Spring Break Chronicle Part II

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Part II – Pigeon Forge Tennessee

            My former roommate, Mark, and I left early Saturday morning in order to get to the trailhead in time to put a couple of miles under our belt be for we set up camp for the first night. As is always the case, our well laid plans came to ruin at the hand of some external force. The first external force: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Few experiences change me as dramatically and convincingly as the experience of sitting in grid locked traffic in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Honestly, I felt as if I was in a movie about where materialism is headed in twenty years. Only that movie was made in the 1980’s so everything looks ridiculously old and simultaneously futuristic at the same time.

            The initial roadside shops did not appear to be so bad. In fact, the world’s largest knife store evoked a kind of stir inside me to the effect that I couldn’t believe that I was going to bypass the opportunity to be surrounded by so many sharp objects at once. Alas, however, the trail awaits, and so on we must press. The Comedy Barn of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee decided that it must monopolize every Billboard in town and somehow decided “As seen on YouTube” was a clever slogan. We past the As Seen on TV store, where I can only assume you can buy assorted unnecessary goods and similarly unnecessary prices (although, my pursuit of the ever elusive Snuggie may have ended if I had submitted to my desire to pull into the boob tube shop).

            Soon, the shock and awe of gaudy stores, and ridiculous tourist trap destinations (let’s just say Ripley’s had multiple storefronts in this town, if that’s any indication of the quality of attraction we are dealing with here) wore off and the drive became not unexpectedly fatiguing. Outlet malls almost seemed mundane compared to the spectacle of the “Miracle Theatre” and “Mystery Land” which featured a giant mansion completely upside down. Still, I was tempted to pull over and play “Firehouse golf” or ride on “Earthquake: the ride.” What I was most disappointed in was that every fifth storefront was a closed down pancake house. I’m not sure if it was because the delicious breakfast flap jack market was saturated, or people were too busy playing novelty-themed putt-putt, but I was deeply saddened to see that in a market where clearly any bad idea could thrive, the griddles were going begging.

            To get the proper mental image, one must consider that this was not some two-lane trek through a block of ridiculousity. I was on a six, seven, even eight-lane road in bumper to bumper traffic, allowing ample time to consider the finer points of Wild Woody’s Go Karts. And maybe it was because I didn’t need to touch the gas pedal for an hour, but the street and traffic seemed to go on forever. It surely covered at least 5 miles. And to cap this all of, I had to resist the urge at the end of the trip to hang a left and travel down Dollywood lane to prove to myself that somehow, one can parlay prominent assets into not only a county music career, but also a theme park (which amazingly is not sponsored by the chicken wing empire which parlayed similar goods to an atrocious restaurant chain despite decidedly mediocre food).

            Finally, once we were past Dollywood and the multitude of hotels featuring colossal water slides traveling out and back into the building, we seemed to be instantly transported into another world. The lanes on my side of the road went down from five to two and the jarring landscape was changed from gaudiness to natural beauty instantaneously. There was a branch off to the right for the Gatlinburg bypass, which I didn’t see until the last second and didn’t fully understand till the next slow-down ensued.

Click here to read Part III