Comfort Suites Pigeon Forge

... reminded me of Niagara Falls – very touristy with all the usual tourist spots i.e.: Guinness Book of Records, Aquariums, Amusement Park themes, lots of theatre productions trying to cash in on their share of the Dollywood market. The area is well known for the sale of local crafts – quilts, candles, pottery, blown glass and jewelry.

The walk up to Laurel Falls was quite a challenge ...

... be open when the ride returns are fast food restaurants. The small downtown area will be closed.

One sad note - Kudzu is starting to overrun the edges of the train route. It covers the banks of the railroad track and surrounding trees for the first few miles, encasing everything including trees. It even covered a truck that had been left in a parking lot. Kudzu is so envasive, it reminds me of the scene in ...

... Walmart also had a gorgeous autumn themed park with creek and all. This one guy, Elijah, had bought a utility van that was converted into a full apartment. He had a wood stove and alll!!! Needless to say, I was more than impressed with that particular setup. Nearby, a school bus named "Big Papa" sat, obviously the result of a conversion of sorts. Elijah explained that the night before the RVs set up music and had dinner together and everything and said that Big Papa housed an entire ...

... surprising things Greg and I noticed while looking at a cemetery outside one of the original churches, was that, in this part of the country, people seemed to live much longer lives than was the norm in the 1800's. Many died in infancy, of course, but we saw that a majority of the headstones indicated years that calculated to 60, 70, or even 80 years of age! Guess those old mountain folks were made of tough stuff! It was a nice drive ...

We left Crittenden Kentucky this morning at 9 AM, traveling south on I-75 and picking up I-40 in Tennessee. It was pretty much a standard travel day for us, covering about 250 miles total, with a half hour or so lunch stop around Noon time. We stopped at a very busy Tennessee Welcome Center (that's where we made our sandwiches and ate lunch) to pick up brochures so we could make good use of our one day in the Smoky Mountains ...

... north of the city around 6pm, another Holiday Inn Express. This one looks like it is older but they still have the nice new beds. I lay down for awhile but cannot fall asleep so I watch TV instead. I find a History Channel show about Hannibal. Seemed he won every battle but lost the war. The amount of slaughter is incredible to me. I see that they are advertising a show for later that night about ...

Hi, everyone,
Just want to say that the Riverstone Lodge in Townsend, Tn. is by far the very best place to stay in The Smoky Mountains. It is the closest Hotel / Lodge to Cades Cove which is just unbeleivable with its mountain views and all the wildlife (deer, black bear, wild turkeys ect...) also well maintained original cabins & churches from the1800's are spread out across the 11 mile journey. Mountains all around you. AHHH. The ...

It has been many years since I've been in Cherokee and little has changed except for the Casino which is undergoing major expansion. We were nestled into a nice RV park with a brook flowing through it. Cherokee is close to many attractions and we enjoyed our stay there.

Every day we would give Ashley a hint or two to help her figure out what we were doing that day or the next day. For this day, it was "We're going to PF to do MG". That meant that we were going to Pigeon Forge to do Miniature Golf, although Ashley was convinced that we were going to the Pig Farm. :-)

We did head out from Lexington, BACK into Tennessee and on down the road to Pigeon Forge. When we got into the campground, we ...

We found a spot somewhere on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. It was so beautiful we spent a few days here and did everything.

We did some white water rafting near our site and met a friend. She was a cat the lived there and loved sleeping in the tent. ha ha ha.... We named her Nantahala, 'Nanta' for short.

It was Beautiful....