My family & I used to go to Pigeon Forge quite frequently when I was a child. I have many, many fond memories of having stayed at a hotel there called the River Lodge and of floating down the river behind it in a tube. (What, you expected there not to be a river near a joint called the River Lodge?) Even so, I want to say it has been more than 15 years since I was last there. I was certain that a lot would have changed to the town in that time but I was also confident that the quaint nature of it would still be intact.
Since this was a spur of the moment trip we had a few issues finding accommodations. Nothing major that put a chink in our plans, we just had to take what we could get instead of what we would've typically looked for in a hotel room. As an aside to this topic I'd like to say that it boggles my mind how a hotel room with a normal nightly rate of $45 suddenly becomes $100 a night just because of the demand created by a holiday - all I can say to that is I am most definitely in the wrong line of work. After having looked at condos, cabins, and rooms (some of which were recommended to us by friends and family), we settled on the Ramada Pigeon Forge South as it would be where we would call home for the next few days.
The estimated time it would take us to get there made it seem like we'd be able to make it without our arrival being too late in the evening, which is why we decided to hit the road after work on August 29. My wife & I work similar schedules so we packed up her car in advance to be ready for when the final whistle of the day sounded. After we dropped off our dog Roddy at my Mom's house for safe keeping (she's always willing to do anything for us and I can never be thankful enough for the fact that she's as generous as she is in this regard), we began to make our way along I-26 towards the upstate of South Carolina. We stopped along the way for supper at a Taco Bell - and yes, all you single guys out there, that's how you woo your lady right there. Tacos.
Having ingested our sustenance, we continued onward and upward (an accurate description if ever there was one seeing as how we'd be going up into the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee). I was in the driver's seat as Jill did not want to face the task of handling the winding roadways ahead. I have to say that the drive wasn't too challenging at first but as the sun set and darkness took over those mountain roads became a real test. Add in the volume of cars on the road due to the holiday as well as having to navigate in amongst the big rig trucks that dominate the highways and you can understand why my hands were cramping from having had a vice-like grip on the steering wheel.
Things took a turn for the worse along I-40 as we neared Pigeon Forge. I say that as if we had car trouble or something of the sort - in reality we had GPS trouble. Not in that it stopped working and we had no idea where to go, rather that the Google Maps application on my phone we were using to get us to where we were going decided that we would be better off to leave the interstate and take a road that wasn't much more than a goat path! (If you're ever going to Pigeon Forge or somewhere nearby and your GPS suggests that you take Hartford Road, DON'T DO IT.) I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this was the most insane stretch of road to encounter at night. It was barely wide enough for one car. There were a lot of hairpin turns and absolutely zero signage to indicate that you were coming up on them. You've heard the term "low shoulder"? Well in this case, "low shoulder" equated to a 20 foot drop off the side of the road into some random field. It was a terrifying ordeal but even so we eventually did get to our destination - we were mentally frazzled and in need of a good, stiff drink but we got there!
We checked into our room just shy of 11:30 PM. Seeing as how we got on the road around 5 PM, that meant we'd been at it for almost 6 and a half hours and my tailbone was feeling every bit of it. The rooms at the Ramada might not have been the most luxurious we've ever stayed in but the beds (yes, beds - try as we might we couldn't find a room with a single king) were quite the welcome sight for a pair of weary travelers like us.
The next morning we got up relatively early, as in around 8 AM, got ready for the day then wandered over to the breakfast area in the hotel lobby. (I use the phrase "wandered over" because of the fact that our room was on the first floor not more than 50 feet away from the lobby.) Continental breakfasts are a crap shoot - sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you wind up with a gut full of doughy carbohydrates. In this instance it was the latter, but we at least got to enjoy some tasty biscuits & gravy. Any meal that includes gravy is a victory in my eyes.
After breakfast we roamed around some of the shops near the Old Mill District, which (as you might assume) is a cluster of merchants set up around an old corn mill situated on the banks of the Pigeon River. The shops are, for the most part, all filled with the kind of wares that appeal only to tourists - baubles that will help someone remember the time they spent in Pigeon Forge. T-shirts, pottery, engraved word work, that sort of thing.
Moonshine distilleries have become a real draw for the area as there are quite a few of them set up along Pigeon Forge as well as in nearby Gatlinburg. One such operation is in the Old Mill District, that being the Old Forge Distillery. Seeing as how I had a stomach full of biscuits and danishes, I ponied up to the sampling bar and partook in a few selections. I have to say that if you're not a fan of whiskey no amount of trying it is going to change your mind. I happen to like it and I was really caught back by how many diverse flavor profiles the cooks behind the scenes in these operations have been able to come up with. I fell in love with their chocolate moonshine and purchased a jar of it!
After we'd been around the shops we decided it was time to eat lunch. On this day, that involved us visiting the Old Mill Restaurant, an eatery that came very highly recommended to us. Trust me when I say that we were not lead astray by those recommendations!
Everyone who eats at the Old Mill is greeted with a serving of their corn chowder and a basket of corn fritters served with maple-infused butter. I probably could have made a meal out of those alone! For our main courses, Jill selected the catfish fillets and I opted for the turkey & dressing. All meals off the lunch menu come served with two side items, green beans and mashed potatoes. I want to share the following photos of our meals before I tell you how much they cost us.
How much do you think you'd pay for a couple plates like those? Because they cost us $10.50 each, which is what every lunch menu item will cost you at the Old Mill. I had close to a pound of turkey on that plate - I cannot begin to tell you how tasty it was, and what an awesome value!
After that great meal we decided an adventure was in order. We had seen several advertisements and brochures for the Forbidden Caverns - I remembered visiting them from when I was a child but Jill had never been to a set of caverns, period. Getting there was easy as it's not much more than a short drive out of town and you're there; if you should decide to visit them yourself just be mindful of the fact that the road to the caverns is like a lot of the rural roadways in the area, that being narrow and winding.
The name "forbidden caverns" comes from a Native American story of a princess who died after she became trapped "in a hollow mountain of two streams", and because of this they considered the cave to be a place not too dissimilar from what other cultures might refer to as purgatory or Hades. Later on the caves were used by moonshiners as the constant flow of fresh spring water therein made it an ideal locale for their bootlegging operations. These days the caves are a popular tourist attraction that brings in visitors from all over the world.
After we toured the caverns we played what will hopefully go down as the most expensive game of putt-putt we'll ever play, that being a round of 18 holes at Old MacDonald's Farm Mini Golf. (It cost about $32 for the two of us!) The course was a lot of fun with its theming being all about Old MacDonald and the animals that make up his farm. Pigs, sheep, goats, and more will entertain you along the way. We played the Porky Putts course which was a par 43 - Jill & I both played quite well as we both finished under par but I got the Duke this particular round, besting her by the score of 41 to 42.
After our round of putt-putt we did a little bit more shopping before eating dinner at Blue Moose Burgers & Wings, a local sports bar & grill we happened upon that seemed like as good an option as any given that by that time of day the Clemson/Georgia football game was on television. Ironically enough, Jill & I were on a trip to Asheville, North Carolina last year when that game took place and we watched part of it from a Buffalo Wild Wings location. And just like last year at that restaurant, there were Clemson and Georgia faithful seemingly separated into their own sections at the Blue Moose. I half expected a knife fight to break out at any moment! The game was interesting, the crowd mostly civil, and the wings were tasty, which made the whole thing a great way to cap off our first full day in Tennessee.
For breakfast on the morning of Sunday, August 31 we decided to try another local favorite eatery, that being the Applewood Restaurant which is one of the primary components of the Apple Barn "campus" (for lack of a better term). The Applewood Restaurant is built out of what was once an old farmhouse - it's been modified since then, obviously, but the qualities that made it a home are reflected in the fact that everyone who dines there receives an experience crafted from the traditions of food, family, and fellowship.
We arrived at the restaurant very early as I thoroughly expected to have to wait an hour or more to get in. As it would turn out, we walked in and were seated immediately. (Jill says she never gets to sleep in on our vacations; I can't say I'm not at least partially responsible for that.) All guests at the Applewood Restaurant are initially treated to a basket of apple fritters and muffins served with their homemade apple butter (I could drown myself in apple butter, just so you know; it's one of my favorite things in the world) and a tasty concoction they call an apple julep - a combination of apple, pineapple, and citrus juices. For our meals, I chose the Farmhouse Special Breakfast and Jill had the Wild Blueberry Pancakes.
They are certainly selections meant to stick-to-your-ribs because you're going to be working in the fields all day - or, in our case, because you're going to be walking around Gatlinburg all day.
If you've never been there, the best way I can describe Gatlinburg, TN is to try to have you imagine a Walmart that sells nothing but tacky, themed merchandise chopped up into individual storefronts and stretched out along both sides of a roughly two mile long highway. If you've been to Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina during the peak season when all the shops there are open you've more or less also been to Gatlinburg. Just swap out all the YOLO and SWAG t-shirts for ones with black bears or University of Tennessee logos. There are other attractions in the area, of course, like the Ripley's Aquarium and a number of fantastic restaurants (the highlight of our time there, for me, was seeing the Ole Smoky Moonshine Holler production facility and store), but they seem to be dwarfed in comparison to everything else. What blew us away was the sheer number of people and cars that were in town the day we were there. (Fortunately we got into Gatlinburg around 10 AM and were able to find a parking space.) The congestion seemed especially horrible, which I can only blame on the fact that we were there on a holiday weekend.
Once we'd had our fill of Gatlinburg we came back into Pigeon Forge to knock around town a bit before our dinner date - an evening of music, laughs, and food at the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show!
The Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show is a comical take on the historical family feud that also involves dancers and bluegrass musicians. It's kind of odd that a rivalry so violent as to have spurred on a number of grisly murders could be turned into the subject of a comedy act - I'm sure the descendants of those families have been rewarded handsomely, monetarily speaking, for their involvement in the production.
Even so, the show itself was a fantastic presentation. You're fed a meal consisting of fried chicken, pulled pork bar-b-que, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cole slaw, and biscuits before the performance begins. In my opinion, this is an area where they are doing things better than similar shows like Medieval Times or Dixie Stampede as I've always felt at those arenas your attention isn't on the performance because you've got a piece of chicken in your mouth. The whole event runs about 2 hours in length. If you enjoy comedic storytelling and country cooking, you won't get a much better combination of the two than at the Hatfield & McCoy theater. (That said, I will add that this show has a lot in common with the Hoop-Dee-Doo Musical Revue we saw at the Fort Wilderness Resort on the Walt Disney World property. It's close but I'm going to give the edge to Disney in comparing the two.)
Before we knew it, Monday morning rolled around and our time in Tennessee had drawn to a close. All there was left to do was check out of the hotel and deal with traffic. I'm not kidding when I say that it took us just shy of an hour to make our way along the stretch of I-40 where it connects with I-26. Other than that, the ride back was mostly uneventful which was great considering how stressful the ride up became.
Looking back on our time in Pigeon Forge, we sure did cram a lot into just two days worth of vacation. That seems to be how we live our lives, though - doing the best we can to take advantage of every opportunity we have to enjoy that with which we've been blessed. I wouldn't trade times like these for anything in this world.
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