Recently, we took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. With uncharacteristically excellent timing, we managed to plan the trip between two tantruming hurricanes. I was driving from our home in central Florida to our ultimate destination- a distance of over six hundred miles, each way. Previously, the furthest I’d ever driven was about 380 miles to Charleston. I had some trepidation about upping my motoring game that much. I know plenty of people who regularly make 600-mile trips in one day, but I ain’t one of them. To be honest, I was not convinced that I would even have the stamina to do two back-to-back driving days of three hundred miles each, but I told myself to get a grip, put on my big girl panties, and embrace the wheel. After all, God made cruise control for a reason. As a sop to my anxiety, I did decide to stop overnight in Macon, Georgia instead of driving the whole distance in one day.
At the beginning of the trip, I began to think that I had become an adventurer in my old age. I felt super comfortable the first day driving. I was puffed and chuffed about my performance. I felt very peppy and full of myself when we pulled into the Homewood Suites for our overnight respite. I was really feeling my oats. I felt confident enough to suggest to Max that we might be able to cancel our overnight hotel reservation on the way back, but I wanted to see how I felt after Driving Day Two.
Waiting until after Driving Day Two to make that decision was one of my wiser moves. The next day was much more difficult. As we inched our way through Atlanta traffic, I found out that fifty miles of northern Georgia is not equivalent to fifty miles of northern Florida. Time, as well as the traffic, stood still. Just when things started flowing more rapidly, we were exiting the freeway to approach Sevierville, where we were staying.
I should have been suspicious. The owners of the Airbnb we were renting told us that the house was about six miles from Dollywood and six miles from Gatlinburg. That information did seem to coincide with what Mapquest and the GPS (why only rely on a belt when you can have BOTH a belt and suspenders?) were showing me. However, the GPS was saying it was going to take half an hour to get to the property. This turned out to be accurate. The traffic on the main drag from the freeway to the turn-off to our house sludged its way across the miles even slower than the traffic in Atlanta. I could not believe the number of cars and the number of pedestrians walking along the Parkway.
The slow traffic did give me sufficient time to really take in the sights on the Parkway. How would I describe the scenery in Pigeon Forge? The first word that comes to mind for me is tacky. Not that tacky is necessarily a terrible thing in my book- my favorite color is glitter, and I leave a little pixie dust wherever I go. The Parkway was overstimulating even for me, though.
There was a smorgasbord of souvenir shops, restaurants, miniature golf courses, mountain coaster parks, more souvenir shops, escape rooms, bars, ice cream parlors, and even more souvenir shops. Oh, and did I mention souvenir shops? The souvenir shops touted “hand-crafted” Smoky Mountains products. I later discovered that the products might have been “hand-crafted,” but that crafting was done in China. The mention of “Smoky Mountain products” apparently referred only to the fact that they had “Smoky Mountains” printed on them.
The buildings stood shoulder-to-shoulder like people standing in an overcrowded elevator. It even felt like the buildings were hunching their shoulders to avoid touching each other, so aware of the lack of personal space. They were huge, painted in bright colors that had faded over time and weather. Much of the architecture was campy and bizarre. Every building was clearly competing to catch the eye. One souvenir shop had a huge alligator covering the middle third of the façade. That alligator was as wide as my entire house. It wasn’t even just painted on- the front of the building was molded into the shape of the alligator. I did not even know they had alligators in Tennessee. Another building had a huge bear, roughly equivalent to the height of the building, spouting from the roof. There was a large wax museum that included a building in the shape of a castle bigger than any Disney royal residence. The main building was shaped like the Empire State Building, complete with King Kong hanging on its side. That King Kong sculpture had to be four stories tall.
As we turned off the Parkway, the roads got narrower and curvier. Thankfully, they also got less populated. As we meandered into the outskirts of the city, I began wondering if we were on the right track because there was not much around except trees. Max began to express concern emphatically that we were out in the boondocks and were overly isolated.
As we reached the last mile of our trek, the concern level elevated. As did the road. I knew I was renting a “mountain cabin,” but I guess I didn’t realize just how much of a mountain I was getting. After living in Florida- the flattest state in the union- for nearly ten years, I’ve apparently forgotten what mountains really look like. I’ve also forgotten what the “roads” up the mountains feel like. I navigated one hairpin turn after another up a steep 2-way road that was only wide enough for about one and a quarter cars. There were no guard rails on either side, so a misstep would mean plunging to our death in the valley below or ramming into the wall of a mountain.
One of the reasons I chose this location is that it sounded like it was part of a community, which felt safer than being out in the wilderness completely alone. The cottage was part of a community, but there were only three or four houses built together before the road curved off into some new curlicue. Even once we located the community, finding our cottage was a challenge. Part of that challenge involved making several wrong guesses. This required driving up multiple blind steep hills and some death-defying U-turns. It also required me to drive in Reverse, which is always death-defying in my case.
When we finally got to the house, I was tired, hungry, anxious, and felt like there was a steel bar between my shoulders. I was also pretty testy. The house was very nice, though. The view was lovely. It was cozy and quiet. There were a couple of neighbors, which made the drive seem less terrifying. After all, if the neighbors could navigate that road on a regular basis, surely I could do it for a few days.
My adventure in the Smoky Mountains certainly started in the “wild” category. Between changing lanes on the freeway through Atlanta without having any idea of what lane I needed to be in, traveling through the Pigeon Forge fever dream of a landscape, and navigating the mini-road up to the cottage, I felt quite the thrill-seeker. I even ventured out back into town to get some dinner, which necessitated coming back up that mountain after dark. The mild part? We cancelled any thought we had of evening entertainment on this vacation. After making that trip in the dark, I decided discretion is the better part of valor. Besides, what is a vacation without several hours of YouTube videos each evening?
Have an adventurous day!
Terri/Dorry 😊
What is the most adventurous trip you have ever taken? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.