As I mentioned before, Steve, Anthony, and me took a trip into the mountains!
Wait...Is that grammar correct? Should it be Steve, Anthony, and I? Eh, whatever. Bite me grammar Nazis!
Anyways, we met early on Friday morning and hauled our cookies from Huntsville into Tennessee! It wasn't a terribly long drive.
Our first stop was in Chattanooga. There is a restaurant there that Steve and I like, called the Maple Street Biscuit Company, and we wanted to have brunch there, as well as visiting a distillery that Steve knew about so that he could get some bourbon or scotch that you could only get at their brick and mortar shop.
We had breakfast (well, I kind of did, but more on that later) visited the distillery, and then ended up walking a bit downtown before getting on our way. I didn't know the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel was a thing! It was so cool to go into the lobby and see what used to be the station! It also has some trains parked in it's backyard, which was pretty darn neat, too. It was also really cold outside, so we didn't stay long. We wondered around a bit and then got back on the road.
The drive to Gatlinburg is really beautiful in some places. Maybe not the miles and miles of interstate exactly, but once you get into the mountains and the road gets twisty, it's really a very pretty drive.
We made it into Pigeon Forge at around 4:00, I think, and Anthony got to get hit right away with the absolute cheese of the place. He was not impressed. Pigeon Forge is a hole. I don't know any other way to say it, but it is! It's just a few miles of tourist traps, bad souvenir shops, and traffic. It has a couple of places worth visiting, if you want to stop here and there, but mostly it's just depressingly awful among the pretty scenery. It's like a redneck version of the Las Vegas strip, but somehow not as classy.
We finally got up to the drive from Pigeon Forge to Gatlinburg and eventually made it to our hotel, which was located at the far end of the main street. Don't get me wrong, Gatlinburg is also very touristy and crowded, but it has a tiny bit of charm to it. Well, at least I think so. We did find that it was super crowded, but it was a holiday weekend and that is kind of expected. We also found out that the town was hosting a Church of Christ Youth Conference, so it was full of teenagers. They were loud, but well behaved for the most part.
Our hotel was...how can I express it...not great, but utterly sufficient for our needs. Granted, I'm a bit of a hotel snob, well, in that I want where I'm staying to feel safe, have inside hallways if possible, be clean, and be comfortable. I'll even forgo a bit of the comfort as long as the clean and safe parts exist. We chose the particular place because of it's location, which was nicely situated on the far end of the main street, within walking distance to a few things that we wanted to see, and within just a few minutes of the Smoky Mountain National Park. Anthony wanted to do nature stuff. Steve wanted to visit distilleries. I just wanted to have a fun trip! It was a fine location for all of that. It was maybe not so comfortable and the shower was terrible, and we found popcorn under our bed (we didn't eat any popcorn at all) but it was safe and the bed was clean, and we didn't spend a great deal of time in the room other than to sleep, so we didn't make a fuss. Anthony said his room was the same. I looked on the website, and neither of our rooms were anywhere near as nice as they ones they advertise, so I think the owners should look into the ethics of truth in advertising.
BUT...we made it, got all suited up for the cold, very cold, weather, and started our visit! We spent that evening walking down the strip and trying to plan out what we were going to do for the rest of our time there. That was fun, even though there were SO many people around. I still don't think I'm used to being in crowds yet. We managed to have good timing when we found a place to eat, so that we didn't have to wait for hours to get a table. It was an Italian place that boasted having the best pizza in town, but since we hadn't had pizza anywhere else in town, we didn't know if it was true or not! I didn't eat pizza (but more on that later) but after we ate, we walked around some more, looked at stuff, joked and had a good time before we went back to the hotel to sleep!
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