{"id":10030,"date":"2021-04-23T18:51:52","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T22:51:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=10030"},"modified":"2022-01-15T12:53:36","modified_gmt":"2022-01-15T17:53:36","slug":"return-to-pigeon-forge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/23\/return-to-pigeon-forge\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Pigeon Forge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One of the many Pigeon Forge tourist traps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday was a lousy day, weather-wise. Cool, wet, dreary. I got stir-crazy and decided to take a road trip to Pigeon Forge, about 30 miles to the east of Walland. I wanted to see the town again, which I first saw in 2012 in our first month on the road. I wasn’t expecting it to be any less tacky than the first time, but the town – and Dollywood – had a special meaning for Jett and me. It was the place where our desire to travel the country solidified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you aren’t familiar with our first month in an RV, it could be characterized as “hell.” Three blowouts, the last doing serious damage to the RV, and a miserable, rainy Columbus Day weekend in a Motel 6 in Knoxville while RV repairs were being made. Jett was in favor of scrapping our plans and returning to Massachusetts. I reminded her that we had rented our house for a year and had no place to return to. Didn’t matter. There were a lot of tears that weekend. Mostly hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday we retrieved the repaired RV and made our way an hour south to Pigeon Forge, to spend a day at Dollywood. Our hearts weren’t really in it and the day, though sunny, was very cool, in the 50s. But we went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And had a wonderful time. Dollywood <\/a>was a revelation. I didn’t ride the many great roller coasters, but we had the best fried chicken dinner ever, toured Dolly’s RV, visited the dogs that we had booked for the day at Doggywood <\/a>and generally shed all of the misery that had accumulated over those awful first 30 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our trip – and our faith in our RV lifestyle – was saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weather was even worse on Wednesday than it was on that Columbus Day in 2012 – highs in the 40s. I had no intention of going into Dollywood, but I had to do a drive-by and give it a salute. And I found my eyes getting damp. I was touched in a way that I didn’t expect. This was where our 8 years on the road really began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Jett, I made it back to Dollywood. Wish you had been with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday was a lousy day, weather-wise. Cool, wet, dreary. I got stir-crazy and decided to take a road trip to Pigeon Forge, about 30 miles to the east of Walland. I wanted to see the town again, which I first saw in 2012 in our first month on the road. I wasn’t expecting it to … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4,27,16,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-places","category-rv-living","category-places-tn","category-tn7"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-2BM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10831,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10030\/revisions\/10831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}