To remind me to pray for the people of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge I’m re-posting about one of the days from Katie and my road trip from Seattle to Jacksonville, North Carolina in May of 2014. We were driving her and a lot of her stuff back to Camp Le Jeune in anticipation of Andrew’s return from Afghanistan.
Praying for this area of our country that is burning. Praying for rain and containment. Also praying for the people who have lost everything. Not forgetting to pray, too, for the Firefighters and First Responders.
From May of 2014…
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 and 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.
Now back to 2016 I’ll be linking this post to signs, signs with Lesley.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 
How sad that the Great Smokey Mountains are now smoking. Rain is a blessing!
That is the most wonkiest thing I’ve ever seen and heard! Wouldn’t blame you for not stepping into a bizarre world at the aquarium. Too much!!!
It must feel surreal to know that so much of what you have seen is destroyed. I heard it first in Blogdom from Donna at Cottage Days and now here. Went to see images and video online…unbelievable. So sad to think that this is the result of arson. Yes, praying.
Sure glad some rain as come along for them.
Wow that is some place!!
I’ve probably said this already but my son David just moved to Ashville.
I am not sure what has been going on that you are referring to, but I hope that you and yours are all well and safe. xx
We are fine Amy. This area in Tennessee has had fires that are not contained and several evacuations are in place. We are wet and soppy in the Seattle area right now!
Beautiful Smokies in the spring and so so hard to see this being burnt up so we do indeed pray for rain.
I loved seeing your visit to this area as it brought back fun memories of our trip there in summer 2015.
I dream of visiting TN someday.
My SIGNS, SIGNS
That’s a nice tribute Ellen and they sure need our prayers and good thoughts. We actually stayed in Pigeon Forge for a few days (RV) -and then moved to Gatlinburg for a few more. (One of our longer RV travel days, ha ha). It was all a rather a surreal experience I’ll say that. We then went to Asheville as well and loved it — we stayed there until it snowed on Thanksgiving, then headed to our winter destination near Mobile Alabama. Every bit of that trip was new and different country( and people )to a couple of Pacific Northwesterners, as you perfectly understand having been there and done that!
Some friends of ours were staying in Gatlinburg after spending Thanksgiving with some relatives in the South. The town was evacuated that very night, and I kept praying and watching their Facebook page to see that they had made it to safety. Praise God, they did!
Fire is a devastating thing!
This is interesting.
This is so sad. Thank you for reminding us to pray for this tragedy and for all the people it has affected.
How sad to hear of the devastation caused by the fires over there. If only we could have shared some of our rain with them over the past two months!
What beautiful countryside! So sad that fire has taken so many lives there and destroyed so much 😦
Blessings,
Aimee
Such a beautiful place and in our prayers!