tennessee vacation: lesson learned

What's that lesson?

Not to ever, ever go back to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.

I visited the area nine years ago. I hated it then, and I hated it even more now. I know so many people who love that area, and I think that's great. It's just not for us.

Here's a rundown:

Friday
Departed Indianapolis, drove to Oaktown to drop off Henry at my in-laws'. Drove down to Pigeon Forge from there, and got stuck in approximately one hour's worth of traffic at 7:30 pm. Finally made it to the cabin rental place and received directions to our cabin. Drove through winding Tennessee roads to gravel road in middle of nowhere. It was a road built for one car only. Thought we were lost, so we got turned around, somehow, and found our cabin's drive at the very beginning of the road, and made the steep decline to the actual cabin. Thanked God that we took a four wheel drive vehicle.

Saturday
Against better judgement, we drove to Pigeon Forge to check out some outlet stores. We were pretty excited by the number of As Seen on TV stores we saw, so we picked the biggest. It had about three aisles of As Seen on TV merchandise, some of it items you'd actually see on TV (the topsy turvy, for example), but then knock-off As Seen on TV items too. And then the rest of the store was full of cheap junk. We went to the Lodge store (cast iron cooking pans), but everything there was regular priced. CJ found some deals on some tools at another store, but that was really our only find for the entire trip. And then we went to Christmas Place, this Bavarian-style "village." It consisted of one Christmas store and then other random stores -- kind of a disappointment.

Sunday
We decided to spend the afternoon and evening in Gatlinburg. We took a wrong turn out of our cabin drive and ended up halfway lost on one car-length roads. Really, some of these roads were better suited as bike paths, and yet, people had still managed to build houses off some of these roads. I determined that there is no amount of money anyone could ever pay me that would convince me to live in these mountains. We finally ended up in Gatlinburg an hour later than expected, and spent the day browsing through mostly cheap, look-a-like stores. We had dinner at the overpriced Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. As we were driving back to the cabin, we found the places we really wanted to visit -- Paws, Etc., a pet store, and the Museum of Salt & Pepper Shakers (20,000 salt and pepper shakers on display, with thousands to buy! Still much classier than the "24K gold" shops in Gatlinburg.) -- but they were both closed.

Monday
Recalling my last trip to Gatlinburg where my parents decided to drive into the Smokies and got stuck in the park in bumper to bumper traffic, we opted out of the park visit and spent the entire day in the cabin. I didn't get out of my pajamas all day, and I got some good reading and TV watching in. Hands down, this was the best day of the trip.

Today
The drive up was quite nice, until we hit I-64 just west of New Albany, and spent an hour in construction traffic. We picked up Henry, and finally made it home just after 5:30. Apparently Bridget didn't fare so well during our absence, even though we had people in here everyday checking on her.

A Summary
We highly recommend renting a cabin -- just not in that part of Tennessee.

To wrap up, just a quick note of thanks to my in-laws for watching Henry (I don't think they read my blog, but just in case!), to our good friends Eric and Leah for checking in on Bridget, feeding our fish, and watering our garden, and to my mother who checked in on Bridget, cleaned our house, folded laundry, and left us a casserole to eat tonight. THANK YOU!

I took a few pictures, but since it's nothing exciting, I may or may not post those later. For now, I need to do some laundry and get unpacked.