COVINGTON - Thousands of yard-sale enthusiasts are expected to brave sweltering heat and bumper-to-bumper traffic this week as they cruise a 450-mile stretch of rural highway from Covington to Gadsden, Ala., for “the world's longest outdoor sale.”

        The sale, featuring an estimated 2,000 vendors scattered throughout dozens of small southern towns, runs Thursday through Sunday along the U.S. 127 corridor (known as Dixie Highway, Kentucky 25 and U.S. 42 in Northern Kentucky.) It offers everything from pinball machines to one-of-a-kind antique dressers and glassware.

IF YOU GO

Rosie Merkt of Wonder Gifts, Books and Art in Covington will be ready for shoppers. (Michael Snyder photo)   • What: The World's Longest Outdoor Sale   • When: 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.   • Where: Begins in Covington's MainStrasse Village and extends along U.S. 127, or Dixie Highway, U.S. 25 and U.S. 42 in Northern Kentucky, through much of Kentucky and Tennessee to Lookout Mountain Parkway in Chattanooga, Tenn. From there, signs direct shoppers to Gadsden, Ala.   • Northern Kentucky restrictions: Anyone can be a vendor. In Covington, tables (provide your own) can be set up on the Sixth Street islands. Tables must be taken down nightly, and spots are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Shop owners can have sidewalk sales in front of their businesses. The MainStrasse Village Association holds permits for the sale; no fees are required.   • Traffic: Kentucky Transportation Cabinet advises motorists to wear seatbelts, drive slowly, avoid tailgating, don't make U-turns and avoid parking on the shoulder of the road.   • Web site: For information on the sale's history, route, parking and traffic trouble spots along US 127 in Kentucky and Tennessee, check the sale's Web site at www.127sale.com.   • Information: MainStrasse Village Association, (859) 491-0458.

        Regular bargain hunters have been known to rent U-Hauls to cart their treasures home.

        Still others, armed with cell phones and Palm Pilots listing their “must have” items, dart from vendor to vendor, swapping information on unique finds.

        “We get calls year-round from people who want to plan their vacations around the sale,” said Donna Kremer, administrative coordinator for MainStrasse Village Association in Covington. “Last year, two ladies from Anchorage, Alaska, flew to Atlanta, rented a van and drove up to MainStrasse for the beginning of the sale. They were going to drive their van the whole sale route before flying back home. Anything they bought they were shipping home.”

        Sheree Allgood of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau said that she's taken calls from as far away as British Columbia..

        “This is a unique event that only serves as a positive for Northern Kentucky. It helps create this area as a destination in people's minds,” Ms. Allgood said.

        Sixteen years after Fentress County, Tenn., officials started the sale as a way of luring visitors off the main thoroughfares into small-town America, the event has taken on a life of its own.

        Featured everywhere from participating states' tourism Web sites to a recent HGTV special , the sale has drawn customers from as far as Japan, and untold thousands from throughout the United States, said Julie Cox, the Jamestown, Tenn.-based coordinator of the sale.

        Organizers will extend next year's sale to nine days - from Aug. 2-10, Mrs. Cox said.

        “People will buy anything if it's a bargain,” said Wilma Kurz, owner of Main Street Memories in

        MainStrasse Village. “Last year, someone even brought down chicken coops and sold them. You name it, and you'll see it.”

TIPS FOR SELLERS

• Keep enough change on hand.   • Record your sales in a notebook so that you don't lose track of items.   • Have someone on hand to bring you food and drink and to relieve you for bathroom breaks.   • Group similar items together. For example, create an outdoor living space with furniture, so that people have a sense of what they can do with your items when they buy them.   • Ask people what they're looking for. You may have something in the house that you didn't put out, such as the old camera equipment in the darkroom that you haven't used for 30 years.

TIPS FOR BUYERS

• Shop early for merchandise like furniture. If you're looking for the best price, go later in the sale when items are marked down as much as 90 percent.   • Keep a log of what you've purchased and where you got it, in case you want to return to the vendor later.   • For larger sales, check other vendors on the street to get a sense of prices so that you don't overpay.   • If you see something you want, buy it. There's nothing worse than going back later for an item and finding it gone.   Source: Susan Goldberg, also known as “Garage Sale Susan” to thousands of viewers of her weekly The Incurable Collector show on A&E. A garage sale fanatic since age 10, the Rhode Island native is a self-described “doctor of junkology.”

        Starting at the Sixth Street islands in Covington, the sale follows U.S. 127 through Kentucky and Tennessee to Chattanooga. From there, signs direct shoppers to Gadsden, Ala.

        At St. Augustine Church near Chattanooga, members have raised thousands of dollars in the past five years to build and operate a school for 700 children in impoverished Haiti.

        “What we do is have everyone in our parish bring in their elegant junk, as we call it, and then we have a team of people from the church price it and move it to our "Hotter Than Haiti Flea Market' on the highway,” said Jack Davidson, who directs the nonprofit foundation that benefits the school. “It's a great way to turn people's junk or their castoffs into usable money, and it's a lot of fun.”

        In MainStrasse Village, many merchants take part in the sale.

        “This is honestly one of my favorite events of the year,” said Rosie Merkt, owner of the Wonders Gifts, Books and Art shop on Main Street. “People come from all over. Last year, some people flew in from San Francisco and Canada. They'll fly in here, rent a car and drive to Alabama, where they fly home.”

        Two years ago, MainStrasse resident Marcie Arnette decided she needed to make room in her kitchen, so she cleaned out more than 15 old skillets, pots and pans that she no longer had a use for.

        “I made close to $100,” she said. “It was all stuff that I was going to pitch anyway.”

        This year, Susan Goldberg, better known as “Garage Sale Susan” to viewers of A&E's weekly The Incurable Collector show, will venture out of her collectible-laden Los Angeles digs to check out the bargains first-hand. Between giving out yard-sale tips and dispensing free water, sunscreen, hand sanitizer and sale tags from her booth in Jamestown, Tenn., she'll explain how to buy and sell items on Yahoo's classifieds.

        “It's something I've always wanted to experience,” she said. “When Yahoo! called and said, "We'd really like to have an expert to tell buyers what to look for and what to avoid and how to look through Yahoo! classifieds,' it was a no-brainer.”

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