About a month ago, I took a big ole dip into the bucket list bucket and came up with an interesting thing -- "Go to Dollywood." Never been there before, so I thought, "what the heck," let's do this. I spent a day running down motel reservations and tickets for the park and the dinner show and putting together an agenda. Since our visit was after Labor Day, the park was closed on Tuesdays. I kinda screwed up and got the motel reservations before looking at the dates for the park. Oh well, that part of the country is beautiful so there had to be things to do. We were in it for four days, so let's go see what we can get into.
With that in mind, Pam and I packed our bags and off we went. The drive wasn't too bad -- I-40 all the way. There was one section in the mountains, however, that would be really dicey in fog or the winter, but it was a pretty easy 4-hour drive in September. On the way, we came across the factory where they make Bush's Baked Beans. Might have to stop there next time.
Our first day was pretty much devoted to sight seeing in the area. The pictures below were views from our hotel. Big mountains -- Smokey Mountains.
We had heard that Sevierville, TN, which was Dolly's birth place, was worth a look so we drove up there and looked around. Didn't see much -- probably not looking in the right places. We did, however, see this statue of Dolly in the downtown area.
We also spent some time driving up in the Smoky Mountains. We stopped at the visitor's center/ranger's offices and checked it out. I found a couple of interesting books there -- Bear in the Back Seat I and II, Adventures of a Wildlife Ranger, written by Kim DeLozier and Carolyn Jourdan. Good books, funny stories and amazing look into the life of a wildlife ranger in the Smoky Mountains. We then drove up the parkway a bit and came across a trail that looked inviting. I wish I had read the books and DeLozier's advice about bears before going off on a hike. Fortunately we only saw birds and falling leaves.
We spent our evening at a place called "The Island." It is a really "island" located in the downtown area, just off the main drag. It has really neat shops, great restaurants (including a Paula Deen's restaurant, which was a super dining place), and a spectacular water fountain that shoots up water choreographed to music. At night, it is also a water/light display and lots of people sit around in rocking chairs.
 |
| (This picture will be replaced by a video as soon as I remember how to do that 😀) |
No comments:
Post a Comment