Thursday, August 18th, 2006
WOW, What a busy, fun filled couple of days! We arrived into
Tennessee late Tuesday evening and stayed in Clinton for the night. We were introduced to The Smokey Mountains, and to Kudzu - both of them are amazing. The mountains seem to exude smoke, or fog, I’m not sure why it is, but it’s weird . Kudzu is also weird, some kind of very fast growing, extremely invasive vine that in places covered everything. Made trees look like topiaries 
covered in ivy, apparently flowers too, that must be pretty. We have definitely entered a new world, the waitress asked if we wanted our ice tea sweetened, and Mike said yes-wow was it sweet, next time he’ll ask for half sweet. She also hand wrote May GOD Bless You on our receipt, that doesn’t happen in Idaho or California! We also saw billboards and buildings off the freeway “advertising” Christ. We found the largest Christian bookstore, over 15,000 sq ft. and saw Colonel Sanders birthplace. Wednesday morning w
e pressed on into Knoxville and into Pigeon Forge http://www.mypigeonforge.com/ where Dollywood is. http://www.dollywood.com/ Mike looked online and found if you enter Dollywood after 3pm you can go again the next day, so we stopped at on amazing outlet mall first. I found a Shoe Closet that had 
Carlos Santana heels originally $125.00 on sale for $19.99, needless to say I went back for another pair, and may even stop on our way out of town again in the morning. The main drag of Pigeon Forge is probably 10 miles long and stuffed with hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and go-cart tracks. There are trolleys that run the loop and stop at the campgrounds, really nice. They run from 8am-midnight and are .50 cents a ride; we probably have spent $20.00 on the trolley over the last 2 days, but better than un-hooking and fighting traffic and to park. So we made it into Dollywood (by trolley) Wed a little after 3pm it was almost 90 degrees, so we headed for the water rides. There is a flume ride called Daredevil Falls and boy did we get soaked. We wandered in and out of water rides trying to stay cool, until the park closed at 6pm. Back to the
RV to change into dry clothes and back on the trolley to go see a Broadway style musical of the life of Christ called Miracle. http://www.miracletheater.com/ Very entertaining, camels and sheep in the production (not singing) and angels flying over head on harnesses…quite a show! Boy did we sleep well that night, didn’t get to bed til midnight, and tonight will probably be the same, more Dollywood today and we’re tuckered out. Did some souvenir shopping this morning on our way to the trolley depot, got to Dollywood about noon and rode the train, some carnival type rides, and of course the water rides again, got a great picture. By about 4pm we had enough and headed for the strip to get some dinner, we will leave tomorrow and head into North Carolina (by way of that shoe store-of course) The south (Tennessee) has been great to us, and we have absolutely no regrets of moving here, the scenery is amazing and the people are great too, the weather is not that bad, and we feel God all around us. Looking forward to getting to church on Sunday - we’ll head to Kernersville and start to house hunt next week, very exciting. p Pigeon Forge is pretty neat lots of shopping, shows and attractions. If you go bring money! We stayed at the RiverEdge RV park http://www.stayriveredge.com/ It is nice too.
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