Lucy and Sam's Wedding Website

Today is our last day in Tennessee!

We decided to have a laid back day in preparation for all the traveling that we are about to do. Our last adventure was a trip to Parrot Mountain in Pigeon Forge. It’s situated just down the road from Dollywood and is really high up on the side of a hill (I don’t think it’s big enough to be called a mountain, but I suppose “Parrot Hill” doesn’t sound as exciting!). We didn’t really know what to expect as there was very little information available on what it was. It is a bit like a zoo, but the birds had more room and some of them were in large aviaries. We started looking around and followed the path through the trees. We came to some stands at the side of the path which had parrots sitting on them. I said hello to them and they ignored me. Sam also said something to them and they ignored him too. We both found it funny and started laughing, then one of the parrots started laughing too – it got louder and louder until it was screaming with laughter! we quietly moved away and could hear it in the distance for some time!

There were all sorts of different birds, not just parrots. Sam was pleased to see some kookaburras – they are very pretty and have lovely markings. They did stare at us for ages which was a bit unnerving, but I suppose that we were staring at them too!

After walking around for a while we came across a building which had a sign on the door saying baby parrots. We weren’t allowed to take photos of them, which is a shame because they were really funny. As we walked in we were made to wash our hands with alcohol like in hospitals. Inside were a whole load of different birds sitting in different trays. There was a women who told us that they were all for sale! I said I didn’t think that we could put one in our suitcase – she said they could ship one!! What a horrible thought – they were only baby parrots and I imagine by the time it got to the UK it would probably be a nervous wreck, or dead…..anyway, we said hello to all of them and some of them came and sat on our hands. There was a really nice African Grey that Sam liked, I’m not sure that the greyhounds would like it so much!

After resisting buying parrots we came to the gift shop which was completely full of parrot magnets, mugs, key rings, candles, soft toys and photo frames. We also managed to resist these, but then we came to the ice cream and gave in! As we were eating our ice creams outside the gift shop we watched one of the staff try to get a parrot to sing “Rocky Top”. It was really funny as the parrot was just looking at him in total silence, there was a big crowd of people waiting to hear it sing – parrots have a great sense of humour!

After our parrot adventures we decided to go back to the cabin for tea – we tried to eat as much as possible out of the freezer. After our meal of lasagne, burgers and nuggets with lettuce (not as revolting as you might think!) we packed our suitcases ready for leaving early tomorrow.

We are now sitting watching The Rockford Files on the telly. We have had the most amazing honeymoon that we will remember forever. We would like to thank everyone that gave us money towards our holiday as it enabled us to do everything that we wanted – Dollywood, Nashville, the Muscle Car Museum, Titanic Museum, Parrot Mountain and lots more!

Thank you

Lucy and Sam xxx

PS – Sam didn’t get eaten by a bear like he thought he would!

Although we’ve been relatively close to the Smokies we haven’t actually spent a great deal of time exploring the mountains yet, so we decided to spend the afternoon taking a drive up there.

We started off by getting a spot of lunch (fast food!) from Taco Bell in Pigeon Forge. They actually have several different vegetarian options there which was a welcome surprise and the food portions weren’t actually huge (or should that be ‘standard’ by American standards) – yay! For those of you that are interested in knowing what we ate – Lucy had a crispy potato soft taco with a cherry limeade “sparkler” (which tasted a bit like marzipan for some reason!) and I had a ‘soft taco supreme’ which was basically a taco with beef, salad and cheddar cheese and a Mountain Dew drink. We both shared a side of Cinnamon Twists.

We had our lunch at a lay-by on the side of the main road that connects Pigeon Forge with Gatlinburg, the reason we chose this spot is because there is a nice creek a few yards away where some people go to picnic or for a swim etc. As you can see from the photo below it’s quite picturesque.

After lunch we drove up to the Newfound Gap mountain pass, which is near the centre of the Smoky Mountains. It is also situated on the Tennessee – North Carolina state border. We spent a few minutes up there to stretch our legs and to take a couple of snaps before making our way to our final destination at Cherokee in North Carolina.

When we got to Cherokee, we had a browse around the local shops (basically tourist gift shops). One shop we bought some items from was run by an elderly lady who got a bit confused when she tried to settle up… We gave her a $20 note, expecting to get about $12 in change for what we bought, but for some reason she believed that we gave her $100 and not $20! Had we not continually insisted that we only gave her $20, we would have had a lot more extra spending money! We later pondered whether this type of ‘mix up’ may have occurred previously but with unfortunate results on her part?

We then went to another gift shop where for $5 per person you could go and see some live bears (I know we already did this in Pigeon Forge a few days ago, but they had different types of bears here, and we could feed them too!). Some of the bears can perform tricks for you for food according to one of the blokes that worked there – in reality only two of the bears did a trick, basically doing a 360 on their back legs whilst standing up. I expected them to at least drive around on motorbikes or play football whilst juggling (joking!!).

We saw one bear that reminded us of our greyhounds in this particular pose:

Each bear enclosure had a small pool for them to go into when they wanted to cool off from the hot North Carolina sun:

We were feeling a bit hungry after leaving the bear enclosures/gift shop, so we went to an ice cream shop and got a couple of really delicious ice creams in waffle cones! After taking about 5 hours to finish eating them (OK I’m exaggerating slightly but these weren’t ice creams you could devour in 60 seconds!) we went to a shop that sold carved animals and other souvenirs that were carved/made by local Cherokee Indians.

The shop was run by a guy and his mum that moved to Cherokee from somewhere in Indiana. He is actually a medical doctor, and as we were from England they spoke with us at length about what we thought of our National Health Service and he told us about how their Medicaid/Medicare worked in the USA, along with criticisms and worries Americans had about the current system which made us actually feel that we are quite lucky to have the NHS that any UK citizen can access for free (in the USA as you may be aware, they have to pay for their medical care unless it is a life threatening problem or you are elderly, for example).

We also talked about their thoughts and views of politics in the USA (even other locals who came into the shop joined in!) – we were told that Republicans are evil and Democrats are for the hard working people of America (although the Democrats are not without fault apparently). They also thought very highly of Tony Blair and were upset that George W. Bush made us join in the Iraq war when we didn’t want to…

Before we left the shop (I’m sure we must have been there for at least an hour at this point!) we wanted to find out what Americans thought of the BP deepwater oil rig saga and whether they hated Britain (or just BP) because of all the damage being caused to the gulf states and to the livelihoods of the people in those areas. They said to us that they didn’t hate Britain, obviously they thought that BP are responsible for the oil spills but they seemed quite enraged at the previous Republican administration for being so corrupt and not putting into place proper safety guidelines/checks for oil companies to adhere to when doing deepwater drilling by the American coastlines.

They were also upset that some Americans were having a go at Obama for not doing enough about the situation, and said that he is literally just trying to clean up the problems from the last government.

So there you go – an insight into American politics and healthcare from actual Americans!

Sam

Today we went to Nashville! We set off early as it’s a long drive. Sam is now used to driving on the roads – I think he may have problems when we return home! The drive to Nashville is on Interstate 40, a motorway where you can drive at 70 mph! It makes a change to the 45 or 55 mph that you have to drive on most of the motorways. We still haven’t worked out the road system yet – highways, freeways, interstates, parkways it’s all a bit confusing!

After a 3 1/2 hour drive we arrived in Nashville. We had looked on the internet and found a vegetarian restaurant that we thought we would go to first. When we got there we went in and the man behind the counter looked at us strangely, after a while he told us that they weren’t open yet. By this time we both needed to wee and so we decided not to wait and to find somewhere else. I looked in the Nashville book that William gave to us and found a vegetarian cafe near the university area of Nashville. We put the address into the SatNav and made our way there. Once we were there we drove around for ages trying to find somewhere to park – it was all parking permit zones! eventually we found a space and put loads of nickels and dimes in the parking meter. We walked to the cafe and it was closed! until August! Sam actually started to strangle me at this point. We went back to the car and decided to drive to downtown Nashville agreeing that we would stop anywhere that sold anything resembling food! We ended up at a place called Blackstone which is a pub and restaurant similar to Wetherspoons. We ordered food and then located the “restrooms”. I was really pleased that there were a few vegetarian choices for me. I went for lasagne and Sam went for chicken with black beans and rice. The portion sizes were a lot more normal here. Once we had eaten we climbed back into the boiling car and made our way to second avenue.

We had a look around the area and came across loads of stores selling cowboy shirts and boots. I really wanted a purple cowboy shirt, but it was $110 and I’m sure that you get totally ripped off buying stuff in Nashville tourist shops.They had loads of different snakeskin boots which were $300 a pair. We came across a horse trying to play the guitar – difficult when you have hooves..

Just off second avenue is a shop which sells homemade ice creams, so we had to try some. It was a bit like an ice cream parlour, but small and tatty. We sat on bar stools and looked at the walls which were decorated with a hand painted scene of a 1930’s bar tender which had been very badly done. The ceiling was made up of shiny silver squares which were embossed with patterns. It was really nice to get out of the heat, and it’s always a bonus when there’s ice cream too!

We then went to “Hatch Show Print” which is just down the street. Inside it has hand printed posters all over the walls from different bands and performers through the decades. They still hand print posters for current artists playing in Nashville.

At the back of the store you can see all of the printing blocks and papers. They also re-print some old posters from the 1940’s and 50’s that you can buy.

Further down the street there was a record store which was packed with old country, rock and bluegrass records, along with very dusty key rings, posters and plates! The man behind the counter was very friendly and we noticed a sign which said ” If you’re not happy with the price, make me an offer, I have to pay lots of taxes and I would rather make a sale”. I have a feeling that he doesn’t make that many sales – this is backed up by the thickness of dust on some of the items!

We were both a bit reluctant to leave Nashville as there was so much to see and do. We both agreed that if we come back again we will definitely spend a few days here.

Lucy.

We decided to have a lazy day today, as we’ve been busy tourists the past few days (and we have to wake up early tomorrow morning to set off on our 3-and-a-bit hour journey to Nashville)!

Our first stop on today’s travels took us to 125 Court Avenue. The Sevier County Courthouse is situated at this address (don’t worry – we didn’t do anything naughty!).  Situated on the lawn outside the courthouse is a life-size bronze statue of Sevierville’s famous singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. Under a shady tree, the figure, by artist Jim Gray, depicts the young starry-eyed Dolly, barefoot and sitting on a rock with her guitar.

As it was past lunch time, we then decided to find somewhere to have a bite to eat. After discovering that McDonalds and Wendy’s sold no vegetarian meals/burgers whatsoever (yes, McDonalds out here doesn’t sell anything that hasn’t got meat in it!), we thought we’d try the pancake place we went to last week only to discover that they close at 1pm – d’oh! So we take a drive down one of Sevierville’s main streets and happen upon a TGI Friday’s – in we go!

Having studied the menu for about 5 minutes the only thing that looked vegetarian on the menu was a soup and salad combo, by now Lucy and I were starving so she decided to go for that. I wanted something light to eat but didn’t fancy having soup, so I chose the ‘lightest’ looking thing on the menu – a bacon cheeseburger, haha! Lucy’s soup and salad had a silly amount of cheese, I pondered whether this is what Americans uniformly classed as soup and salad?

We also had some iced tea with our meals, something which we’ve never tried before – and to be honest probably will not opt for again in future… Afterwards, Lucy’s dessert consisted of a chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream, while I decided to go for a peanut butter and pecan pie with chocolate sauce. Definitely not healthy in the slightest but extremely delicious!

When we left TGI’s and got in to the car a really spectacular thunderstorm greeted us as we started driving – there seems to be at least one or two of these every day at the moment due to the hot and humid weather I expect, but they don’t last very long and most of the time it’s really hot and sunny. Watching the news on the TV later in the evening they reported that there was a severe thunderstorm just outside of Knoxville (about 25 miles away from here) which brought down a few trees and power lines, and caused some flooding in a few areas.

Anyways, our final destination before heading back to our cabin was a place called The Music Outlet which is a few minutes away from where we are staying. This bluegrass and country music instrument shop is jam packed full of acoustic & electric guitars, mandolins, banjos, amps, accessories and books – a real heaven on Earth for any musician or even anyone fascinated by musical instruments!

Sam

Today we went to Gatlinburg, which is just down the road from Pigeon Forge. It is located at the bottom of the Smoky Mountains which look amazing. Gatlinburg is designed so that tourists can walk along the main street, which is unusual as nearly everything here is designed for cars. We decided to look for somewhere to eat and eventually decided on an Italian restaurant, as everywhere else only offered veggie burgers (and there’s only so many veggie burgers you can eat!) We both had spaghetti, we thought that this would be a good healthy option – when the waiter brought it out he said that he had given us more bread sticks because we were only having the vegetarian option! By the way, when he said bread sticks I thought it would be those thin crunchy sticks that you have with dips – here they are like strips of pizza without any toppings, should have known that we’d end up eating pizza in some form! The spaghetti was all you can eat! neither of us managed to finish the first bowl, I have no idea how anyone manages a second.

After eating we went to “Ripley’s Believe it or not!”. This is a museum of strange artifacts collected by Robert Ripley on his travels around the world. The building has pretend cracks running down it like it has been in an earthquake!

When you get inside, you come across all sorts of strange things and a lot of annoying American tourists! It has everything from a 2 headed cow….

a giant chair……………….

to hand painted “potato chips”

It was very strange, but very entertaining!

Sam persuaded me to go on the Gatlinburg Sky Line, which is like a ski lift up the side of one of the mountains! It was a bit scary as I’m not good with heights, but it was definitely worth it for the view at the top!

Just as you get to the top they take a photo of you! It’s a bit mean as I was concentrating on not panicking about being so high up – the last thing you are prepared for is having your photo taken. We decided to buy our photo – although I did manage to smile, you can see that I am gripping onto the metal safety bar extremely hard!

Once we were up there we stopped and had a look at the amazing view of the Smoky Mountains. We are planning to visit them later this week. As we sat down we noticed a Woodchuck harassing a tourist for food nearby. It was grabbing onto her leg and looking up at her – it was very sweet and looked like a cartoon character. We didn’t realise what it was until we got back to the cabin and Sam looked it up online!

Getting back down was a lot more scary as the chair faces away from the side of the mountain! I was very glad when we made it to the bottom.

I took a photo of it, but it really doesn’t show how high it is!

When we got back to the car we looked at the temperature gauge and it said 44 degrees!! That would explain why we felt a bit hot!

Lucy.

Today we decided to go to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. It’s quite a massive place, and took us over 4 hours to see all of the attractions (as well as stopping for a couple of snack breaks).

When you first park up, you are taken to the main attractions area by a ‘trolley’ (to give you an idea of scale, the car park alone is about the size of a football field). After you’ve paid for your tickets and walk through into the amusement park, you are immediately greeted by a member of staff who asks if you want your photo taken (presumably to purchase at a sizeable fee later) – we politely declined and got a map of the park afterwards to navigate our way around.

We decided to refuel ourselves first of all by having a bite to eat at one of the restaurants in the park. We ordered a couple of really yummy veggie burgers which came with huge steak chips, and some onion rings. I’m glad we didn’t order any starters – we couldn’t finish our meals as they were so massive!

When we finally managed to digest enough of our meal to enable us to move, we set off exploring the park. Today was about 35 degrees celsius, a very hot and humid day as you can imagine so a lot of the people visiting the park went on the various water rides such as Mountain Slidewinder and Daredevil Falls. Walking around, we noticed they had lots of upright fans outdoors which sprayed fine mists of water at the same time – we made sure we walked past a lot of them to cool down a bit!

One of the areas we went to was the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, a 30,000 square foot aviary which houses one of the biggest collection of non-releaseable American Bald Eagles in the USA. The birds they keep are unable to be released into the wild due to either being injured/shot by people in the past whilst in the wild, or have been too used to being around humans when they were younger and so wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild.

We were sat down near the front of a stage where the keepers were talking about the birds and gave live demonstrations of them flying around above the audience – one of the birds even brushed right past Lucy’s face! Dollywood apparently participates in a programme to help breed bald eagles as their numbers in the wild are quite low – so far they have helped to breed 101 pairs of eagles for release into the wild which is pretty cool.

At the end of the show they invited visitors to make donations towards the programme – you can give a note to one of the birds (an African Pied Crow called Friar Tuck or Tuck for short) who will promptly insert the note into a box in exchange for some food from his handler!

When the show finished we observed the eagles in their aviaries for a few minutes and one thing we thought was interesting, was listening to the eagles calling to each other – we can sometimes hear the same calls in the woods outside our cabin!

We did some more exploring of the park, going to a few gift shops and even having a guided tour of Dolly’s old tour bus (which is a bit like a hotel on wheels!) – it apparently cost her $750,000 but her new one cost a mind boggling $1.2 million! The tour guide was telling us that they had the floor lowered in her new tour bus as her husband is 6ft 6in tall and didn’t really have much in the way of clearance space in the old bus!

Anyway, here are a few photos from Dollywood to give you a brief insight to what the park is like!

Sam

Today we decided to go and meet some American greyhounds. The Greyhound Rescue Foundation of Tennessee hold a meet and greet every month in PetSmart just outside Knoxville. We had to take the motorway to get there and Sam was pleased that we weren’t pulled over by the sheriff this time! The sides of the motorway are really clean – there is no litter at all, not like in the UK. We were wondering if it’s because they have people who clear it up, or if it’s because people just don’t throw the litter down in the first place? As we drove past a dead dog on the hard shoulder, we decided that if there were people who picked up the litter, surely they wouldn’t leave a dead dog?

When we arrived at PetSmart we went straight to see the greyhounds.They were at the back of the store in a big group. We got talking to some of the volunteers and met some of the hounds looking for homes. I could see Sam considering how we would get one home! The greyhounds were all a lot fatter than ours! It was really nice to get a greyhound fix as we are really missing ours. Mum (who is dog sitting while we’re away) told us that Banjo has eaten half a bag of flour!

After we went and had a look around the shopping mall next door which was just like being at Merry Hill. When we came out it was about 32 degrees and really humid. As we got into the car and quickly switched on the air conditioning, it started to rain! It turned into a total downpour and all of the streets started to flood. We got back onto the motorway and decided to go to Floyd Garrett’s Muscle Car Museum in Sevierville. By the time we got there we were in the middle of a massive thunderstorm! The museum is in a huge warehouse. Me and Sam both enjoyed looking at all of the cars.

Lucy.

Today we went to the Titanic Museum at Pigeon Forge. As we went in we were given boarding cards with the names of real passengers on them – the idea is that you follow their story to see what happened to them. Sam was Paul Chevre – a sculptor who was on his way to Canada to unveil a sculpture of the Canadian prime minister. I was Roberta Maioni from London who was a maid to the Countess of Rothes. The museum is based on different levels and you follow the story of  the design, building and sailing of the Titanic. I think we would have spent longer looking around if it hadn’t been so full of Americans! All of the exhibits are real items from the Titanic and from surviving passengers. There is a gallery of black and white photos taken by one of the passengers – he took them with him when he climbed into the lifeboat and they are the only surviving images of the passengers and interior of the ship. I found these photos really moving as everyone was having so much fun in the photos and it made it more meaningful to see images of the passengers. When we got to the end of the tour, there was a list of all of the passengers listed on the wall – we found out that both of our passengers survived. We were both first class passengers and this meant that we had a higher chance of surviving – most of the passengers that died were third class.

At the end of the tour you come out into the gift shop – where you can buy a polar bear holding a Titanic life buoy – how inappropriate is that! There was a whole load of cheesy souvenirs that we avoided. We did buy some postcards and a newspaper – well we are tourists!

In the afternoon we decided to follow the Arts and Crafts Trail around Gatlinburg. As with everything, it is a car tour trail. We visited a pottery workshop, a gallery and a wood carving shop where they sell items carved by Cherokee Indians. It was nice to see some hand made things as everything else seems to be made in China – just like the UK!

For tea we went to “Mr.Gatti’s” – an all you can eat buffet. I asked Sam if we could go there because of the name. They have pizza and salad and you eat off plastic plates that are like school dinner plates. The best bit was trying apple and cinnamon pizza and chocolate pizza, which were really nice! a bit strange though.

I am amazed at just how automated everything is in America – the toilets flush themselves the moment you stand up, the taps switch on the moment you place your hands underneath them, the paper towels dispense themselves when you go to take one, they even have drive thru banks!!!

Lucy.

Today’s travels first saw us going to the Dumplin Valley JuneFest bluegrass festival in the early afternoon, located on a farm in a small community called Kodak which is about a 20 minute drive from our cabin in Sevierville. You can see a line-up of the day’s performers on their website.

Everyone here was pretty friendly and most people were of course interested in knowing what brought a couple of Brits to their part of the world. It was a pretty hot and humid day, so our first stop was to get something cold to drink and a bite to eat… Lucy opted for a home-made lemonade with ice (I decided to get one myself a little later) and I just went for plain old water. Food-wise I had something I’d never eaten before, a brisket sandwich, while Lucy had beans and corn bread. Later on we got a couple of massive servings of ice cream (chocolate and pecan nut for me, vanilla and M&Ms for Lucy) which quickly started to melt in the summer heat!).

The music was good, and the event seemed a little different to other bluegrass festivals I’ve been to in the UK – for example no alcohol was allowed on site, people actually threw their rubbish away in the ‘trash cans’ rather than chucking it on the ground, and what we found quite interesting was that there wasn’t any jamming going on outside of the main stage which is what you’d normally find in a British festival, which suggested that people went there solely to listen to the music rather than that AND playing some tunes themselves by their caravans etc.

By the way, in keeping with America’s tradition of everything being large, nearly everyone that was camping at the festival had these huge Winnebago campervans, although we did see a couple of small American (i.e. aluminium looking domed 50s style) caravans – they were probably for the owners’ pets rather than themselves though…

3 Bears Gift Shop – Pigeon Forge

A little later we went back to our cabin for a break and some tea before heading out into Pigeon Forge. We first went to a place called the “3 Bears Gift Shop” – a completely OTT store full of bear related souvenirs and toys. You can also make your own bears (similar to the Build-A-Bear shops in the UK), and if shopping has given you an appetite you have the opportunity to purchase ice creams, slush puppies and fudge in a variety of different flavours!

Upstairs there is an “old time” section where you can get dressed in cowboy/girl attire and have your photograph professionally taken against the backdrop of a saloon bar in any manner of poses you want. When we were there, we saw some kids all dressed up in old time clothes complete with hats and holding guns. The shop also had some photos of previous photoshoots on display for visitors to look at, I must admit the photos all looked pretty amazing!

For a few dollars, we had the opportunity to go out and see some live black bears that they keep out back. I was a bit nervous about this, but thankfully you can see them either from the upper level or on ground level behind walls and thick glass windows! They looked quite cute, and one of them appeared to be licking one of their beach balls (their enclosure resembled a river/creek scene complete with running water). Another of the bears wanted to play with said ball but the first one gave him an almighty roar which sent him away!

We also went to a gem stone mining shop next door, before you actually enter the shop there are some channels of muddy water where you can use a big square sieve to search for gold and precious stones and fill a bucket up full of your treasure – only in America!

Inside the shop there is a vast selection of precious stones, magnetic rocks, fools gold, and even fossils for you to feast your eyes on and purchase. You can also buy gift sets, bags of sand that you can use a sieve with to search for fools (or real) gold, and even dozens of books to help you become an expert in the field of treasure hunting! I was quite fascinated with the magnetic rocks, Lucy was studying the jewellery that was for sale, and the shopkeeper was content drinking her large milkshake…

Cirque de Chine

In the evening, we went to the Cirque de Chine – a live show located at the Smoky Mountain Palace theatre in Pigeon Forge. For your $30 you get an action packed two hours watching some of the most talented acrobats and performers China has to offer!

Each act was performed to military precision, and all the stunts were amazing (and pretty dangerous)! I don’t think I’ve been to such a show before, but I think I’ll have a job trying to find one better than this, that’s for sure! There were many examples of balancing and pushing human strength to the limit in things I didn’t even know were possible!

Sadly we weren’t allowed to take photos or film any videos of the performances, but if you look at their website under the “Photos” page there are some examples of the stunts that were performed when we were there.

The final act of the show involved five blokes riding Kawasaki motorbikes inside a huge metal cage – this act was dubbed “The Flying Motorcycles”. We were completely gobsmacked how they managed to not drive into each other AND not fall down from the top of the cage whilst they were riding upside down!

Sam

I have noticed that one of the main things that we talk about on our blog is food! As you all know, me and Sam like our food – but it is such a huge part of the American culture and it’s more or less impossible to have a small plate of anything! A healthy option is having some vegetables on top of your meat and cheese pizza! We were watching a talk show on TV which had an actor as a guest – when he said “I like my food”, he got a big round of applause!! The ice cream we had today is another example of food being the way to happiness – have a look at the container it comes in:

It has been really humid with thunder storms here. It is meant to be getting even more humid with more storms to come. It’s like walking around in a sauna.

Sam has covered everything that we did, but I would like to add 1 more photo for the day – this is the sign over the front of the 3 bears gift shop!

Lucy

This is a photo of Sam at “Mellow Mushroom” – “The best pizzas in the world”. Today we decided to have a look at Pigeon Forge which is about 20 minutes down the road from the cabin. Sam is starting to look slightly less scared when he has to drive us somewhere. Pigeon Forge is based either side of a long highway called the Parkway. As you drive along it, it is hard not to get completely overwhelmed by signs and lights everywhere. All of the attractions are placed next to each other and you can be totally distracted from the road.

I wanted to visit “Lil’ Dolly’s” which sells quilts and dolls – Sam wasn’t so enthusiastic, but I persuaded him. The store is a big warehouse which has Bluegrass music playing full blast as you walk around, and a women on a microphone who greets you loudly as you come through the door. All of this is also piped outside through big speakers so everyone can hear it in the street. The quilts are all multi-coloured and have things like bears, tractors and wild horses on them. The doll section was scary and so we avoided it.

Just down the highway we found a country record shop which sold lots of Bluegrass stuff. The man who owns it was a bit strange, so we didn’t stay for long. He seemed a bit desperate to tell us that he once dated Dolly Parton’s cousin and that he knows where Dolly stays when she’s in town. I think he expected us to be impressed and was a bit annoyed when we weren’t. He also tried to get me to record an album in the “shed” that he had at the back of the store. We made a very quick exit!

We went to “Mellow Mushroom” for dinner. We were both a bit confused by the menu and ordered something called “pies” which turned out to be pizzas – Why?!!!  Our waiter asked where we were from and asked Sam if he liked football – Sam said yes!! I looked shocked – Sam hates football! haha (I don’t mind playing football, I just don’t like watching it on TV! — Sam). We only managed to eat half of our pizzas as they were HUGE! – see below!

Our waiter took pity on us and asked if we wanted some boxes – we nodded and we now have a big box of pizza in the fridge, along with the potato pie that we still haven’t eaten!

We went to Walmart to get some dishwasher tablets and discovered that everything was about half the price of what we paid at Food City! I managed to sneak a set of metal crochet hooks into the trolley when Sam wasn’t looking.

We were planning to visit the Titanic Museum, but when we got there it was fully booked. It’s really popular and tickets sell out quickly. So we will book ahead and go later in the week. We had a look around the outside – around the back it has a huge fiberglass iceberg! It is moored in water and has a fountain which slashes water at the bow! I was a little disappointed that they didn’t make the whole boat – maybe they got fed up half way? So it finishes abruptly like someone has cut through it with a knife and glued a piece of card on the end and said “that’ll do”,  “people won’t be bothered to look at the back”.

Lucy