Holy Kitsch (and Mini-Golf), Batman!

This day was a on the docket to be a very long one, so we got up early and made our way to a place which is ubiquitous across much of the country, but which neither of us had been to before--Waffle House.

My impressions: no-muss, no fuss.  The menu is lean and not exactly inspiring, but covers your basics (and apparently every possible hash brown topping) at a very reasonable price.  I liked my eggs and sausage, but was not enamored of the hash browns (no toppings) and toast.

Then, we were on the road to Gatlinburg.  It was a long, but lovely, drive.  There are seemingly endless hills, with lots of trees along the way.  For a person whose usual long drive from Seattle to Portland is probably 2/3s urban or suburban, it was a really refreshing change. 

The rest stop we hit was clean, indoors (?!) and had several folk staffing it who were able to answer my question about the purple-blossomed trees.  Apparently they are called Redbuds.  One noted that while their color doesn't match their name, they're the reason his eyes are all red.  Heh.

Once we turned off I-40 towards Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg we discovered a whole new world of ALL THE KITSCH!  And all the traffic.  The roads are lined with every sort of roadside attraction.  Many Ripley's museums, dinner shows, carnival rides, live goats (?), live alligators (??), and buildings in all sorts of shapes, from medieval castles to the Titanic.

By the time we finally reached Gatlinburg I was about ready to run away screaming, but we did manage to get ourselves parked and out among the throngs of vacationers.  Our first activity was a moonshine-themed escape room, which we did with a family of one father with three teen to pre-teen daughters.  We did not escape, but we were about thirty seconds away from completing the last puzzle when the buzzer went off.

Next we continued down the road and found a little place called The Village, which was very quaint and filled with little Old-World styled buildings with more modern shops.  Tom enjoyed the Fine Art gallery where he made a purchase of some lovely prints of naval battles.  We both found goodies at the Celtic store, and we enjoyed some German food in a quiet spot over the cheese shop.  It was nice to be someplace not swarming with people.

After that it was time for mini-golf.  There is so...much...mini-golf in Gatlinburg.  We played three courses.  The first was sort of Indiana Jones adventure-themed.  A pleasant enough course, and the first demonstration that if we are ever faced with needing to play mini-golf for any important reasons, I had better be the one to do it.  I won the first round 55 to 73.

Next was a nine-hole black light course, undersea themed.  Very nice atmosphere with nice art and appropriate music.  I won that round 24 (including a hole in one!) to 4`1.

Last was a really cool 18-hole course working its way up a hillside--built with nice wooden ramps and stairs and including some interpretive history of the area.  I won that round 51to 73.

Tom did find that he scored best when he sort of hit one-handed, backwards, and with a kind of sashay in time with the music.  I have NO IDEA how that worked, but it did.

Finally, it was time to escape Gatlinburg and go back up the road to Pigeon Forge.

We're in the hotel now and anticipating our full day at Dollywood tomorrow!

Welcome to Nashville!

I've been to Nashville before, when I was a college freshman on choir tour.  My primary memory is of being quite sick and having my homestay folks  bring me to their son's pediatrician, who diagnosed me with bronchitis and prescribed antibiotics.  This turns out to have been a good thing, since the choir later got snowed in for a week in Asheville, North Carolina and if I didn't already have those antibiotics, that would have been even less enjoyable than it already was!

So now, more than two decades later, I'm back.  My husband and I are both not particular fans of country music, so rather than doing the Grand Old Opry or other more country-oriented activities, we visited the Belle Meade Plantation and Cheekwood Estate and Gardens.

Belle Meade used to be a large plantation specifically dedicated to breeding racehorses.  The current property is much smaller than it used to be.  Original buildings include the Mansion, the Carriage House and Stables, the Dairy, the Gardener's House, the Smoke House, and the Harding Cabin, a very early building on the property.

The grounds were mostly open for exploration and I enjoyed getting to learn about some of the folks who had been involved with the plantation.  Everything was easily walkable with pleasant trees, including Southern Magnolias, Black Walnut, and a ubiquitous tree with small purple blooms, but not much in the way of leaves.  They're everywhere, but I haven't yet been able to learn what they are.

There were two tour options, the Mansion Tour, including the family's parts of the mansion, and Journey to Jubilee, which "focuses on the African-American experience during and after slavery."  We took the latter tour.  Our guide was named Jasmine and she was incredibly knowledgeable about not just the Belle Meade family, but about the history, politics and economics surrounding slavery.  We were very impressed with her presentation.  She didn't sugar-coat things, and asked a lot of questions designed to make folks think--including in ways that I hadn't really considered.  After emancipation, for example, what did freedom look like?  What about vagrancy laws?  What about using the penal system as a way to maintain the social status-quo?

We also learned about lots of things in the past that could kill you--like arsenic in the green paint in the original wallpaper in the Mansion, and the doctor who prescribed running up stairs in a corset and smoking "asthma cigarettes" to help cure asthma.  Did not work...

One of the coolest things to learn about Belle Meade is that most of the best racehorses in past many decades can trace their lineage to Bonnie Scotland, a sire horse who was purchased by General W E Harding of Belle Meade in `857.  There was a graph showing the descendants from Bonnie Scotland which included Secretariat, Seabiscuit, Seattle Slew, American Pharoah...and more.  So that was quite nifty!

Next we traveled a few more miles down a lovely avenue among quite grand homes to Cheekwood.  Cheekwood is a larger estate on a hill.  It has several gardens (which were lovely--though mostly not in bloom yet), the Estate perched on the very top of the hill, and some other smaller buildings.  The estate house building began in `1929-completed in 1932.  It's quite grand--much larger than the Belle Meade manson, and outfitted in high style.  There are also art exhibits inside.  There was a fascinating woven rug wall-hanging made to look like it was melting and stretching, including spaces which were not woven straight-through, but had holes straight through to the wall.  That was our favorite piece.

At the base of one of the gardens is a lovely little model train set-up amid a number of large tree stumps.  The train cars were probably the size of a small cat, and ran on tracks through the trunks, over bridges overhead, and everything was decorated with nature-themed art, including giant mushrooms, bugs, and designs made of rocks or wood.

There was also a Japanese garden, a dogwood garden (which we're glad was *not* in bloom as husband is wildly allergic), a terrace garden, and water garden.

The warmth and humidity of the day finally started to surrender to a lovely brisk breeze and a few sprinkles.  We grabbed some nibbles at the beer garden on the way out, where a country music group was performing, including an instrumental version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

Back to the hotel fairly early, and then we settled in for the evening's exciting weather, including Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and Tornado Warnings on the TV.  So far the tornado warnings have been just north of us, but we did get some amazing sideway rain and waves in the parking lot.  Didn't see much in the way of any lightning, though.

We're on the road early tomorrow--when temperatures should have dropped about 20 degrees.  Looking forward to some cooler and, hopefully, less humid weather.  And fewer tornado warnings!

Welcome to Nashville!