We left Hendersonville, Tennessee after a stop at Starbucks and filling up our gas tank at a Kroeger Grocery store Station. Kroeger in Washington is either our Fred Meyer stores or our QFC stores.
Right about here on the road our clocks turned forward an hour and we were now in the Eastern Time Zone!
We really weren’t prepared for our drive through Sevierville and Pigeon Forge and the strange sights we would see.
This was promising but then we drove into the bizarre world of Pigeon Forge.
What!?
The Hatfields and the McCoys!
The Titanic?
We weren’t able to make it to Rushmore but this did not make up for it!
A Bavarian Denny’s? This town had an amazing amount of dinner theaters of different genres to experience. There were some great looking miniature golf properties but so many other tacky unusual properties.
We did not divert our path further to go to Dollywood.
Now this was more like it. This was the scenery we were expecting on our Smoky Mountain Detour.
This was in the town of Gatlinburg. This town had a lot of candy shops, donut shops, fudge shops, taffy shops and Whiskey shops.
Ripley’s Aquarium was also located here. I’m scared to think of what kind of creatures you would see in there.
We bought a sandwich here and headed out to our destination on this day which was Asheville, North Carolina.
We laughed real hard when we crossed this river 8 times during our detour!
We made it to Asheville at 5:30, checked into our hotel and then got ready for our dinner reservation at the Omni Grove Hotel on their Sunset Terrace. That experience will be a future post!
We are so happy to be here in Asheville for a two day stretch. We spent most of the day at the Biltmore Estate properties today and walked our feet off. We are chilling in our hotel room tonight having a picnic in our room instead of heading out to eat. The weather was beautiful today. Tomorrow we drive our final miles on this road trip across the U.S.A.
Thanks to all of you bloggy friends for following along with us on this journey across the U.S.A.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 
Fun to see the touristy places…I know that the Biltmore Estate must have been wonderful. Ahhhh…and this leg of your journey ends tomorrow. The anticipation must be running high. Thank you very much for sharing the journey with us. It has been very enjoyable.
Following we are…and enjoying “our” trip! Thanks for taking us along, Ellen and Katie!
You must be so glad that your destination is near!! You’ve done well and I am enjoying your comments and observations. Thanks so much for including us “bloggy friends”. What a trip!
Pigeon Forge is the weirdest place I’ve ever been. We never went into any of the places there but it was an experience driving through.
It’s all looking quite familiar over there…and bringing back good memories. I’m looking forward to your tour of the Biltmore Estate.
Ooooh, the Biltmore! Hope you are rested up, Ellen.
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