Our Tennessee Vacation—part 6

Wednesday…

                Oh Tennnnn-neseeeee

                Oh Tennnnn-neseeeee

                Oh how I love this Tenneseeeeeeeee 

  

And we really liked the chain type pancake joint we found there.  Flap Jack’s.  Their menu is great!  And…they have square biscuits because they don’t cut corners!!  Lol

They are part of the restaurant group that includes Mr. Gatti’s (yes, my children, they do still exist and there is one in Pigeon Forge), TGIFridays, Golden Corral, the Melting Pot and Corky’s BBQ.  They had all of the above right there in the area if you are the exception to the rule and only eat at familiar places.  The Darden Restaurant group is also in the area.  That would be Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn, Bahama Breeze, etc. 

                Our big exploration event of the day was to find the “top of the world” Corry wanted us to see.  When he lived down in the area, it was a favorite spot of his.  And after finding it, I know why!  It is fabulous.  Clingman’s Dome…aka the Top of the World. 

                The drive up was really something!  Oh my goodness those twists and turns and were we REALLY that close to the edge??  We went through the circle turn too.  Complete circle.

               

 I did love it but that’s not to say I wasn’t doing a LOT of backseat driving in the passenger’s seat.  And I probably cracked a few teeth clenching so tight.  Lol  But we made it. 

                

                Whew!  At the top.  We MADE it.  And whoa the difference in temperature!

               

That was in the parking area.  We weren’t able to do the walk to the lookout.  Another half mile or mile up a path.  I was fine.  Our view was unbelievable.  God paints an awesome picture.

               

                We stayed up in that very pleasant air for quite a while.  Even with my asthma, I had no troubles breathing up there.  In fact, it was easier everywhere in the whole area than it is at home.  I felt way better in every health department down in this area than I have felt anywhere in years!  Wish we could sell everything we have and move here.

                Heading back down the mountain was another adventure.  Oh boy.  Going down there are a lot of areas that just about had us hanging onto the pavement with both hands white knuckled.  Some places had walls; many didn’t. 

               

A very nice lady grabbed our camera and took a picture of the two of us at one of the little stops.  This was at the point that is the Tennessee/North Carolina border.

               

                Down down down down through the Smoky Mountains National Park on our way back to check out a few things in downtown Gatlinburg.

               

                I had a destination in mind.  Cooters.  Yep, from Dukes of Hazzard.  They have a place that is a small museum and a mini golf place and a little store that has everything Duke and everything General Lee.  But we’ll get there in a minute.  For now, let’s look around town a bit.  There are so many little streets and plazas and alcoves of tourist traps.  Lol  If you stay at one of the huge hotels or resorts down in the town area, you can walk anywhere or take a trolley to anywhere in the area. 

                

                Ahhh COOTERS!

               

                Back through the little mountainy area and on to Pigeon Forge for the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Theater.  I was excited.  It was sure to be a fun evening.

                

                Our first encounter with fun was when the guys tried to take our ECV’s to park them where they’d be out of the way.  We rode them in fine, but we didn’t need them during the show.

               

                Food was deeeeeelicious!  Pulled pork, chicken, slaw, beans and taters.  They brought them in little metal pots with handles.

               

                Now the show!

                     

Well pre-show.  And then, dessert!

               

                All the shows in the area that we went to prided themselves on being family friendly clean comedy.  Great stuff.  They also involved the audience, young and old.

                

Preshow done and now on to the main attraction

And in the end, the Hatfields and the McCoys were joined as one in marriage.

And the celebration continued with dancing and clogging and lots of spirited fun.

                

                They strive to make your every minute full of fun and light-heartedness.  From the little games and shop areas in the lobby

               

To the animals outside the building

               

To all the signs and decorations on your way to and from your car

                

After the show we went back to cabin.  I sat on the swing in the pleasant mountain air a little while, then went in and sorted through our collection of the day.  Only one more day here and we wanted to make sure we had done all we’d hoped.  After looking through things, I realized we could come down here twice a year for many years and still not ever do it all. 

The hot tub felt mighty good, but for some reason it took my breath away.  It hadn’t done that before.  I stuck it out a while though because fat floats and it really takes a load off. 

J

Our Tennessee vacation—part 5

Tuesday…

                After spending a sort of leisurely morning going through some things at the cabin, we decided this would be our day to find Mama’s Farmhouse Restaurant.  When I asked the people who were locals working at Dollywood for their recommendations of locally owned restaurants, this was one highly recommended.  I was told that the lady who started the restaurant was indeed a local woman and it had maintained the local flavor and traditions.  Awesome.  Just what we were wanting.

                The ride there was normal, normal.  I did my usual and tried snapping pictures of unique things.  Nothing too remarkable jumped out and bit me today until we got to the restaurant.  How special it looked.

Yes.  Those chairs do say Mama and Papa.

                I hadn’t asked what kind of food they had or what their prices were like.  My mistake.  It’s really important to do that!  But it worked out.  It was what I considered fairly reasonable for a good quality restaurant in a high, high tourist area.  What we didn’t know was that it was an all you can eat place.  Cool. 

                We were seated in one of the front rooms, almost by ourselves.  Our waitress came up with a sweet country smile and asked what we’d like to drink.  I decided coke and Cliff got sweet tea if I remember right.  She brought us our drinks in canning jars, the official glass of the area I think.  Along with that, we were given a basket full of sweet cornbread and biscuits and PEACH butter!  Oh my GOODness that was wonderful!  She asked us whether we wanted soup or salad and told us that was one of two decisions we’d have to make.  I opted for the salad and Cliff got the soup. 

FanTAStic!  Both were delicious.  And what was best about my salad was the apple cider dressing.  I had never tasted it before and I was in love. 

Before our starters were gone, she came with the meal.  We were given helpings of chicken AND meatloaf, macaroni and cheese AND mashed potatoes, okra, green beans and corn pudding.  When something was nearly gone, she was prompt to bring refills. 

When it looked like we’d had enough, she told us we now had to make our second decision.  Strawberry shortcake?  Or banana pudding.  I asked if she could do half and half and told her I’d really like my shortcake without the biscuit.  She brought me a bowl of vanilla ice cream with strawberry topping, Cliff shortcake and a banana pudding to share.  Wonderful food.  Loved this place.

The signs on things cracked me up. 

On the way out, we happened to notice that the family tree of the Mama who started this special place was on the wall.  How cool.

                I was wanting to go back to the resort and take more pictures of the cabins and while we were wandering around see what other things we could find.

The cabin was still what we thought it was.  No one moved it or changed it.  Lol  

The view from there was still superb.  I was happy.

Driving down the road, Cliff saw me drooling I think.  He pulled into the Factories Outlet Christmas store.  He knows my love of Christmas stuff.  And…I was taking pictures, pictures, and more pictures of all things Christmas thinking my sweet friend Cheryl and her best bud Denise will find their way down to enjoy if they see enough of it.  Lol

As we wandered we realized that you really do need to check things out before jumping at an activity.  There are many, many of whatever you’re wanting to do.  Ziplines was perhaps the one that struck me the most.  There were ziplines advertised that were right there in easy reach.  But the coolest one we found was back some weird road we found and it looked awesome!  We actually were able to watch some folks coming back to base. 

We had pulled in their lot to turn around and out of nowhere in the trees of the far mountain came slip sliding in a couple people.  WOW!  How fun!  They got to the platform we were closest to and hooked on and slid into the main lodge type building.  Neat, neat, neat.

                Our next little stop was at the Gatlinburg Welcome Center.  I found a few trinkets there for gifts and learned about several other types of arts and crafts that are locally made.  I could have gotten what I wanted there, but buying at the little shops from the artists would be so much more fun. 

                Our wanderings were the side and back streets on both sides of the main drag.  If we got lost it was fine.  We had the GPS to help us back to the business area and on to our evening activity.  While driving we saw a gigantic barn with a huge picture on its end.  We wanted to see just what that was.  When we got to it, we discovered an empty barn with Dick Clark on its side, for sale.  Wow.  If we were rich and talented, we could buy it and do something with it.  Lol  ANYthing!  Looked to us like in this area, anything goes and it all makes a good buck!

                Great Smoky Mountain Murder Mystery Dinner Theater was a fun place to go.  We had never done a murder mystery before.  The show we saw was a take off on I love Lucy.  The acting wasn’t real professional, but it was fun.  The meal wasn’t anything to write home about but it filled our belly.  Been there done that, now we don’t need to do it again.

                We got Back to cabin after stopping in to use the two for one ice cream coupon we were given.  And now I remember we also had 36 free holes of miniature golf.  DRAT we forgot!  We opened the door to the cabin and it’s REALLY hot!  Oh fer joy. Sleep that night didn’t seem too promising.