GMC Hidden Treasure Adventure

Last week, I participated in one of the MOST fun adventures I’ve ever experienced.  You’ve probably all heard about the Longest Yardsale, which has been going on for maybe 20 years or so.  It’s always the first weekend in August (why they picked August, I’ll never know….it’s HOT, people!).  Anyway, I have been to the yardsale a few times years ago, but only from Gadsden, AL up to Chattanooga, TN.  Hwy. 127 actually stretches all the way down from Ohio to Alabama and that’s the route of the yardsale. The last time I went on the Longest Yardsale was in 2009, with 2 of my fave girls in blogland!

It’s an amazing sight to say the least.  Traveling the back roads of the USA is such a fun thing to experience and this trip was definitely an adventure of a lifetime that I’ll never forget.  We flew up to Michigan to start this trip, where I met up with the GMC folks and 7 other bloggers.  We then hopped into our GMC Yukon Denali cars and drove to Ohio for our first stop on the yardsale route.  It was a total of 5 days from start to finish and at the end, we were all exhausted, but incredibly happy.

GMC has sponsored this event for 4 years now and I’m SO happy to be a part of it this year.  It’s called the Hidden Treasure Adventure and they sponsor bloggers to shop the yardsale for a deserving Habitat for Humanity family. We all had rooms assigned to us as well as a few pics of the house, so we knew what we were looking for and had so much fun finding the treasures.  Each blogger got $285 to spend on the yardsale, so we had to be particular about what we bought.  Once we explained what we were doing to the vendors, many of them worked with us on giving us the best price they could.  That was certainly appreciated!  So, today I’m taking you on the yardsale adventure with us!  It was so fun and exhilarating.

This group of bloggers was so inspiring to hang out with for 5 days.  We laughed and laughed and had the best time.  Lucy snapped this selfie of all of us as we got started on the first day.

All the GMC bloggers this year, from middle to the left:  Lucy, Sarah, Dusty, Ashley, Allison, Brooke, Megan with GMC, Michael and me.  In the back are GMC interns, Jenn and Dee.  The GMC crew did a fabulous job with keeping things on track and getting us where we needed to be each night.  We had long days and met up at a designated hotel each night for dinner and sleeping.  Long and exhausting, but so much fun!  As the old lady of the group, I hung in there pretty well! 🙂

Our first night in Ohio, we were at a hotel in the middle of cornfields, no kidding!  They wrapped around the hotel on both sides.  We kept seeing so many cornfields and soybean fields on the road.  I had no idea that rural Ohio was such farm country!  The corn was beautiful.  My dad would have loved seeing that.  This is the most dressed up I was for 5 days.  The rest of the trip was shorts and GMC t-shirts….we were comfortable.

We all hopped in one vehicle that first evening to check out what we could in that area before dinner and it was so fun to share this experience with these awesome folks.

Those GMC Yukon Denali SUV’s are amazing vehicles, let me tell you!  They have all the bells and whistles, with 3 rows of seats.  We lowered the back row so that we could fit in more treasures, but this thing was great for a long road trip.  So comfortable!  We all took turns driving.

I got to ride along with these fun girls, Lucy and Sarah.  You might recognize them from the very fun HGTV show that is on right now, Beach Flip.  Yes, they are celebrities now and actually got recognized at one point on our trip.  If you haven’t watched the show at 9 pm EST on Sunday nights, check it out, there are only a couple of episodes left before the competition is over and I can’t wait to find out who wins the $50K prize!  They can’t breathe a word about the finale.  I’ve known Lucy for a few years.  She lives in Birmingham and that’s where we first met years ago and I think she is the best. Sarah is so much fun too, a new friend, and we all had a great time together.

When you have several people in a car, it can be difficult to find music that appeals to all.  We 3 represent the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s and settled on 60’s music that we all loved.  I was happy about that, 60’s music is the BEST!  We had XM radio and wifi on board, which made it really nice.

Traveling south on Hwy. 127 in Ohio, we saw so much corn and I snapped this pic of the huge windmills with my phone.  It’s hard to grasp how big they were, but they were huge.  The corn, oh the corn, it was abundant!

Traveling the backroads is so nice and relaxing and we saw SO many beautiful barns in Ohio and all the way down that highway.  We loved the old barns!

They were everywhere and so pretty I had to take pics.

Nothing prettier than an old barn, weathered and aged.   We stopped at many stops that first morning and then I found my treasure.

When I came upon this round solid wood vintage table and chairs, I just knew this was the one.  The lady had it marked at $175, but when I told her about our project and what we were doing, she came down to $100, so that was such a bargain.  My money could stretch further!  It was in good shape and I knew I’d recover the chair seats.

Score!

We saw a lot of fun things along the way. On this yardsale, many individuals in houses set up yardsales in their yards and then all the fields along the way are set up with vendors and antiques dealers, so there is something for everyone.  I spotted this so cute bamboo side table at one of them and it was only $25, but I didn’t get it.  I tried to resist bringing home anything else and I succeeded in concentrating on the task at hand.

On cute town we went through in Ohio was Celina.  Such a quaint main street and the houses on that street were beautiful.

We stopped and walked a stretch of this street, looking at all the treasures.

At another stop down the road, we saw so many unusual things as well.  You can find so many unique things on this yardsale, from primitive farm equipment, to furniture and more.  Yes, like this alligator valet. Don’t you want one just like him to hold whatever?

Like this vintage table and chairs from maybe the 50’s.  It had rained in lower Ohio and Kentucky and as we moved South, the mud was apparent.  We all ended up stepping in mud in our flip flops, but we persevered on.

One we all scored the major pieces for our spaces, we could rest a little easier.  We helped Sarah with her master bedroom space, on the lookout for side tables and a dresser.  We scored the dresser at this stop.

Those side tables are for Sarah’s master bedroom and we got the dresser in the back.  You should have seen us packing up the treasures.  Something I’m used to, as I’ve shopped this way for years.

More fun finds along the way, this set of blue and white lamps were $10 for the pair, I think it says.

Down the road in Tennessee, we stopped late afternoon at the BBQ Shack in Grimsley, TN.  One of my readers, Gina, had written me before I left and told me to stop by if we could.  I found it and we mapped it out to get there.  Unfortunately, Gina was working elsewhere that day and I missed her, but met her sweet husband.  Hi, Gina! Sorry I missed you.

The BBQ was great and we were ready for a lunch stop.

We stopped often and saw many fun things.

I posted this picture on my Instagram and Facebook page and it got SO many comments. My mother has these glasses in this amber color and they live on in their mountain house.  I got about 500 comments on my Facebook page from people reminiscing about these glasses! Who knew that the simplest thing could get people talking so much, but it happens every time!

Signs and more signs.

The GMC girls and the trailer traveled along with us and at night we would empty all our finds in the trailer so that we could have a fresh start the next day.  We shopped for 2 whole days, all the way down the Chattanooga and then from there, headed back to Lithonia, GA, where the Habitat House is located.

The trailer arrived and we unloaded all of our fun finds, ready to repurpose and decorate this space.  I can’t wait to show you the end results of this treasure hunt and the Before and After pics of the house.  We all did such a great job with our spaces and it was such a blessing to us to get to bless this family with our talents.  I’m forever grateful that God has opened doors for me to use my talents for good to help others and this was certainly one of those moments.

If you’d like to see a video I did while we were out shopping, check it out! I’m on a new app called Periscope and it’s live streaming video that stays up for 24 hours. People can comment right then and then I can save it and show it later.

I’ll be back very soon to show you the house and all that we did to it.  We got to meet the sweet family, the Yaro family, that will live in the house and what a treat it was to see their faces as they came in the house for the first time.

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