Our Tennessee Mountain Home
The next stop in our search for adventure and warm weather was Tennessee, the home of country music, Volunteers, the Sun Sphere, smooth whiskey, Rocky Top (whatever that is), and of course, the lovely Ms. Dolly Parton.
We spent nearly the entire month of October in Dolly’s hometown of Sevierville, on the north edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. Instead of staying in an RV park as we normally do, we found a parking spot with full hookups on a small farm just a few miles away from the main highway.
Our parking spot was up on the edge of a hill, which gave us great views of the trees as the turned colors, and of any wildlife (wild turkeys, whitetail deer, a newt) that wandered through the little valley below. It was nice and quiet, and the owners were great hosts. Izzy missed having other kids or a playground nearby, but did enjoy feeding the chickens that lived on the property.
The towns of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg are aligned north to south, and have one major highway that runs through them. This is a gorgeous area, and as a result, it draws a lot of tourists, especially in October when the weather is mild and the leaves are turning colors. Unfortunately, this results in a lot of traffic regardless of the time of day or day of the week.
It also means that most of the business in the area cater to the tourists. While sitting in traffic, your eyes are in for a visual assault as all the dinner shows, amusement parks, knife stores, strange museums, go-kart tracks, pancake houses, and moonshineries are advertised to you. It’s pretty much an Appalachian Vegas, which didn’t have much appeal to us. Everything is bold and bright and in your face, and they all seem to cost at least $40 per person.
We skipped the tourist stuff, and spent most of our time enjoying some quiet farm living.
We did manage to get in a few adventures, though.
Izzy was very excited for Halloween. She wanted to wear her costume and get some candy. She doesn’t like talking to strangers so we had to practice saying “trick or treat” quite a bit. In the middle of a pandemic and in a new town, we decided not to do any door-to-door trick-or-treating and instead, got tickets for “Boo at the Zoo” in Knoxville about a week before actual Halloween. Izzy had a great time and was very happy when other people knew she was Spiderman. She was definitely focused on the Halloween aspects of the visit, but we did manage to see a couple of animals as well.
Our biggest adventure while in Tennessee was a trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Traffic was awful all the way to the park and then got worse around the visitor center. This scared us out of going any further into the park, but we still managed to get in a great little hike.
Before we knew it, our month was up, the weather was getting cold, and it was time to head south. See you down the road.
