Pigeon Forge & the Smoky Mountains

This is the last post about the 2023 Pigeon Forge trip. You should read the previous post first.

 After Noccalula Falls Park, we stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, then headed for Pigeon Forge. There was an accident along the way, in Chattanooga. Google Maps announced a one-hour delay while we were still in Georgia, but then didn't revise the route, so we figured it'd been cleared up. Not! While we were stuck in traffic on the freeway I glanced at the map and saw there were at least three other highways heading our direction, so why it waited to change the route until the traffic finally started to move again is beyond me. Anyway, in the end it took us on a very scenic drive through northwestern Georgia and eastern Tennessee, not just on alternate highways but on neighbourhood streets and rural lanes that made me positively ache to be in a little convertible with the top down (not a drop of rain today, BTW).... 

  We got to Pigeon Forge at about 6:30 Eastern Time. First impression: Ghastly. Horrible. Utterly detestable. Like Vegas, but without the charm. The traffic on the road in front of our hotel has been bumper-to-bumper all evening (it's 11pm as I write this, and it's still a traffic jam out front). The electronic billboards are relentless. Everything is crowded with Middle America: restaurants, shops, streets.... Everything. I feel sorry for the people who come here with kids.

Pigeon Forge culture

  And kitsch beyond belief. Within a couple of blocks of our hotel is a building made to look like a wavy medieval castle; near that is a statue of King Kong carrying a biplane up what looks to be intended as Rockefeller Center, next to which is a stumpy Empire State Building. One of these monstrosities houses the uber-trashy Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Close to that is a building that looks like a Hollywood version of Mount Rushmore, with giant heads of dead celebrities stuck to its parapets. That's a wax museum, I think. A little further down is a "crime museum" meant to look like Alcatraz (it doesn't), and next to that is a giant yellow barn that appears to be a theater.

  Amid all this glitzy schlock, though, are a couple of almost-nice touches. I like the canopy of lights covering the access to The Island (see below), and in the courtyard of that development is a miniature version of the Bellagio's dancing fountains, lined with Adirondack chairs. Apparently, watching the fountain is a Thing here.

  We went to the Sunliner Diner for dinner, a popular 50s-themed place two blocks away (of course, that required us to go in the opposite direction and make a U-turn, because while everybody's glad to let you in, and let you move over, you just can't catch much of a break on traffic coming from the other direction).

  The Sunliner Diner is big and brightly lit and has décor that is a 21st-Century version of the 1950s. The food is just okay; the service is good; the ambience is so-so (too loud, mostly); and the value is poor, as everything is terribly overpriced. Don't tell me "resort," the Sunliner is no resort, despite its gift shop selling $30 T-shirts and $24 coffee cups.

 Then we went for moonshine. The distillery's tasting room and shop is located in The Island, a true resort development that features an amusement park, a shopping center, several hotels, and parking like Disneyland, complete with shuttle trams. It was fairly late by the time we got there, so it only took about half an hour to drive the five blocks from the diner to the turnoff for the Island -- think about that for a second -- and we got lucky in the parking lot, finding a place in the second section. We did our tasting and picked out our bottles and left. We will most assuredly not be going back there. (On the plus side, the 'shine is about $12 cheaper per bottle than it was at the liquor store next to our hotel, where I first discovered it. That makes it the only good deal yet to appear in this tawdry town.)

  On Friday morning, we had breakfast in the hotel, then headed off to hear Wyndham Resorts' timeshare-lite presentation. That wasn't really too bad. For one thing, it poured rain while we were warm & dry in there, and for another, the deal (if it's as it's presented -- watch the John Oliver segment on timeshares) is something I might've actually been interested in 10 or 15 years ago. But now? No way. Anyway, they went through their spiel, and when we didn't bite they called the manager over to make us a different offer, which again we weren't taking, so they gave up, gave us our little prize (a $200 gift card) and we left. 

  The rain had eased up some, but we still didn't want to spend much time wandering around on trails, so we went down to Gatlinburg to have a look at their Arts & Crafts Community. There's an eight-mile-long loop along three roads that features over a hundred artists' galleries and artisans' shops. I was particularly interested in finding some nice pottery, while Sherry was just interested in various things, generally. Most of the potteries were closed, though; possibly because of the Easter weekend. There was one larger place open, which had a few things that mildly interested me -- I want pottery that doubles as art -- but nothing really worth the asking price. Sherry did find a deal on yarn, and bought two skeins super cheap. ("The lady who taught me died," said the shopkeeper, "and her kids asked if I wanted what she had left over. I named a price, and they took it, and I got twenty-six big boxes of yarn.") Stroke of luck for Sherry.

  Then we went through Gatlinburg -- which is as crowded as Pigeon Forge but retains enough of its own character to be genuinely interesting; given a choice, it's the better place to stay if you ever come to the Smokies. There are silly touristy attractions there, too, but it's a walking town. Parking is outrageous, so leave the car at the hotel and take the free shuttles that cover pretty much the whole city. 

  We couldn't find the other place we wanted to have a look at, another arts-and-crafts market. There was nowhere we could leave the car and walk around to search for it. We got to within six numbers of its address (it was at 968 on whatever the street was called; we found 962 and there our search came to an end), then gave up, went back to our hotel and rested until dinner, for which we went to an interesting local restaurant next door, called Local Goat, which was started by a retired military man who began raising goats as a sort of therapy. When he had too much milk, he learned to make body lotions and such from it, and, well, one thing led to another and now he has a very well-thought-of restaurant (where you can buy goat's-milk lotions in the gift shop). My thumbnail review: good food, very good service, good ambience, reasonable prices by local standards (meaning, it was only a little overpriced). I went with the steak nachos, while Sherry had the Black & Blue Burger. 

  I slept like a log; Sherry's burger didn't sit well with her, she says.

  Saturday morning it was still raining, but not hard. We finally got out of the hotel around 9:30, and went for breakfast at a tiny little cafe on a road other than the Parkway (home of the constant traffic jam). They had an hour and a half wait, so we left to take our chances, which meant we pulled in at a Shoney's that hides in plain sight at the older end of the Parkway, where the traffic starts to thin. At least the coffee was good, as was the service. The ambience is as you'd expect at a crowded chain restaurant that features a breakfast buffet (we ordered off the menu), and the prices ... well ... have I mentioned that it's a resort town? Three-fifty for coffee and twelve bucks for eggs, toast and bacon might be de rigueur in Monaco or Abu Dhabi, but in Middle America, even resort-town Middle America, it's highway robbery. 

The Old Ogle Place

  We headed to the park. Our GPS took us an odd way, through new-ish subdivisions of houses that are literally one room per floor, stacked up three and four floors high, with balconies cantilevered off the back, and driveways that I would never attempt in the dark. These places seem to have proliferated wildly as land prices have skyrocketed.

  Like I say, it was still raining, but not badly. We went to the visitors' center for a parking pass and a passport stamp, then took the Motor Nature Trail, a roughly 40-mile one-way drive through luxuriant scenery. This park is the most visited in the country (mostly because it's the biggest park in the eastern half of the country, and so draws many visitors from all over the southeast, midwest and northeast, people who don't have time to drive out to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon) and the sheer number of visitors strains the resources. There was nowhere to park at many of the sites along the Nature Trail, so we didn't get to do any hikes along the way. The only beauty spots we could access were an old pioneer cabin and a roadside waterfall called, I kid you not, The Place of A Thousand Drips. But we enjoyed the drive.

Upper Laurel Falls

   By then, the rain had eased further, and we chanced a hike up to Laurel Falls, one of the most popular locations along the northwestern edge of the park, which is replete with waterfalls. It's a little over a mile each way, and the reward is one of the larger and higher waterfalls in the area. (The photo at left is only of the top portion of the falls; it continues below the level of the path, all the way down to the bottom of the valley.) While we encountered a lot of people on the (sort of paved) path, we had the falls to ourselves for as long as we felt like staying out there. Nice.

  Then we drove off in search of a couple of other waterfalls, ones that were said to be right beside the road. We apparently missed them, so we turned around and went back, and discovered Meigs Falls mostly by accident, maybe two hundred yards off to the right, with no sign; and then a place called The Sinks, indicated only by a sign warning of a "Congested Area" ahead. (It wasn't congested.) Both were very nice, and by this point the rain had pretty much stopped entirely, but it had gotten colder and the wind had picked up, so if anything it was more unpleasant being outside the car. It being fairly late in the afternoon anyway, we headed back to Pigeon Forge, having dinner on the way home to avoid having to go out in the local traffic again. (Oh, and we also stopped at another moonshine distillery we stumbled across. We are now fairly well stocked with the stuff.)

  I had planned a four-day relaxed excursion home, but as is usual with these trips, I now just want to be home. So we will likely make it in two and a half days. I went through my planned route on RoadTrippers, and cut out almost everything I'd included just because it was Along The Way. We're left with a scenic point near Birmingham and a botanical garden in Mississippi (and that, only to break the trip; we may skip it, too).

Here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 

P.S.: In the end, we went a different way, stopping only to see Birmingham's statue of Vulcan (which, judging from online comments, is best known for his bubble-butt). We got home on Monday, in time to collect Carly from the kennel.

Driving to the Smokies

 First Day (Tuesday, April 4)

  So we dropped Carly off at her new kennel. She was so thrilled to get a paper collar, like one of those hospital bracelets every patient gets. That was the high point of the day. Which, when all we're doing is driving across Texas and Louisiana on the freeway, isn't a bad thing. We had breakfast at Panchito's on McCullough and lunch at an IHOP along the freeway east of Houston. I checked Google Maps and figured that we could make Pascagoula at a reasonable hour, so I tried to book a hotel there; the Wyndham website kept telling me there were no hotels available. I figured I'd try again later.

  By the time we stopped at the rest area in the Atchafalaya Basin, it had become clear that Pascagoula was a tad optimistic. At that point, the traffic through Baton Rouge, which normally makes Austin seem rural in comparison, was at a dead stop, both before the bridge and approaching the 10/12 Split, so I modified my expectations and tried for Hammond. Still couldn't get the web site to work, so had to call and make a reservation on the phone, which took way too long (20 minutes) but got it done. The customer service rep I spoke to put me on hold so he could confirm the reservation, but he couldn't get a response either, so he just sent me the confirmation email and that was that. Now we're at the hotel, which is less than a quarter full, so not a problem.

  One other high point for today: there's now a Don's Seafood Restaurant located in Hammond, not far from out hotel. When I lived in Lafayette, 40 years ago, that was the place to go for top-quality seafood. It has not changed. I had an outstanding plate of catfish topped with crawfish étoufée, while Sherry had stuffed catfish. Both were excellent, though if I'm being honest -- rigourously honest, you know -- hers was the better of the two. 

  And one other happy note: Trump was arraigned today. I caught a glimpse of it on a TV screen somewhere along the way. It's way past time for that.

Second Day (Wednesday, April 5)

  Well, this was a pretty good day: drove across the tail of Mississippi and up the interstate to Montgomery, Alabama, where we finally got to go to the Lynching Museum. I forget what it's really called, but it consists of two facilities, the memorial that I've been to twice before, both on days when it's closed, and a museum a few blocks away, in downtown. 

  The memorial is an awesome place. It reminds me of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin for its simplicity of design. Steel blocks inscribed with the names of lynching victims and dates hang from the ceiling of a very large rectangular building. Duplicates of the blocks are laid out in the courtyard, arranged alphabetically by state and county, so visitors can see who is known to have been lynched in a particular place. (I found that one lynching victim from Bexar County, Texas, has been identified: one Alexander Washington, killed on October 11, 1886.)*

  It was near closing time when we got to the museum (after a long, trying search for somewhere open for lunch at 3:00 in the afternoon), so we kind of had to hurry through that. It's just as well: the exhibits it contains are pretty damn overwhelming in their portrayal of slavery, Jim Crow, and modern American use of the criminal justice system as a tool of oppression. (I would have disagreed with that to some extent, had not certain people in power in the Federal government in my lifetime made belated but still-horrifying admissions from time to time; think Nixon, think Trump.)

  We drove on into the evening, and are now lodged in another Days Inn, this one in Gadsden, Alabama. There's a state park with a 90-foot waterfall, ten minutes up the road, so we plan to visit there in the morning before heading up toward Cloudland Canyon State Park in Georgia, which we may or may not visit, depending on the weather. 

  Oh, and! Next to our hotel is a convenience store/liquor store which sells moonshine from a distillery in Gatlinburg, where we will be passing. I looked it up on line to add to our trip plans, and found there's also one, with a tasting room, a short distance from our hotel in Pigeon Forge. One more thing to do while were there, and that one doesn't depend on the weather. Mmmm... I can almost taste it now.

Third Day (Thursday, April 6)

  A day of ups and downs. First thing this morning, we drove up to a place called Noccalula Falls Park, just above Gadsden, where there's a 90-foot-high waterfall, and a trail that goes along the creek, behind the falls, and back down the other side of the creek to a suspension bridge, then back up to the access trail. I was never so unprepared for a hike in my life. 

Noccalula Falls

  First, the trail appeared to be a level, broad well-tended path, so I wore my boat shoes. Uh-uh. Once you get down to the creekside, it's a rocky up-and-down slog, not terribly difficult, but difficult in boat shoes. By the time I realized that, I was fully committed.

  Second, it appears I'm not entirely acclimated to my new eyeglass lenses, and I found that, at a few important moments, the ground was not quite where it seemed to me to be. I have a couple of new scrapes and light bruises as a result.

  Third, I was excited to be able to use my new hiking poles, which I got for Christmas. Sherry grabbed them out of the back of the car and carried them off for me. When we got to the climb down to the creek, I set the length on one, then started to set the length on the other, only to discover that I had neglected to cut the zip-tie that held the two poles together in the store. You know, those things are impossible to destroy without a sharp blade. I happened to have a pair of good scissors in the car, but by the time I realized the need, it was too far to go back to the car. So I just used one, but had to hold both handles in my hand, which was more than a little inconvenient. (Soon as I got back to the car, the scissors came out.)

  And fourth, we didn't expect a half-mile trail to require a four-mile hike of about two and a half hours, and we had no water with us. In the end, we decided that we would not walk through under the falls, as it looked too slippery and sloping; instead we went back the way we'd come; and rather than going all the way back to the suspension bridge and up, we took a short cut through the Day-Use Park ("Stop! Do Not Enter Without Park Wristband!" F**k that.) We found that, in order to reach our car from there, we'd have to walk all the way to the far end of the Day-Use Park, about half a mile, and then about another half-mile along the highway to the parking lot we were in. Or we could just go under the chain-link fence separating the two parks, which was only fastened at the top. Sherry caught her hoodie on the fence -- she's a lousy criminal -- while I rolled under with no trouble (except having to use my hiking poles to stand up).

  I don't normally do things like that, but it felt really good to be so brazen. Like escaping from prison, but in broad daylight.

  Noccalula, by the way, is the name of an "Indian Princess" who supposedly jumped to her death rather than marry outside her tribe. Romeo and Juliet with a miscegenative twist. This is Alabama, after all.

*It turns out that this lynching actually took place in Atascosa County; the town where it happened, Somerset, was later moved to Bexar County.

Here's a link to all the pictures from this trip. 

Click on "Newer Post," below, to continue reading about this voyage.

Low Expectations

This was written on April 3, but won't be published until later for security reasons.

 Some time back, my wife and I were talking about places we'd been that we would particularly like to go back to some day. There are a lot, for her and for me, but one in particular we agreed on, enthusiastically: Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in Tennessee and North Carolina. So it was with that in mind that, having been forced by a poorly-designed mobile website to call Wyndham Rewards on the phone from a Wendy's parking lot in Kansas, and having been subjected to a pointless (though they don't know it) pitch for their Wyndham Resorts program (a sort of time-sharing venture), I accepted an offer for a 3-night stay in their facility in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near that national park. They threw in a $200 gift card as a sweetener when I resisted the first offer. That won't begin to cover the expense of getting to eastern Tennessee, but it helps. Sure, we'll have to sit through another hour-and-a-half presentation on the joys of timeshare ownership, but we can do that.

So a few weeks later I selected a time for the trip, after consultation with my wife about her schedule. At that point, neither of us had any definite travel plans, so the choice came down to the timing of her local team's soccer matches, and Easter was the best time for her to be away. 

Well. The trip is nearly upon us: we leave in the morning. My diligent-albeit-meaningless travel plans have already been pushed back a day because of an unforeseen family situation. so the trip over will be three days instead of four (though we might take an extra day coming back). And of course my excitement at the thought of driving around the southern Appalachian Mountains in my little convertible has been quashed by the realities of weather (highs in the 50s and strong chance of thunderstorms are really not "convertible weather"), so we'll be puttering across country in my aging, but still reliable Subaru Forester. (I say reliable: the stereo's Bluetooth has died for a second time, so we'll be limited to music and radio, no audio books. That's a real blow, but I'm damned if I'm going to get that fixed again.)

Really, the biggest things about this coming trip are (1) the dog and (2) other plans.

When both of us go somewhere, we like to take our dog with us. That means we go to places where she'll be welcome: primarily our family outposts in Colorado and Arizona, but also occasionally to other places. But more often, it means only one of us goes, and the other stays home with the dog. My wife goes to see her sister, and I stay home with the dog. I go on a wander, and she stays home with the dog. She goes to a tournament, and I stay home with the dog. It works for us. (At least, it works for me; I assume it works for her. Seems to, anyway.) But our sweet little dog is not welcome at Wyndham Resorts (another reason we won't be buying into it, as if we needed another reason), and so she's going to the boarding kennel for a while. I hate that.

And then there are the other plans. Like I said, when we picked these dates we had no other travel plans except a vague notion that at a certain point in mid-to-late April my wife would be out in Arizona for a couple of weeks with her sister. They do it every year. Nothing else was planned for the entirety of 2023, at least until a vague point in October when another regular trip comes 'round. It seemed like a safe bet to put this trip on the calendar for Easter.

beautiful scenery, tarted up

I'll make this the short verion: we do not have time for this trip. We do not want to go. We wish we had not committed to do so. There is no time in 2023 when we would want to be in Tennessee for a long weekend. And that will be true for every year into the foreseeable future. We will still enjoy the National Park, if it doesn't rain too much, but the truth is these resorts are not in places, as a rule, that interest us or suit the sort of travel we like to do. We have no interest in the commercial tourist attractions of Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg; they don't include anything of interest to either of us. It's like another Branson, Missouri: beautiful scenery, tarted up. 

(I did stay in a Wyndham Resort in New Orleans a couple of months ago, and it was very nice, but it's just a regular hotel with a good price and a good location; there was nothing "resort-ish" about it, that I could see.)

Also, I watched part of John Oliver's recent commentary on time-shares, which I recommend to anyone considering ever buying into one.