We had our first non-family-visiting-based vacation to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary (delayed by a season for nicer weather).
I discovered about 4 hours down the road that I was wearing my computer glasses, and had left my regular glasses at home. This worked out better than I expected it would (given that they’re meant to focus at about 3 feet!) but there were times when I really wished I’d had the right ones.
Gatlinburg was beautiful. The most mountainous of mountain vacation spots I’ve ever been to, aside from Pike’s Peak. It is a small town by necessity since it’s nestled in a relatively narrow valley, and it was clearly not designed for the amount of tourist traffic that it gets. But they have a free trolley, areas that are very pedestrian-friendly, and overall it works. Our motel was a small one toward the outskirts but still in town, and the lady behind the desk gave us the first of many warnings about the local bears.
The symbol of Gatlinburg, black bears are normally shy of people and are peaceful mostly-vegetarians. But idiots feed them (quite illegally — think $10K in fines plus over a year in prison) and they start to associate humans with food. This makes them bolder and more aggressive, and they have been breaking into cars, mauling people, etc. They’ve unfortunately had to put down a record number of bears this year and there was one human death. We didn’t see any ourselves during this trip, except from well above on the Ober tramway.
We had a couple of nice breakfasts at Pancake Pantry — delicious food but if you don’t show up within the first hour or less of opening, you may find yourself waiting outside in line for literally two hours — and one at a more humble but solid Southern breakfast place. We got to see Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies — a large and impressive aquarium with a massive tank that features a long underwater tunnel and a nice variety of animals. We visited several shops in the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community, and tasted and bought some great cider from Tennessee Cider Company. Ober Mountain and the supposed fall festival that was happening there were an expensive letdown, but we made up for it with a trolley ride to Waffles de Lys after dinner, and the fantastic Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail (especially the Place of a Thousand Drips).
If you’re ever in or near Pigeon Forge I heartily recommend The Local Goat, a large and busy (but worth it) restaurant that serves locally-sourced food. Everything was super delicious and I had probably the best burger of my life, as well as great fried green tomatoes, a very good side salad and a wonderful peanut butter cheesecake.
The next day we drove through Great Smoky Mountain National Park, a wonderful scenic mountain road, and then onward to Myrtle Beach. Our hotel was right on the beach and as we arrived, our balcony overlooked the tail end of sunset. The city itself had much less traffic than Gatlinburg, or rather more space for the traffic it had, despite a Jeep Jam that was just getting started. (Given that it was the end of October, they should have called it Jeepers Creepers.)
The beach was nice and clean, not terribly crowded (being in fall), and the water wasn’t super cold but the waves were rough enough that I only waded in about knee-deep. We spent a fair amount of time in the pool and hot tub, shaded from the sun by a neighboring hotel — high-rises aren’t all bad. We visited the other U.S. Ripley’s Aquarium (there’s a third in Toronto), a bit smaller than the Smokies location but still very nice and with some animals we’ve never seen elsewhere, like a zebra mantis shrimp and sloths. We had lunch at The Hangout (good food and piña coladas, but gets more loud and obnoxious around dinnertime) and dinner (with funnel cake) on the boardwalk.
The next day we drove a ways out of town to the Prince Frederick Chapel ruins, a Gothic revivalist church from the 1840s that had been torn down in the 60s except for its facade and bell tower. There’s a fence and security cameras to deter vandals, but we took several photos and drank in the quiet forest sounds and feeling. When I texted my mom about it, I found out that this is where Cousin George was buried!
But I was feeling increasing cold symptoms at that point. I got through a decent enough (second breakfast) lunch and some good no-sugar-added butter pecan from Kirk’s 1890 Ice Cream Parlor but with increasing fatigue from trying to breathe. I wound up spending the afternoon trying to get some rest, and then back to The Hangout for dinner.
My spouse thankfully took over most of the driving the next day, since I was feeling pretty miserable. We got ourselves to Chattanooga and decided against trying to do anything that evening.
The next morning I thought I was feeling a bit better, and we went ahead with our plans to breakfast at the Bluegrass Grill (extremely good, small breakfast place, highly recommended, again it’s better to come early than later in the morning if you don’t want to wait). I had the best cinnamon roll ever and a half “fancy bacon flight” (one big piece of Jamaican jerk spiced bacon, and one piece of surprisingly subtle orange clove bacon). We visited the Tennessee Aquarium, which is two separate buildings for “River Journey” and “Ocean Journey” and got to pet sturgeons as well as rays. Lunch was at Thai Smile nearby. At that point I was exhausted and we retired to the motel room to rest up, rather than visiting Lookout Mountain or either of the caverns we had as possible destinations. My spouse also started having more serious symptoms as well, and by the next morning, I was the one in better shape so I drove us home. Lovely fall colors in Kentucky and it would have been a generally pleasant and low-stress drive, if not for those colds.
Very glad that I had also taken today off for recovery purposes, otherwise I’d have called in sick. Also this morning I managed to trip over my own pantsleg and blanket getting out of bed, half-caught myself on the bed but slid to the floor and scraped the skin off my knee; then I cut my forehead shaving. I decided there will definitely be no chainsaw juggling today. Perhaps we will go do our early voting, and take care of renewing drivers’ licenses though (this needs to be taken care of soon since they’re closing DMV offices for software updates).
My father-in-law is visiting this weekend, so hopefully we’ll get better soon and not pass this cold on to him too.