Hey everyone, I don't remember exactly how it came up, but mskate wanted to do a vacation with me over Memorial Day and we decided to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, the same place I went to with my family 8 years earlier. This was going to be fun, I knew a lot of things that would be fun to do, like the dinner shows, and we were going to do Dollywood which we didn't do last time, and we were staying at a Drurry Inn where we would be within walking distance to major sites. Plus, this was going to be our first road trip together (every other trip we've done we flew). We spent a week or so getting things gathered and ready for the trip, Saturday night going to mass and fill up the van, and Sunday driving to Tennessee. This was also the weekend my godbrother was having his graduation party, but since our plans were made over a month prior to finding out about that we had to decline. This will come up later, foreshadowing. Oh, and we have a satellite radio tuner in our van, and this happened to be a free preview week, so we had our commercial free jams on this trip.
We woke up at my normal work time of 5:30 AM so we could get going early and beat some traffic (assuming people would be traveling for the holiday). We loaded up the car with the final things (snacks, drinks, electronics, and toiletries) and hit the road. Along the way we stopped at Buck-ees where we got gas and lunch (and went to the bathroom where we had to pee to believe), and at other times we stopped at rest stops to switch drivers. Buck-ees was fun to stop at since I haven't been there in over a decade, the last time I saw my aunt and uncle in Texas. We had brisket and home made potato chips, which is kind of crazy from a gas station. I also got a pressed penny that was specific to the city. Mskate's family is more into Buck-ees and stops whenever they can, and now she's going to try to get more when they stop. They also have stickers for the passport book (which will come in later), so mskate picked up one. The gas also wasn't too bad, at least compared to everywhere else. This was kind of funny, whenever mskate was driving the weather was nice, but when I was driving it was raining. She swears she didn't plan it that way, but that's what ended up happening. When we got to Tennessee we stopped at the welcome center where I got this picture with a Dolly Parton standee, and we got some brochures and coupon books to see if there was anything we'd be interested in doing. As we were driving in we noticed a BJ's Wholesale, the same wholesale club we're members of, and while we were planning on getting Buck-ee's gas at the start of our trip home, we decided it would be better to get gas from there since it's definitely cheaper.
As we were coming in, we started seeing things that were familiar; the Hatfield McCoy dinner feud, the Titanic thing, different store fronts, and such. It was cool seeing everything again. We got to the hotel, checked in, and all went well. We got our keys, parked in the parking structure, unloaded the car, got to the room, inspected for bed bugs, and then got settled in. I thought I charged my video camera the night before but I guess I didn't because when I tried using it the battery was dead and it seemed like it wasn't holding a charge. I figured the aftermarket battery I bought before my Hawaii trip went bad, so I ordered a new one to be sent to the hotel. It was about time for the evening kickback where we had dinner. It was a pasta night, and it was alright though I think I mainly had the hot dog and nachos. I found a drink I really liked, the cherry vodka sour just with tequila. I originally wanted a basic tequila sour, but the bar tender made the hotel cocktail with tequila instead, and it was really good to the point where I always had one when I could (because some nights we weren't there). I left my camera to charge over dinner and when I came back it had a charge (not a lot, but some), so my battery wasn't bad it just hadn't had enough time to charge. I canceled the order and I didn't end up with an extra battery.
That evening we went down to The Island in Pigeon Forge. There was a walking path behind our hotel that took us there, and we didn't exactly know where we were going, but we made it. It was...a tourist area. Lots of shops, lots of tourist trap attractions, very similar to a Downtown Disney, but it was fun. We went to the arcade that was there, I bought a $45 card for $35, and we played games. I mostly played the coin pushers and mskate played the crane games and won ticket disks on top of some other things. We didn't get any prizes that night, but we still had fun. After that we walked around the place some more, but mskate was having a diabetic low and the troubles with that, so we didn't spend a ton of time there. I went up to an information desk and while they were able to get us some information, they mainly existed to try to get us to do the time share/vacation club tour so we could get some free experiences. They almost got me signed up for the tour, but then I got scared off with "and we need a credit card for a $40 deposit." I'm like "no, I don't feel comfortable with that." The only other thing we did that evening was watch the fountain show. They have a fountain in the center of the district that plays a little audio show with fountain choreography every 30 minutes or so, so we watched it. I wanted to do the distillery tasting, but I had to get mskate back to the hotel. Oh well. On the way back there was a flock of geese with goslings on the walking path, and I'm like "we need to avoid these guys, they'll fight us." That night we watched Toy Story on the fire stick.
It's now time for our first real day. We have breakfast at the hotel, which is breakfast potatoes and pancakes with peanut butter for me, and oatmeal with peanut butter for mskate. The first thing we do is go to the mountains to get stamps for her America 250 national parks passport. For the 250th birthday of the country, national parks and historic sites are doing a thing where you can get stamps for the location for a stamp book, and there were 2 in the area, one at a welcome center and one inside the park. We drove from our hotel through the Pigeon Forge main drag and through the Gatlenberg main drag, just kind of enjoying the mountains and future sites, while also telling mskate about the things I did last time. We didn't really know the one welcome center had stamps so we passed by it on our way in, and we got to the park ranger station before they opened. We walked around a little but couldn't really go hiking since we didn't have good shoes (both wearing crocks). While there mskate saw that they had a little zip bag for the passport, and since we were getting some maps and such she decided to get a bag as well as her stamps. On our way back to Pigeon Forge we went to the welcome center, which required some looping around turns since it was a very divided highway. We went through the tunnel that I remember going through 8 years ago, so that was fun.
[videos of mountains to come]
After the mountains we drove down the main drag of Pigeon Forge. Normally this would be a "passing through" thing, but I wanted to stop at some the places pepperBC and I went arcade hopping last time. We went to a place that advertised live sharks that I thought was where they had live goats, but it wasn't. We drove by some of the arcades, and I wanted to stop at the place with mini-bowling. We stopped there and played a round of bowling. Mskate wasn't exactly excited at first, but she saw how much fun I had with it and got into it, so it was all good. On our way to the next place we drove by the Hatfield McCoy Dinner Feud, which was fun to remember.
The main thing we were going to was the Disney outlet store at the outlet mall that was outside the main drag. Mskate wanted to get a Bullseye doll for her costume at friends for life this year, and while we were there we picked up a new autograph book since ours is getting kind of full and I think a pin. We were like 1 item away from getting 30% off, but there was nothing else we wanted so the 30% wouldn't have saved us anything. Right close was a Boxlunch store, which is a less edgy hot topic that focuses mostly on geek stuff. There wasn't anything there, but it was still kind of fun. Afterwards we went to the Ripply's Farm Arcade which was right there at the opening of the outlet mall. It was mostly a look around, nothing really interesting that made us say "I want to drop some money here." We also walked over to the starbucks that was there to see if they had the Tennessee travel mug or any that were specific to the region (because those exist), but they didn't. After all this we went to publix (a southern grocery store) and got some sandwiches from the deli counter, along with sun screen since we didn't plan on that from before. We watched Bugs Life at the hotel while eating our sandwiches.
After our break we went back to The Island to finish off our arcade card. I mostly played the coin pushers winning a bunch of chips and some cards while mskate played some crane games and some other things. While I was sitting there someone walked up and asked if we were playing for tickets, I said yes, and he gave us his card with like 100 tickets on it. In total we won like 1500 tickets, and the big thing was an LED cupcake along with some little toys to put in the egg hunt fundraiser. After that I went to the Old Smoky Moonshine store where they had all sorts of flavors and testings. I wanted to do a testing for $5, which was 3 less than the premium tasting for $3 less. I was the only one in my sampling group that did the basic, so the bar tender took some pity on me and let me do a little sampling of the premium ones; I think I got a cherry and one other. Each of the samples was done in a protestant communion wine cup (you know the little cups). When I had the apple pie moonshine I raised it in honor of my one friend's dad who loved apple pie moonshine. Like 1 or 2 before the end of the sampling someone broke one of the rules of sampling and they had to shut down the bar for legal reasons, which resulted in all of us having a free sampling. I tipped the bar tender for his time though. When I told my family about it my mom said "get a jar of apple pie for the friends, I want to give it to them as a gift." On the call I asked if I should get the 70 proof or 100 proof for the America 250, and dad said "just get the 70 proof." After all this we went to a sock store because we needed socks for Dollywood and didn't think to pack any. We got the cheapest socks we could, but they're still nice.
Our next big adventure was The Dolly Parton Stampede, a dinner show competition between the north and south with animals. The funny thing is the north is blue and south is red (instead of historic north is blue and south is gray), so my joke is "ok so now we're the bloods and the crips." Since we're both yankees we wanted to eat on the north. We also got dressed up in our cowboy hats, America 250 shirts, and mskate put on her cowboy boots with me in my Tommy Bahama flip flops I got for Hawaii. We got there early enough for the pre-show and to get all our specials, along with seeing the horses in the stable outside the place. We got a special souvenir mug in the shape of a boot, with the special mocktale of a buckboard bash (lemonade, sprite, pineapple juice, grenadine, and a cherry), and we also got a flag to wave at the show. It was quite good. The pre-show was a pretty good bit of live music. They sang a state song which was all 50 states, and rocky top, and some others. As we were getting ready to go in someone asked us if this was it and if there would be horses since that's what her son wanted (I guess we just looked like we knew what we were doing). We told her "no, this is just the pre-show, there's going to be horses and food."
On the way back from the stampeed we stopped at food city, a grocery store that was right by the hotel. The main reason was to go to the starbucks in the store to see if they had the mugs (which they didn't), but we also got juice boxes since mskate was going through her low supplies pretty quicky and the following day was Dollywood where we had to be prepared. Then on a whim, we checked the cereal aisle. For Toy Story 5 Kellogg's was doing prizes in the cereal again, special spoons and trading cards, but that wasn't a main thing or something because everywhere we checked all they had were trading cards, and we were thinking they just chickened out and went with the cards. Well, food city must have not gotten the memo, because they had boxes of frosted flakes with the toy spoons in them. We don't really eat cereal, and of the "participating" cereals frosted flakes are like my least favorite (froot loops, lucky charms, apple jacks, then frosted flakes), but I like them enough to get the prize. We were quietly freaking out that we found a place that had the prize in the box, mostly mskate but I was also happy. Then what got me excited were the off brand cereals, like hokus pokus (lucky charms), fruit frenzy (froot loops), cinn-amazing crunch (cinnamon toast crunch), cocoa crisp rice (cocoa krispies), and very berry crunch (crunch berries). I paid for it with cash to break the 20 since I had like 3 20s and 4 singles. When we got to the car we opened the box and we got Buzz Lightyear. After the grocery store we watched Princess and the Frog before bed.
Today is the main event of sorts, Dollywood. We woke up and had breakfast, and got to the park like 10 minutes after it opened. Getting there wasn't too difficult, just follow the maps, and we parked in section C where the trolly picked us up. We went through security and because I know the things that tend to buzz, I pulled out my umbrella and video camera. I still buzzed, so I just went over to the security guards like "yep, not my first rodeo, here are my things, unzipping my bag," but it was just my umbrella so I didn't need to do the "go through all my stuff." Since mskate has diabetes we got the disability pass so we don't need to wait in the line; still need to wait with the "come back times" so it isn't completely unfair, but we aren't standing in the queue line. The neat thing about Dollywood is that they do it where you go to the disability entrance, they give you a "come back time" based on the line length, you ride on the next set of trips (like, they wait for the people who were right in line to ride), and then you have to wait that amount of time before doing the next ride. Honestly though, we kind of didn't need it; there were large projections of rain and bad weather, but aside from being hot and like 1 shower when we were in a show, it wasn't bad at all, so I think a lot of the people with flexible tickets went on a different day and the lines weren't bad at all (come back was always like 1 or 2 minutes later, with only once being 20 minutes). We looked around the opening gift shop and found some things we'd want to get at the end of the day, and a set of bear ears for mskate to wear all day (because it's the Dolly Parton version of Minnie Mouse ears and she loves Minnie Mouse ears), and on our way to the rides we went under a bunch of umbrellas that I guess change throughout the year.
This is when things got a little intense for mskate. My mom and I love thrill rides, it's why we go to Cedar Point every year and ride everything, but it's not exactly mskate's thing. We started with a big swinging ride called Barn Stormer that takes you up like 120 degrees (to where you're kind of hanging), and mskate didn't really like that. Next was Blazing Furry, a mix between roller coaster and dark ride, with a lot of scenes with mannequins and some drops (which hurt our backs since the seat only went up like half way). Next we did Tennessee Tornado, a roller coaster that loops you 3 times. After that we did Wild Eagle, a ride that made it look like we couldn't bring our backpacks or pockets with us, so we did 1 of us sit with the bag and one ride, and switch. And soon after that we did Mystery Mines, a roller coaster that lifts you straight up and loops, which was the straw that broke mskate's nausea to where she was almost ready to go home. We hadn't even been in the park for an hour, so that wasn't great. I walked her through it and we stayed in the park the rest of the day.
Before going into the details of the actual next things, during our "too many rides" we stopped at a gift shop where we got an ornament and saw some Dolly Parton sights. The ornament is fun, it's a bus with bears and the wheels spin. We also went to the chapel in the park; it's a real chapel that does a Sunday 11:30 service. We also saw Dolly's school house.
OK, back to the main timeline. After giving mskate some snacks we went to do a show, Dreamsongs. This was REALLY cool, because Heidi Parton, Dolly's niece, hosts the show. Yeah, we didn't see Dolly in person (though she was on the big screen where she sang with people in the show), but we saw a real Parton sing, which was super cool. After that we went to a museum of Dolly's life and career. It started with here early years, and went to her early touring, and then her super success, and her movie career, and ending with her book charity. They showed off her gold and platinum records, which were many. After this there was a little museum of her outfits, and I couldn't help but notice that they had to get some "custom mannequins" for her outfits. We were going to look at her tour bus (because they have one on display), but because of the rain they didn't allow it to the public so they wouldn't track water and mud in it (like I said, there was a brief shower). After we road a roller coaster called The Lightning Rod, which was pretty fun, which was followed by lunch at Red's Drive-in. It's a pretty standard 50s themed amusement park restaurant, pretty similar to coasters at Cedar Point. Since we had a rather big breakfast at the hotel and amusement park food is super expensive we split 1 meal and 1 side; I got chili cheese fries, mskate got a burger with a gluten free bun, and we split her fries (I also finished her burger, she didn't want all of it). The bun was a quality gluten free bun; a lot of the time it's not that great, but this time it was good.
Our first ride after lunch was Rockin Roadway, a little car ride thing. Because we were on the disability pass we got fuzzy dice with our car, which we realized was to indicate to the ride operators that this was a disability rider and we had to get off with the same place we got on. It's a fun little track, driving around a loop with a bridge, while they played country music on the car radio. We only really had time to ride that ride, because next was Play On, a music show of different tunes from the last 70 years with quick costume changes for each era. It was a great way to cool off, and they sold snacks like these pretzel butterflies. Before the show there was a group of veterans and they recognized a world war 2 tank driver, which is pretty impressive because he had to be close to 100 at this point (my grandpa was a world war 2 vet, on the younger side, and he was close to 100 when he passed 2 years back). These were good things to do because now mskate was all ready.
With mskate all happy again, we road the bumper cars. These bumper cars had the island so you drive a loop while bumping into people. Mskate said she never did bumper cars before, so that was pretty cool. I guess not everyone does that when going to amusement parks as a kid. Our next thing was the train. It's just a 30 minute train ride through the park, just a calm ride while the conductor tells us stuff. We got to see a new roller coaster under construction. After the train ride we went to get cinnamon bread for me and a diet coke for mskate. We went to the mill where I got my bread and mskate got her drink. It was pretty neat, you buy your bread at one register, and then go in the mill to get the bread, and along the way they have fountain drinks. Before mskate got her diet coke I had some sprite, because I was thirsty. I tried the bread and it was pretty good, cinnamon bread isn't exactly my thing, but it was still pretty good.
At this point I'm hot and tired, it was a hot day and there wasn't much shade or air conditioned places, and with only like 2 hours left in the park and mskate's general tiredness, we were finishing up. The next ride we road was Fire Chasers, a roller coaster where you go forward, and then it goes backwards, which was much better than Good Gravy in Holiday World. After that was Big Bear Adventure, the most recent coaster that was very smooth and fast but not super intense, so it was a good way to end the day. Mskate was noticing people with a first time button, and while it was pretty late in the day I still asked where we could get them, and it was up at the front of the park. We got our buttons and wore them for the rest of the trip (or at least I did since I put it on my camera bag strap). Mskate got a tulip rice crispy treat, and a Dolly Coat of Colors bear, and a couple other souvenirs. When we got back to the hotel I went to the pool because I wanted to cool off. I'm normally not one for hotel pools, but I needed to extract the extra heat, so I just kind of waded around for 15 minutes. Afterwards I went through the splash pad just because I could. We also made it back in time for the kickback dinner, so that saved us some money. That night we watched The Princess and the Frog.
It's now day 4 of our trip, and our big plan was to go to Gatlinburg and walk the strip. We had our breakfast at the hotel and filled up ready for a full day. We parked at the $15 parking structure that I parked at the last time. We were a little early, most everything opened at 10AM and we were there at like 9:30AM. There was a subway that was open, that had a 2nd floor with some video arcade machines, which was pretty cool. We didn't play any, but it was fun to look around. This is when we had an exchange that completely changed some of our plans. Last time I got really into one of the arcades down there, and I brought my game card from last time so we could bring the same card and play with it. Well, since this was a subway and we had subway cards in our gift card bag, mskate told me "we can't get stuff here because I left the gift cards back at the room." Well, that was where I kept the game card, so that was kind of a problem, because part of the fun was bringing the old card and using it again. Oh well.
One of the cool things about the Gatlinburg strip is there are "little walking neighborhoods" with shops that are only accessible via path. It's kind of like a small European market thing, or something quaint like that. Our first stop was the Old Smoky Candy Kitchen, which was a pretty cool candy store; they had mixing pots for the fudge and other creations, fresh fudge and fancy chocolates, specialty honey, and various other things. We didn't get anything, but it was fun to check out. After that we walked by The Donut Fryer, a place I got a donut from last time and it was really good. My favorite stop though was The Spice Trader, not because I have a love of spices or anything, but it just smells amazing; at least in my opinion, when I brought mskate in she said it was too overpowering. We found a Life is Good store and thought of some things to buy later because dad-in-law really likes that brand. Then before we left, I did a gag I did the last time, where I was a periscope with the camera, and I had mskate do a video of me doing it while I did it.
This is a little periscope gag. Watch these videos together.
We walked some more down the road, looking at different stores. We made it to the arcade that I spent so much time at last time and it changed quite a lot. They still had quite a lot of coin pushers and the same sign from last time, but they didn't have the same spongebob coin pusher that I won all my cards from last time. I would have really enjoyed playing the popeye coin pusher or smurfs coin pusher if we did, but we didn't. The funny thing is for the prizes one of the options was DeWalt power tools. After the arcade we walked around where they had another "village path," but it was just to mini-golf. It was a pretty impressive mini-golf, like it was playing on the mountain with a lot of cool trick holes. That would have been fun to do, maybe next time.
We walked a little more down the strip, passing Johnny Rockets (where I ate lunch last time), and Ripley's Believe it or Not. Ripley's is really popular here, with so many different branded attractions. We didn't do anything this time, but it was still pretty cool. We went into the Ripley's arcade next to the Believe it or Not museum, which was pretty small and uninteresting, except for the fact that the virtual bowling skeeball game was glitching and had static on the screen, which I didn't think was possible with a digital display. As we walked down the street more we came to a major arcade that's attached to a space needle. I kind of wanted to go here, SOOO many coin pushers, so many fun games, so many options. As we were walking around I found a set of claw machines and all the stuffed animals were set-up in a way that it was impossible to win anything. They looked really good all lined up, but the claw was no way strong enough to pick one up. Mskate decided she didn't want to support a place that was going to scam it's players like that, and she wanted to go to Arcade City, the same company we went to at The Island.
That arcade was at the end of the strip that was interesting, so we crossed the street and started the other side. Right close to the start was a 7D shooting range. What's a seven dimensional shooting game where we are only able to really perceive 3.5 dimensions? I don't know, because we didn't do it. Right close to it though was a non-redemption arcade. This is an arcade that was mostly pinball, video games, air hocky, and some crane games, but no tickets for a prize counter We didn't play there, but it was cool to look around since I do enjoy those games. We stopped at a Walgreens for fun since so many are closing by us and Walgreens used to sponsor the diabetes conference. It was a pretty standard drug store, but we did find Disney branded bicycle playing cards, which was something we hadn't seen before. They had princess cards, stitch cards, and general Disney cards. There was also a distillery right close as well, and while we didn't take the tour it was fun to look at the pots and stills, and smell the yeast. As we were going to the area there was a tour bus that was parking to let the tour out, and as we were doing that there was a guy directing everyone going "bus parking on sidewalk, out of the way, bus parking on side walk." I also came across this colorful restaurant name, Dick's Last Resort. I don't know what it is (wikipedia said it's an obnoxious server novelty place), but I liked the name and took some novelty photos.
This next thing was unexpected and really cool. I wouldn't say that I'm a big fan of Moonshiners on Discovery Channel, but it is a show I enjoy watching. I went into Sugarland Shine just as a thing to do, and as I walk in I'm greeted by a standee of Mark Rogers, one of the moonshiners on Moonshiners. I thought that was pretty cool, but figured it was just a bit of a brand deal. As I went in a little more, I found standees of Mark and Digger, with jars of Mark Roger's American Peach Proof, Jim Tom's Unaged Rye, Mark and Digger's Hazelnut Rum, and loads of sipping creams (which they like to make). Oh man, it's the place where you could buy stuff from the TV show. I didn't do a tasting there since I already did one and mskate was getting tired, but man that would have been fun to do. I still had a lot of fun walking around and looking at all that they had. And I almost didn't go there.
Now it's time for Arcade City, if the games were good we would see if we could use our card from The Island and drop our $35 there. What was cool about it is they had an old school movie theater marquee advertising the arcade. We weren't able to use our card from The Island, but it still had a bunch of games we would like. They had the crane game mskate was good at, wizard of oz coin pushers, Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory coin pushers, and a wheel of fortune game that actually spun the wheel. One of my grandma's favorite TV shows was wheel of fortune, and when we took her to chuck e cheese before she died her favorite game was the pirate wheel (which was basically the wheel of fortune wheel), and while she didn't completely like the wheel of fortune video arcade game since there wasn't a real wheel spinning it was still pretty entertaining for her. We HAD to do the wheel of fortune game in memory of her. They also had the bean bag toss game (a game I'm pretty good at) and a giant hungry hungry hippos game (a game that looked cool) among other things, but the bean bag toss jackpot was set at a score that I don't regularly score at and the hungry hungry hippos game was $2 per play which was probably a rip off, so we mainly stuck to the good crane game and coin pushers. Since I have a full size coin pusher at home I found the machines that were ready to pay out, and we got quite a lot of chips and cards (one of which we kept as a souvenir and to mark mskate's first time winning cards, that one's going in the coin pusher at home). I also got mskate set-up on a coin pusher and showed her how to aim and go for it, and she started getting into it when she was winning, so that was great having something we can bond over. One of the games had a problem with the aimer, so the tech had to fix it and he gave us another dollar's worth of play for our loss, which was great. Then I knocked a card off and it got stuck on the prize roller, so I had to call him over and get the card out for me. I apologized for having so many problems, and he said "don't worry, it's my job to do this." I also won a fair amount of bonus plays and got 50 at least once, which is always great. Because I didn't want to JUST play the coin pushers, I did this baseball pitching game and light up the squares Ping-Pong ball game. In total we won 4529 tickets, and had a store room to pick from which is really fun since it's kind of like shopping and not just going to the prize counter. We didn't get enough for a REALLY big prize, but enough for a fair number of good things. and got some stuffed animals, candy, a travel backgamon game, some army men and egg stuffing prizes, and to finish it off a slinky. When we were done we went to the bathroom that was on the 2nd floor, and they had some crane games up there. While up there I looked over the city since they had a window overlooking the strip.
These were capybara prizes, a reference to a youtuber I like.
After the arcade and walking down the street we came across a Donald Trump MAGAstore. They had shirts for Trump, shirts for Charlie Kurk, hats and shot glasses for both of them, and some other things. They also had a mannequin dressed up as president Trump, and I did the Trump YMCA victory dance with it while singing the song, and the cashier got a good kick out of it. After the store we walked around another little village place while mskate talked to her mom and told her about my Trump meme dance. While there we found a Kilwins Ice Cream and got Gatlinburg Mud to split. It was pretty good. This was also when we went back to Life is Good to get some shirts since we were on our way back, and passed by the Ripley's Mirror Maze, a place I spent a lot of time at last time. Our last stop was the Mountain Mall, a 5 half-story mall we looked around just for fun. We also passed by the Ripley's Aquarium, which was fun to point out since we spent a day there with my grandparents.
Now is probably a good time to talk about what we didn't do. Because Gatlinburg is kind of a tourist area they have a lot of attractions. Mskate had some interest in doing something "in the mountains," one of those "ride a cable car into a resort area thing and do stuff there" things. They had 2-4 on the strip and looked kind of interesting, and the one that looked most interesting was Anakeesia. From the brochures and website it's like "take a skyliner vehicle up a couple hundred feet to a little village thing that is 'only accessible via the cable car' (at least for the normal people, I'm sure there's a service entrance for the things available to buy up there), and then there are different activities and shops up at the top." Plus the "enclosed skyliner car" was more appealing than the ski lift we saw with other attractions. However, after she read some reviews it seemed like it wouldn't have offered much for us, and since mskate isn't like a "true travel influencer yet" (she wants to, but struggles to find motivation to post), we couldn't justify the probably waste of money. It was for the best anyway, she was getting tired. There were also a lot of roller coaster things that were around the mountain side (mountain coasters), and the hard thing with those is that they're kind of expensive since it's "pay per ride" (though if one factors out how much it costs to go to an amusement park and how many rides you end up doing, it kind of is the same amount) and they look kind of sketchy (I'm sure they're legal and safe, but they look like something bubba and jimbo made in their backyard out of things they found on the side of the road). We also got a little turned around as we were trying to leave Gatlinburg and drove up a mountain and back down (first time using low gear) and saw all the motels around the main strip. Kind of cool.
After our time at Gatlinburg we did resort exploring. Since Dollywood has 2 hotels that have transportation to the parks, we said "lets go explore the hotels just like we do at Disney." Mskate was a little concerned about a guard stopping us as non-guests from going to the hotels since that's what they do at Disney (only resort guests or meal reservations are able to park there), but Dolly Parton hotels are "not that special," so we were able to park there no problem. First we went to Heartsong, and the location and parking lot reminded me of Bavarian Inn Lodge; just kind of out on a hill away from things, but very big so not a problem. I'll put it this way, if you like exploring hotels and resorts, just looking around at all the decorations and such (like us), you'll enjoy this. However, if you don't like that, there's not much for you at Heartsong if you aren't staying there. There was some cool artwork hanging on the walls. There was an America 250 chocolate display. In the lobby lounge there was a giant portrait of Dolly playing a guitar. The most interesting thing was a room with some of Dolly's guitars and outfits in a mini-museum. We had fun because this is the kind of thing we enjoy, but it didn't offer a lot explorers.
Our next stop was Dream More, and if you had to choose a hotel to explore, this is it. Like Heartsong, it too is kind of "off in the forest on a hill," but it has WAY more on offer. First, before you even enter the hotel, they have one of Dolly's tour busses that you can stay in for your visit, and I think they do tours; they weren't doing that while we were there, but I think it's an option. Second, they have some of those novelty oversized anorondeck chairs for giants that guests can take pictures with. Then when you walk in right at the front there's a little display with a plank from "the stage of Dolly's first performance" (the porch of her childhood home) and her dream box time capsule to be opened on her 100th birthday. Right close by there's a hall with the album art of all her records (of which there are a lot), and since she's on the album cover it was kind of easy to see that it was listed in release order and see how she changed over the years, and at the side of the wall there's was a giant picture of Dolly singing into a microphone. Then in another hallway they had one of those changing pictures thing, where from one perspective it's a picture of the train in Dollywood, and as you walk past it the picture becomes Dollywood's logo. As we were walking down the hall we came across a "do not disturb" sign and it said "dreaming more," which was fun. They also had a little arcade, and if the games were better we would have played some so we could get the game card (because they probably would have had a cool logo on it), but they didn't have any redemption games or good video games, so we decided not to. It was around lunch time so we had lunch at the hotel. I had a cheese burger and mskate had a steak plate (with seasonings and feta cheese that was only available for a limited time). The special sauce on the burger was quite good and mskate absolutely loved her steak, saying "can you figure out how to make this at home." There was enough for her to take home and had it for dinner that night. Before leaving we went out the main entrance and there was this giant Dream More fountain sculpture. Great way for us to finish with the greeting.
Before going back to our hotel we stopped off at Food City to get another box of Frosted Flakes for the spoon. We got a Woody spoon this time, so that was a win. I also got more pictures of the off brand cereals. We took a little rest before we did one more thing, and that last thing was going to The Mill, a place that was in the other direction of the walking path; instead of walking to the right to go to The Island, it was walking left to go to The Mill. There is actually a little story with the walking path. Because it's spring time and animals are getting born, there was a mother duck and some adolescent ducklings that were right by the side of the walking path. Mskate walked ahead, but I wanted to have some fun with the ducks. I pulled out my phone and took some photos, and took out the video camera and took video of the ducks. Since they were adolescents the mom wasn't super aggressive and keeping them away from me, but I also wasn't making myself look too intimidating. The mom was making some kind of noise that I could tell was some kind of "stay back" sound. That was fun.
The Mill was a quaint little tourist town. The Mill itself is a restaurant that I guess was once a sawmill or flourmill, it looks like one of those big wooden mill buildings. There was a general store gift shop that we looked around in, but nothing all that interesting. After that we went to another distillery. Again, we didn't do anything there, but I liked the smell of the yeast. Our next stop was a stone cutter store, where you can buy stone tablets and get engravings. If we lived closer we would think about getting a memorial stone thing for the in-laws dogs, but we live many states away so we didn't do that. We also stopped in a leather store, with gloves, bags, smithing aprons, and stuff like that. It smelled SOOO good. The other store we went to was a blacksmithing store, and we found a great present for my brother; he's kind of hard to shop for but he likes blacksmith stuff. We got him a Damascus "tuit" coin, a Damascus coin with "tuit" embedded in it. I didn't know what "tuit" meant, but I know Damascus is high quality and kind of expensive when making knives, and this wasn't too expensive so it'll make for a good gift. One of the guys behind the counter explained what "tuit" means; it's a redneck term, "when will you do it" "I'll get tuit." That's actually kind of perfect for vikingpolak, because when we need him to reply to messages, he'll get tuit. Our last stop was at the ice cream parlor where we each got our own kid cups. My butterfinger ice cream was really good. We walked back to the hotel in time for the kickback (I think it was something where I had the hot dog), and then in the evening we watched Pixar's Brave. This was my first time watching Brave because the marketing for the movie back in the day was absolutely terrible. Everything was "I'm a strong independent woman, I'm not going to get married," and it had nothing to do with the fact that the movie is actually about a mother and daughter learning to understand each other with the mom as a bear. [Full analysis here.] Before going to bed we did a night drive down the main strip of Pigeon Forge since there are a bunch of neon-like lighting. It was really fun, all the lights were great.
Now it's our first travel home days. We ate breakfast and got everything packed up. Nothing extra special, but since we were only going half way we took our time. As we left we stopped at the BJ's Wholesale to get gas. We also went in the main store to see if they happened to have the fiber brownies I like, but they didn't; I guess BJ's just doesn't stock them anymore. Mskate drove from Tennessee to Kentucky, and continued until we went to the same Buckee's we did on the way there. I had a lot of time to watch the scenery and get some nice creative commons videos. When we got to Buckee's there was a cool old Chevy 3100, it was kind of rusty but still really cool. We got our gas, and our "gas station" brisket and chips. Before we left there was an army convoy leaving, which was really fun to watch since it was like the humvees and water trucks (or whatever). One of the drivers waved to me, it was kind of a parade. I drove after Buckee's and we drove into Covington Kentucky, almost staying at this circular hotel, but it got a bunch of bad reviews recently so we decided to stay at a Cincinnati Drurry Inn.
[additional videos coming soon]
When we got to Cincinnati we stopped at the William Howard Taft historical site. It's a museum for the 27th president and has his house available for tours. It was pretty neat, we don't talk about WHT much in school, so I learned he was a supreme court justice after being president, and his entire family was in politics. There was an animatronic of his son that when pressing a button tells a story while out fishing. We also watched a video presentation, which was fun. The main reason we stopped though was so mskate could get her stamp for the national parks passport. We also bought something from the gift shop, and the guy at the desk said "please be patient, the credit card machine runs on dial-up." I said "really, I didn't know that still exists" (because AOL shut their dial-up service down last year), and he said "yes it does, and they recently changed the number so now it takes even longer." I thought that was really weird, but then as I thought about it some more it made a lot of sense; the credit card machine is the only internet connected thing I could see there (everything else was off line), and they probably don't get a ton of traffic, so pay-per-use dial-up is probably cheaper than unlimited high speed.
We got to our hotel and it was another Drurry Inn. We unpacked the necessities and things that would get ruined in the heat, but a lot stayed in the car. The kickback was pulled pork and beans though, so I had an elevated hot dog. There's a bit of a meme in the Bar Rescue sub-reddit where people post "elevated hot dogs" since that's common thing on the show. It starts with a base of a normal hot dog, then there's a layer of pulled pork, a layer of baked beans, a little more pulled pork, a line of mustard, topped with jalapeños. "The heat makes people stay 30% longer and use all 3 of their kick back drinks." I made a little joke video of it. Right next to our hotel was a cracker barrel, which was good because we needed to get a graduation card for my god-brother and they had them, so we went there and got him one. After dinner I got mskate set-up with the fire stick before doing my evening activity.
Here's my evening activity. Right across from the hotel was a video game store and all you can play arcade. Unlike Level One where it's "just buy some drinks," Arcade Legacy was $10 admission, and not all the pinballs were on free play (mostly the newer ones, I wanted to play the pokemon one but it was like $1 per game). No big deal though, there were still some vintage mechanical pinball machines that were free, and that was pretty fun. The video games were where it was at though. I played some standards like Donkey Kong, Tetris, Crazy Taxi (which was in Japanese and I did a lets play of one level), Q-bert, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time (which I played 100%, I have to do that every time I get the opportunity to play at at free-play arcade because of childhood memories), but there were some others. I found this more obscure 80s arcade game called Zoo Keeper, where the the goal is to keep the animals contained by running around the outside and building up a wall. It's really fun and made by Taito (a pretty recognizable game company), I don't know why it isn't more well known and popular. I also played this drum game where I had to give them my drivers license to borrow the drum sticks, and that was really fun. There was also this Japanese school competition game with cheer leaders and minigames. I didn't to all that great, but part of that is because I didn't exactly know what my goals were. There was also the Star Wars Trilogy Arcade Game, and I did great on Hoth, ok on the Death Star run, I think I failed Endor, I beat Boba Fett, I failed Darth Vader, and then I failed the Death Star 2 run. Something kind of neat was in the basement they had console games with all the controller ports occupied and multi-player games (like smash bros and mario kart). I didn't participate, but it was cool they had it. The last thing I did was I played a modified DDR game, it had all the songs in it, and they were organized in a folder. I mostly played DDR Extreme songs, and then went back to the hotel after getting thoroughly exhausted.
Time for our final day. We packed up our stuff and ate a lite breakfast since we were going to have brunch with my god-family. We drove to that cracker barrel and arrived before everyone else, so we looked around the strip mall some. We found a farm supply store, and I heard the peeping of chicks and ducklings. We went over to it and found the little baby birds. I think it's fun looking at the baby birds at tracker supply, and this was it too. Next door was a grocery store. We looked for the cereal, but didn't find any. We finished up there and went to restaurant. It was fun to see all of them and celebrate my god-brother's graduation. He's going to go into the seminary and be a priest. He seemed to have thought through everything and be prepared for "a new kind of life dedicated to faith," except for the fact that he was now going to be "the family priest who does all our sacraments" (baptism, wedding, and funeral). When I said that, he was kind of "...oh, yeah, I guess that's going to be my life now." This was a funny thing, my other god-brother, the youngest sibling, he's impulsive and kind of irresponsible. He wanted the super sugar chocolate pancakes and one of his parents was like "I don't know, that looks like a lot of sugar" and he said "I know, that's why I want it." It was a good visit, and now we'll see them at camping.
After cracker barrel we went up to Dayton where they had a Write Brothers museum that also has the national parks stamp. They had a write brother glider replica. They had this demonstration of different aviation principles (like lift). They also had a general store replica of the Write Brother bicycle shop, where they had an actual check written by one of the brothers. The last thing of note was a display about parachutes and ejection seats. There was this really cool video display where it was a steering wheel that advances the frames of a video of an ejection seat demonstration, that can also go backwards. This way you can see exactly how it ejects. There was also an ejection seat you could sit in, which was cool. Dayton has a lot of cool stuff.
After that it was drive home. We made one more stop, the Dayton Buckee's for gas, and they didn't have a penny press, darn. Overall, really fun trip. We saw and did so many fun things, relived great memories, and just had a fun vacation just the 2 of us. This was really good because right when we got home my grandma figure had to go on hospice for her anurism. She was waiting for us to finish our trip before mskate had to go take care of her, it's kind of funny how that ended up working out. For the next 4 days mskate had been with her at her house with my mom and her son as they help her through end of life, and I called every day to tell little stories. Before mskate left we printed out a picture of her great grand daughter so we could get a picture of her holding the picture. Now we're just setting up funeral arangements, and I'm going to run the live stream like I did for her husband. Enough sad talk though, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Also, be sure to follow my twitter and/or blue sky to keep up with the vlogs that are coming soon.
