"No thank you, but where'd you get that cool alien head filled with slime?"

Cassidy: The little green men get ready to fire up their UFO on first night of the festival.

Ben: The one on the left had too much to drink. 

The signs said that when they were shot at, the little green men "somersaulted back." 

Cassidy: Some venders told us about how the festival is going to land on the date of the solar eclipse in 2017. Supposedly all of the hotels in Hopkinsville (a town about five miles away from Kelly) are already booked and there are rumors that the aliens will be returning on that day. 

Ben: They also told us to remember Kubrick and guacamole, but I'm not sure why. 

"I know we're here for the little green men, but we're also here for the G-man. That's Jesus Christ." There was also live gospel music going on that Friday night.

"Oh wait, what is that? That's... oh, that's just a balloon." 

"Zoink zoink."

Ben: The aliens proceeded to show off by revving their nuclear reactors and their hyperdrive ion thrusters... I think they were just compensating for their size.

Cassidy: Ben, that's rude.
Ben: What? Look at them. They're small. 

Check out more about Kelly, KY and their infamous aliens on the town's website: http://www.kellyky.com/