{"id":850,"date":"2012-10-10T07:32:54","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T11:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=850"},"modified":"2012-10-10T07:32:54","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T11:32:54","slug":"pigeon-forge-tn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/10\/pigeon-forge-tn\/","title":{"rendered":"Pigeon Forge, TN"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, let me admit that I am a wuss when it comes to roller coasters.\u00a0 That wasn’t always the case; when I was young I loved them.\u00a0 Not that I had many opportunities to ride, as Wisconsin is not exactly Roller Coaster Heaven.\u00a0 But I fondly recall some trips in which a roller coaster remains as a vivid memory.\u00a0 And I rode the wooden roller coaster (top speed: 35 mph) at Canobie Lake whenever I could.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t ride any of the 5 roller coasters offered at Dollywood<\/a>.\u00a0 I almost went on the Mystery Mine coaster – until a helpful patron told me that the ride begins with an 80-foot vertical climb in the dark.\u00a0 I wasn’t sure I could do that without some fresh Depends on hand, so I moved on.\u00a0 The wooden roller coaster was the finest I have ever seen and I think I could have managed that, but I saw that first when I was still window-shopping.\u00a0 The new Wild Eagle ride – a coaster in which you ride on the wings, dangling over space – looked to be pretty gentle in terms of G’s, but the 6 loops scared me off.\u00a0 The fourth one was another that started in the dark, so I passed.\u00a0 The fifth one was entirely in the dark.\u00a0 That one intrigued me as I suspect it would have been like Space Mountain at Disneyworld, which I enjoyed, but it was getting late by that time so I passed on that one, too.<\/p>\n

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The Wild Eagle coaster<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Mystery Mine tower and Wild Eagle loop<\/p><\/div>\n

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The wooden coaster<\/p><\/div>\n

I sure that I will regret not having gone on any of them – and I could have done ALL of them as there were no lines anywhere all day –\u00a0 but I am pretty sure that we will return as we really enjoyed the park.\u00a0 The most daring thing I did was Adventure Mountain which is basically a ropes walk\/climb.\u00a0 It was more challenging than I expected – especially the section where I had to balance on a 6-inch beam and hug a rock wall – but was a lot of fun.\u00a0 I just had to ignore the 10-year-olds who went three times faster than me.\u00a0 The downside of being there on a cold day – besides shivering on the train ride up into the forest – was that a number of attractions were closed.\u00a0 Adventure Mountain is actually 3 ropes courses but only one was open.<\/p>\n

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Navigating Adventure Mountain<\/p><\/div>\n

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The rock wall and balance beam<\/p><\/div>\n

I mentioned the train.\u00a0 I was impressed.\u00a0 This is no little miniature; this is the real deal – a 2-8-2 steam locomotive that originally worked on the Alaska Railway.\u00a0 It billowed smoke (and covered us with minute specks of coal cinder) and belched prodigious amounts of steam, but gave me a real sense of what travel in the era of steam locomotives would have been like.<\/p>\n

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The belching locomotive<\/p><\/div>\n

We dined at Miss Lillian’s Chicken House, an all-you-can-eat buffet of fried chicken an chicken-fried steak.\u00a0 Jett and I agreed that it was the best fried chicken dinner we have ever had.\u00a0 Crispy skin, juicy meat, tasty sides.\u00a0 I went back for seconds.<\/p>\n

We also saw Dolly’s bus.\u00a0 It was nice, but old (built in 1996) with NO SLIDES.\u00a0 Simply barbaric.\u00a0 But we got to see where she slept while on the road and her dressing table with one of her wigs.<\/p>\n

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Dolly’s bedroom<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dolly’s bus<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dolly’s wig<\/p><\/div>\n

While we were enjoying Dollywood, the dogs were enjoying(?) Doggywood, Dollywood’s kennel.\u00a0 They kept both of our mutts in a nice clean cage all day for $25.\u00a0 Very reasonable.\u00a0 We stopped by after lunch to take them for a walk, then returned to the park.\u00a0 We appreciated how thoughtful Dollywood was in providing that facility for dog lovers.<\/p>\n

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Incarcerated<\/p><\/div>\n

In general, we felt that Dollywood was exceptionally clean, friendly and very thoughtfully laid out.\u00a0 Adjacent to most of the major rides was a kiddie park, for the enjoyment of those too small for the big rides.\u00a0 A family with children in a range of ages could let the teenagers ride the coaster while mom or dad hung out in the kiddie area.\u00a0 And very nice kiddie areas, too.<\/p>\n

Dollywood wasn’t cheap – the senior all-day pass was $51.\u00a0 But a full day at Canobie Lake is $30 and you get a lot more at Dollywood.\u00a0 We thought it was worth the price.\u00a0 It would have definitely been worth the price if I hadn’t been a wuss and had experienced those superb coasters.<\/p>\n

Our campsite for the Pigeon Forge hop was the Creekside RV Park<\/a>.\u00a0 It was not our favorite place.\u00a0 We were lucky enough to get a pull-through site, but it was barely large enough for the rig.\u00a0 In general the sites were small.\u00a0 It was also very soggy due to the four days of rain that preceded our arrival – not the park’s fault, but it didn’t help improve our impression.<\/p>\n

Today we move on to Nashville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, let me admit that I am a wuss when it comes to roller coasters.\u00a0 That wasn’t always the case; when I was young I loved them.\u00a0 Not that I had many opportunities to ride, as Wisconsin is not exactly Roller Coaster Heaven.\u00a0 But I fondly recall some trips in which a roller coaster remains … 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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,4,5,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gtw","category-places","category-rvparks","category-places-tn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-dI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","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=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}