Day 62: Pigeon Forge, TN

Stop 37 / State 21: Pigeon Forge, TN

Today's 186 mile jaunt took us toward the Southwestern tip of Virginia and down into Tennessee.

We're kind of (very) disappointed in Pigeon Forge. The town itself is unbelievably commercialized. It seems to be miles of arcades, amusement parks, thrill rides, oddity museums, miniature golf (Niko would love that), fast food restaurants and Hillbilly dinner shows (think Medieval Times but with Hillbillies). Fortunately, there's a park on the back side of our campground and, on the far side, we found and old mill that had been converted to a fairly decent restaurant (called the Old Mill).

I was originally targeting Gatlinburg for our stay. It's the one town between Pigeon Forge and Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Pigeon Forge was still close and how could you go wrong with a town called Pigeon Forge. We drove through Gatlinburg to the park entrance today (we'll explore the park tomorrow). Gatlinburg is a much prettier town. It still has its Ripley's and Guinness World Record Museum and every block has 2 or 3 ice cream or fudge shops but, compared to Pigeon Forge, it's heaven.

Our KOA Kampground is practically across the street from Dollywood. We considered checking it out but, after checking out their webpage, didn't see anything that would justify our spending $52 each. This is one of the more crowded KOA's that we've stayed at. Yesterday, someone told us about a wonderful KOA in Gatlinburg. I guess, with 2 KOA's to choose from, we picked the wrong one.

-J-