Hooray for Dollywood

I have lots to do before I move, so taking a day off from preparations probably will hurt me, but I applied Australia Rules and, besides, I needed a break.  I went with Elmer and Mrs. Fudd to Dollywood yesterday.  It was a nice break.

First off, I couldn't sleep in, as I've become accustomed to.  I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. so that I could leave at 6:00 to arrive at Elmer's house by 7:30.  (That included time for getting lost, naturally, as he lives in the middle of nowhere and, because we're at the far end of the time zone, it was pitch dark the whole drive, so I kept having to flash my brights to read the street signs, and I missed the road anyway, since it was a funky intersection where three roads converged, and the sign I was looking for was not the one closer to the intersection.)  Then it was to be another two hour drive from there to Dollywood.  The actual travel time was longer, as we had to stop for them to have breakfast (and a second, but small, breakfast for me) and to buy mushrooms.

Yes, I said mushrooms.  There's a factory called Monterey Mushrooms at exit 72 on Interstate 75 where they raise mushrooms, and any not selected for market are boxed or bagged up and put in a refrigerator at the guard shack for anyone to drive up and buy.  According to the friendly guard, the crops harvested vary, and so do the times, so you could even show up at 2 a.m. and get some, or they might have one species one day then not again for three weeks.  Yesterday, they had white, button mushrooms (5-lb. bag for $4.00), large portabellas (6-8 in a 10-lb. box for $12.50), and "baby bellas", which were small like the buttons but colored like the portabellas (5-lb. box for $10.00).  It's just as well I don't care for mushrooms, as I certainly couldn't eat that many before moving.  (If you want any of their leftover compost for your yard, it's $30 for a small pickup-load and $35 for a large one.)

First up at Dollywood was an 8-buck charge to park the car.  (All of a sudden, shelling out $3 to park all day in downtown Noog doesn't sound so steep.)  The tram ride to the entrance was a nice courtesy, but the lots should be restriped for ease of figuring the way in/out, not solely for squeezing the highest number of cars in the lot as possible.  (I presume all the surly teens or twenty-somethings were back at school and thus weren't available to direct cars.)  It's a good thing we showed up fairly early, so we made it to Lot C instead of D or E.  (There was a surprising number of patrons there.  Yes, it was a Saturday, but tourist season is over, and it was cold and cloudy and threatening rain all day, so why weren't we the only ones there?)

It's not just rides and overpriced gift shops and overpriced food outlets in Dollywood.  There also were booths with craftspeople demonstrating how they made the items, which you (naturally) could purchase.  People were making belts, wooden musical instruments, glass, various wooden knickknacks, etc.  Many of the music shows this month were of a gospel theme, so we listened to snippets of one of them, a bluegrass trio, and a 1950's-themed a cappella group (some of the missing twenty-somethings, but they weren't surly).  We browsed through the gift shops (couldn't even find a T-shirt I liked), and we weren't about to shell out big bucks for the overpriced food ($17 per adult for the country buffet, but $2 cheaper at the fried chicken buffet, and I'm not paying no $7 for no funnel cake!  We had lunch/dinner at a restaurant down the highway, after leaving the park.)  The show featuring injured or human-imprinted (and thus non-releaseable) birds of prey was nice – or maybe I'm saying that just because the show included a Great Horned Owl and an Eastern Screech Owl.  (They played the typical call of a Screech Owl, and I think that was the sound I heard for the only time during one of my walks earlier in the week.  I've heard a Great Horned Owl in the neighborhood several times.)

"But, Cap'n," you ask, "didn't you go on any rides?"

Well, yes, but only a couple.  I didn't go on any roller coasters because I won't go on any that take you upside down, and the only one that didn't would take you sideways, and I didn't think I would like doing that, either.  And, based on previous experience, I don't do well with rides which spin me rapidly in circles.  So, we went on the carousel (a much gentler circle), where some punk kid beat me to the dragon and some punk man beat me to the ostrich, so I had to settle for a horse, and we rode on the narrow gauge train (built in 1943 for use by a mining company in Skagway, Alaska) for a 5-mile loop through the park and surrounding area.  Some of the rides were designated on the park map as gentler, but Mrs. Fudd said they were intended for small children, so I probably wouldn't have fit in them in the first place.  One of the water rides had been shut down already for the season, and no one was on the other one (because it was so chilly), so they shouldn't have bothered having it running in the first place.  (If you don't want to walk around wet after that, you can stand inside a drying chamber afterward – for $3.00.)

We spent 5-6 hours at the park, and I could see spending all day there and not experiencing everything, if you wanted to.  On top of that, the entry price of $57.00 per adult suddenly becomes more affordable if you buy a season pass for $86.00 and go at least twice in a year.  (The Fudd's did that, as their young grandchildren visit them several times a year.)  So, if you want to go on every ride (i.e. if you're not a chicken like me) and listen to every show and watch/talk to every craftsperson, go for the season pass, and you can spend as much time there as you want.

The area around Pigeon Forge, Dolly Parton's hometown (When she was growing up, do you think she imagined there ever would be a 6-lane, divided highway in her little town?  And it's paved!) is crammed with [places calling themselves] antique stores and outlet stores, so you could spend an awful lot of time and money in that community if you want to, and we didn't even make it to Gatlinburg yesterday, and....

Yes, I have pictures, but I want to fill up my disk first, and then I can post a couple here.  (I didn't take many in the first place, since you can imagine most of the cutesy, country-themed facades on your own -- or you can perform a Google image search.  Yeah, like that one.)  That is, if I have time before leaving the Noog.  I called to schedule the last day for my utilities, but I still have to get my mail forwarded (which involves a trip to the post office, because stingy old me isn't about to pay a dollar for the convenience of doing so online), and....

Sigh.  It was nice to have a day off, though.