Yesterday was a slower day--we didn't have to take any major drives and had just a few things on the to-do list. First--Tuckaleechee Caverns.
We were supposed to take a fairly direct route, though there really isn't a lot of direct anything in the the Smoky Mountain areas. I accidentally took us into the park, where we enjoyed a very scenic drive along a little river, which I believe is actually named Little River. We saw both a deer and wild turkey crossing the road and what looked to me like a juvenile bald eagle, whose head was only just starting to go white.
Turns out, this was the road that Tom had planned for us to go back on after the caverns. Oops! At least we got where we were going.
He's not a big fan of small, enclosed places, but Tuckaleechee Caverns is advertised as having about a very big room, so thought he'd give it a go. And it does! It also has some places where the clearance is only about four feet. That would have been all right, until we hit the spot where there were stairs going down, with a sixty foot drop on one side. Combination of cave plus heights was too much and he abandoned ship. Good news, this was pretty much at the beginning of the tour. I continued on in our group of about fourteen folks, who our guide had called a "small" group. It didn't seem that small to me until we were passing other groups down in the caverns, which might have been as many as thirty.
There were lovely formations, a very big room, a very big curtain formation, which was probably my favorite formation, and more, but what was probably the neatest thing--which I haven't experienced in other caves--was that there was a river going through almost the whole length of the caverns. We also saw a waterfall. Pretty neat overall.
Then we headed back toward Gatlinburg and went to see the Arts & Crafts Community, which we had missed the first time through. Turns out it's actually an eight-mile loop through the backwoods with galleries off the sides of the roads here and there. I purchased a small handmade broom and Tom picked up some Native American art.
Back to the hotel after lunch for a short nap for me, then we hit MagiQuest in Pigeon Forge. It had a large, well-done mirror maze, yet more mini-golf (which I only won by eight strokes this time), a laser obstacle course, which I was *awful* at and Tom did not partake of, and this weird MagiQuest thing, where you get a "magic" wand and do quests. Would have been a bit more fun for younger folks, but I generally enjoyed it.
It was the last day in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area, and while I enjoyed it, I was ready to move along.
Onward!
We were supposed to take a fairly direct route, though there really isn't a lot of direct anything in the the Smoky Mountain areas. I accidentally took us into the park, where we enjoyed a very scenic drive along a little river, which I believe is actually named Little River. We saw both a deer and wild turkey crossing the road and what looked to me like a juvenile bald eagle, whose head was only just starting to go white.
Turns out, this was the road that Tom had planned for us to go back on after the caverns. Oops! At least we got where we were going.
He's not a big fan of small, enclosed places, but Tuckaleechee Caverns is advertised as having about a very big room, so thought he'd give it a go. And it does! It also has some places where the clearance is only about four feet. That would have been all right, until we hit the spot where there were stairs going down, with a sixty foot drop on one side. Combination of cave plus heights was too much and he abandoned ship. Good news, this was pretty much at the beginning of the tour. I continued on in our group of about fourteen folks, who our guide had called a "small" group. It didn't seem that small to me until we were passing other groups down in the caverns, which might have been as many as thirty.
There were lovely formations, a very big room, a very big curtain formation, which was probably my favorite formation, and more, but what was probably the neatest thing--which I haven't experienced in other caves--was that there was a river going through almost the whole length of the caverns. We also saw a waterfall. Pretty neat overall.
Then we headed back toward Gatlinburg and went to see the Arts & Crafts Community, which we had missed the first time through. Turns out it's actually an eight-mile loop through the backwoods with galleries off the sides of the roads here and there. I purchased a small handmade broom and Tom picked up some Native American art.
Back to the hotel after lunch for a short nap for me, then we hit MagiQuest in Pigeon Forge. It had a large, well-done mirror maze, yet more mini-golf (which I only won by eight strokes this time), a laser obstacle course, which I was *awful* at and Tom did not partake of, and this weird MagiQuest thing, where you get a "magic" wand and do quests. Would have been a bit more fun for younger folks, but I generally enjoyed it.
It was the last day in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area, and while I enjoyed it, I was ready to move along.
Onward!
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