Tuesday, Aug 25 - Pigeon Forge TN

Another beautiful day in Paradise, still here in Pigeon Forge!  This Riveredge RV resort is quite upmarket, the bathrooms are beautiful, lovely solid tiles, granite bench tops, piped music and you almost need a degree to work the sophisticated shower system. 

 

We catch the trolley into ‘town’ and check out the sights, do a bit of shopping (nice tote bag for me to replace old faithful which has finally given up it’s tenuous grip on life), have some lunch and then decide we should go back to the resort and have a rest by the pool before the Hatfield and McCoy dinner show.   

The show was OK and the food was all you can eat –  soup and bread, fried chicken, pulled BBQ pork, mashed potatoes, sweet corn, coleslaw, followed by Granny’s banana cream dessert, all brought to your table with as many refills as you like.   They had beer, but no wine??  We were offered moonshine though – politely declined!

Hatfield & McCoy Show

Wednesday 26 August - to Nashville

On the road again but first we want to see Gatlinburg (I am sure it is mentioned on one of Johnny Cash' songs) and we are so glad we took the time.  It was only about 8 miles south of Pigeon Forge but where PF is a fun park type village for the young’uns, Gatlinburg is a lovely quaint village – an American Queenstown.  It's a foodies' paradise and apparently also the wedding capital of the South – can absolutely see why, it’s very pretty with the Smoky Mountains backdrop.  We would have liked to stay here, might come back one day!

Gatlinburg TN

Anyway we head south west, ultimate destination Nashville.  We have planned a slow day as Kim saw a guitar at the Country Music USA store yesterday which he wants to buy and I would like to visit the outlet malls, of course : )

Get on the road proper by early afternoon and make our way to a random campground just 60 miles away – Soaring Eagle, near Lenoir City.  We have driven a narrow, winding two opposing lane highway and seen two or three different car wrecking yards (?) full of rusty, old model, American cars – work in progress we assume!  We will spend the night here to regroup, look at all our leaflets etc. and plan how we want to tackle Nashville.