The Kings of Huntsville

Gatlingurg 2004 (1st Anniversary)

Now that I’ve slacked and a week has gone by, pictures are up from our trip up to Gatlinburg. Highlights of our stay in the Honey Bear were trips up Clingman’s Dome and to Rainbow Falls. Both were quite pretty. We’re also both very sure that we would not have been able to make it up to see Rainbow Falls if it hadn’t been for the last two months of working out. Getting to the top was challenging and left us worn out, but it was also a lot of fun (2.7 miles up-hill — rated moderate in the tourism guides)



One other bit of fun we had was our ability to outsmart ourselves. As we were travling north of I-75, we saw TN-321 which was on our map as one of the roads that was in Gatlinburg. Our map didn’t show 321 connecting to I-75, but we just figured they didn’t want to draw it in (and MapQuest must have just opted for the larger hwy route). So instead of the route that would take us up and through Knoxville, over a few miles, and then south through Pigeon Forge to Gatlinburg, we decided to take our ‘shortcut’. An hour or so later, we realized that things weren’t as we expected when we found ourselves in Pigeon Forge (though we thought would be coming into Gatlinburg from the west). For the curious, take a look at the map.
We did get to see a lot of the country (which was VERY pretty) and drive lots of curvy mountain roads (scary and fun).

As for Gatlinburg itself, it is an interesting conglomoration of the Ripley’s tourist events (5 total now), fudge shops, pancake shops, and Bible outlets. There were a few other stores, but every other store seemed to fit one of these categories. Oh… gotta add Thomas Kincade stores (there are at least four downtown Gatlinburg)

That just about does it for this year. We went the week before our anniversary this year to avoid higher holiday weekend rates. That will probably end up being a trend that we keep in the future. Today, on our actual anniversary, we’ve watched some movies, we picked up some sticks in the yard, and I mowed the lawn. Dinner was a buy-one/get-one deal on pizza that we went in on with the neighbors (the calories don’t count because it wasn’t our idea, right?)