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.