Tri-Cities Flea Market welcomes us to the south

We didn't have a plan for our first day in east Tennessee, so when we saw the billboards hyping up the Tri-Cities Flea Market, that seemed like a fine place to kick things off.

The Tri-Cities (Johnson City, Kingsport and Bristol) Flea Market is pretty wild. It's situated in what appears to be an old quarry. The parking lot gives way to rows of long, matching buildings, each with dozens of vendors inside.

It wasn't long before we were surrounded by confederate flags, NASCAR tees, children's toys and rifles. Welcome to the south!

After shuffling through all the buildings we could find, we spotted a downhill bend in the road. There were more vendors in the next parking area down! From there, we found stairs leading further down to another spread of matching buildings. Even more vendors!

The Tri-Cities Flea Market, photo courtesy of the official website.

We got some cheap soda to help beat the heat, and continued on.

At $5 apiece, we found the first batch of Donald Trump for President tees that we'd ever seen. A little further on, a long-time sci-fi collector showed us around his collection of Star Wars action figures and other oddities. We found a fish scale and tape measure concealed as a can of Skoal chewing tobacco and took it home as a souvenir.

Elsewhere, a man was selling antiques that included real segregation-era signage and shackles that would've been used on women or children who were slaves. It was crazy to feel just how heavy a single leg shackle was.

We tried to explore every corner of the massive market, and we ended up closing the place down. By the time we made it back up to our car, the area was mostly deserted, but before we left, we made note of an unusual sign: it was an ad for a place called "Backyard Terrors," and it promised life-sized dinosaurs to anyone brave enough to visit.