Gatlinburg & Pigeon Forge Vacation Recommendations

It has become a family tradition of sorts to venture off east of home to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge Tennessee at least once a year. Some of the family have been doing this for decades and have strong opinions on their favorite restaurants, things to do, places to shop, and more. Parking places are all important in Gatlinburg as well. I have decided to share some vacation photographs and reveal some of the family recommendations.

Family Fun

Chimneys Picnic Area – Great Smokey Mountains National Park – We like to take KFC to the park for lunch and climb around the moutain stream. Our picnic table was right up against the creek bed. There hadn't been a lot of rain so there wasn't as much water flowing as in previous years but it was still pretty.



Roaring Fork Motor Trail – Great Smokey Mountains National Park – Got people in the group who can’t exactly go hiking? This trail lets you ride in your car. Many historic cabins, historical markers, some foot trails you can take to waterfalls, and more.

Dollywood – Pigeon Forge – Theme park with kid’s rides, thrill rides, water rides, carnival games, shows, arts & crafts, steam engine train, food, etc. Bigger and nicer than you think. One of the best wooden roller coasters around!






Dollywood’s Splash Country Water Adventure Park – Pigeon Forge – Water park associated with Dollywood. Water slides, lazy river, wave pool, and other excuses to get wet.

Davy Crocket Mini Golf - Gatlinburg - A well maintained mini golf course popular with youngsters.

Favorite Places for Breakfast

Pancake Pantry – Gatlinburg - A must for breakfast at least one morning each trip. Very extensive breakfast menu with almost every flavor of pancake you can think of. (i.e. lemon-apricott, pecan, blueberry, M&Ms, buckwheat, and more)

The Old Mill – Pigeon Forge – Also great for breakfast and has a historic grist mill next door on the river. Massive wood beam architecture inside. See my picture of the mill.

Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant – Pigeon Forge (more commonly called “The Apple Barn” in my family) – Country style cooking in country style building with apple orchard behind it. Homemade apple fritters. Has several gift shops, candy stores, etc. next door.

Favorite Places for Lunch and Dinner

The Peddler – Gatlinburg – Great steaks and huge salad bar. Waiter brings around steaks for you to look at before you order.

The Park Grill – Gatlinburg – Interesting assortment of menu items and an absolutely beautiful building made of massive wood construction also worth seeing.

The Brass Lantern – Gatlinburg – My family always shares a “tureen and skillet” (soup and a skillet of corn bread) any maybe several of them.

Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant – Pigeon Forge (more commonly called “The Apple Barn” in my family) – Country style cooking in country style building with apple orchard behind it. Homemade apple fritters. Has several gift shops, candy stores, etc. next door. There is now one open in Gatlinburg too but I’ve never been to that one.

Best Italian Cafe and Pizzaria – Gatlinburg – We love the pizza and the wonderful garlic rolls. Can’t see it from the main drag. You have to turn in a driveway into the Elks Plaza Shopping Center. Not a lot of parking places but we always seem to get one somehow. There is often free bluegrass music in the Elks Plaza in the evening.

The Wild Plum Tea Room – We always stop here for lunch when driving through the Great Smokey Arts & Crafts Community.

Favorite Places to Shop

The Village Shoppes of Gatlinburg – Gatlinburg – Right on the main drag. Many smaller botique-type shops and a few eateries for desserts, coffe, donuts, etc. Behind the Pancake Pantry mentioned earlier. You generally have to pay to park, however.

Here's the entrance to The Village Shoppes from across the street from my parking secret at the bottom of this post.

Tanger Outlet Center – Sevierville, TN – Many upscale outlets. Sevierville is adjacent to Pigeon Forge.

Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community – An 8-mile loop where local artisans, demonstrate and sell their arts and crafts. Stop by the Wild Plum Tea Room for lunch. I aways poke my head into watch the glass blower on the far left of this stretch of shops.




I saw some beautiful handmade rocking chairs on the front porch of this shop for $275, though I didn't buy one. They had a similarly beautiful handmade porch swing.


Ely’s Mill – Antique shop at the end of the Roaring Fork Motor Trail. The Roaring Fork stream is behind the mill with lots of green moss-covered rocks. See the picture.



Gatlinburg Parking Secret

Phi Beta Phi Elementary School on Cherokee Orchard Road – The school charges $5 to park in their parking lot during the summer. If you leave and come back you have to pay again. Within easy walking distance of The Village Shoppes of Gatlinburg and the Pancake Pantry. Earlier in this post is a photograph of the flower-lined back entrance to The Village which is just across the street from the school parking lot.

Back from a Long Blogging Hiatus

I am hopefully back from a long blogging hiatus. Things just got a little crazy for a couple of weeks at work and at home. I spent a lot of extra mental energy at work for a couple of weeks on a special project. It was fun and I learned a good bit while I was at it but it suffocated my blogging-related brain cells. I also spent numerous weekend hours braving the June and July heat in Nashville to scratch a couple of items off my “honey do list.” These items were however only belatedly off the list as I was reminded “if you’d done it earlier in the year it wouldn’t have been so hot.” Also during this time I have been trying to take better care of myself and get some much needed exercize on weeknights. Put those three things together and you have very few discretionary hours left for blogging. Surely, I am not the only blogger to have this problem? Oh.. our old cocker spaniel died, too.

Copenhagen, Denmark

This picture of a frozen Copenhagen taken in the winter of either 1984 or 1985. Note the footprints on the frozen wanter.

Images from the USS Texas

I took the following pictures onboard the USS Texas in the summer of 1985 somewhere northwest of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USS Texas is a Virginia class guided missle cruiser.

The sea for this Pacific ocean sunset was glassy smooth, smoother than I thought possible on the ocean.

Conservative Rock Songs ?

I have a pair of headphone-style noise protectors with a built-in FM radio that I wear while mowing the grass and weedeating. When I was working in the yard this week I heard about a conservative journalist named John J. Miller at the National Review who came up with a list of The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock songs.

The third song on the list was the one that amused me the most. The journalist picked "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones as the 3rd greatest conservative rock-n-roll song of all time. The reason? He calls the song The Screwtape Letters of rock, a reference to the classic book of Christian apologetics by C.S. Lewis (also of The Chronicles of Narnia fame.)

John Miller made some good points on the radio about how in the songs lyrics, the Devil took credit for such things as Pilate sending Jesus to be crucified, the Nazi blitzkrieg and the killing of the Czar and his family which came with the start of communism in Russia.

Copyright © 2006 by Philip Hartman - All Rights Reserved

The Other WWII Memorial

On a recent visit to Annapolis, Maryland I stumbled across the Maryland World War II Memorial. I posted pictures of the National WWII Memorial a while back. The memorial is located immediately across the Severn River from the U.S. Naval Academy.


The memorial has the names of Maryland residents killed in the armed forces during WWII.

Thurgood Marshall Memorial

While strolling around historic Annapolis, Maryland (I got to combine a few hours of pleasure with a business trip to Baltimore), I stumbled across a memorial to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Its across the street from the Maryland State Capital as is shown on this photo below. All pictures taken in April 2006.

The memorial from the front.

A close-up of the memorial plaque.

Remember the Maine!

The USS Maine was blown up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. The foremast of the USS Maine was recovered on October 6, 1910 and errected as a memorial on the campus of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland on May 5, 1913.

US Naval Academy campus

United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland on the banks of the Severn River. Picture taken from the opposite side the river in April 2006. The large dome to the right of center is the US Naval Academy Chapel. The second and smaller appearing dome-like structure a little farther to the right is the top of the Maryland State Capital building just a couple of blocks up Marland Avenue on the back side of the campus.

 

Stad Amsterdam

The tall sailing ship "Stad Amsterdam" docked in Baltimore, Maryland in the Inner Harbor. Picture taken the first week of May 2006. The USS Constellation is docked on the right hand side of the picture as well.

The "Stad Amsterdam" is of recent manufacture and is both a symbol of the heritage of the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and is used to train young people in how to run a sailing ship. For more information on the ship, click here.

Baltimore Inner Harbor

A picture of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. Picture taken in May 2006.

 

Annapolis City Dock

The City Dock in Annapolis, Maryland. Picture taken in April 2006. The dome in the left center background is the Maryland State Capital building. See also Annapolis was the US Capital for About 9 Months.

 

Annapolis was the United States Capital for About 9 Months

Below is a picture of the Maryland State Capital building, the oldest state capital still in use. It was also the US capital for about 9 months before Washington, DC existed. This picture taken in April 2006.



Here's a historical marker with more detail



A huge painting of George Washington resigning his commission as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army to Congress in Annapolis hangs in the rotunda of today's US Capital building. Click here for more details.

The other side of the Maryland State Capital.

Courage Runs Deep - Submariner Memorial

Below are some pictures of a memorial to the 3000+ WWII submariners who lost their lives in the line of duty on 52 submarines "still on patrol". I took the pictures in April 2006 on the campus of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The view behind the memorial is out into the mouth of the Severn River where it joins the Chesapeake Bay at Annapolis.



close up of the brass plaque....

the back side...

Around the World Sailboat Race

I visited Baltimore, Maryland on business and discovered that sailboats and crews participating in the "Volvo Ocean Race" were in town with all the yachts docked at Inner Harbor. This around the world ocean race started back in November in Spain and is still going on. How does Spain to Sweden by way of a South Atlantic/South Indian/South Pacific route around Antartica sound? (See the picture below.) They just ended a racing leg which started in Rio di Janerio. The race is expected to end in Gotenborg, Sweden in mid June. For more information see the official web site.

US Naval Academy Campus

A squadron of sailboats used by the Midshipmen at the US Naval Academy to race against each other and learn seamanship. Picture taken from the US Naval Academy campus along the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland in April 2006.

The sailboats have names like Challenger and Resolute.

Politically Incorrect Tax Dollars at Work: US Naval Academy Chapel #1

The entrance to the United States Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland. Picture taken in April 2006.

 

Washington, DC Surrounded by the Confederacy?

I find the historical marker below on the campus of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland really interesting. It isn't necessarily well known that owning slaves was legal in Maryland when the Civil War broke out in the United States. However, Maryland and a few other "slave states" did not secede from the United States of America (the Union) to join the Confederate States of America. (Missouri was another example of a slave state which did not secede.)

If you don't know your geography very well, you may not realize that Maryland is immediately west, north, and east of Washington, DC. Virginia which was part of the Confederacy was to the west, south, and east. Therefore, if Maryland had sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln and the United States Capital in Washington, DC would have been surrounded by the Confederacy.

Based on the historical marker below, it appears that the Union did not want to allow this unpleasant possibility to occur. Union troops took over the Maryland capital of Annapolis and physically prevented the Maryland Sate Legislature from convening and even considering a motion to secede from the Union.

I'm not advocating this should have happened... I'm glad we no longer allow slavery. However, just imagine how United States history might have been different if Washington, DC had been surrounded by the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War.

 

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference

Only once and a while does a book I read really make a significant impact. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference was one of those books. I’m not sure I’ll ever look at the world the same way again.

Ever heard of a American Revolutionary War historical figure named William Dawes? Ever hear of Paul Revere. Would it surprise you to know that William Dawes and Paul Revere played the same role in trying to alert anti-British colonists of an impending attack? Why is it everyone remembers Paul Revere and not William Dawes?

The author uses this and many other examples to explain why some information spreads by word of mouth like wildfire, how fads get started, how epidemics spread, why some messages are “sticky” (easily remembered), why anti-smoking campaigns aren’t working, and more.

He proposes Three Rules which control epidemics or the rapid, viral spread of information (or disease).

• The Law of the Few
• The "Stickyness" Factor
  
• The Power of Context

Just a few people can make a big difference in spreading rumors, starting fashion trends, spreading disease, or making a product “cool” – but only if they’re the right people:

• “Connectors” – People who know lots of people. People other people want to know. They are “social glue”.


• Paul Revere is remembered in history because he was a connector. He knew who to tell in each village along the way on his midnight ride. He knew who would spread the word quickest. William Dawes was not connected and the people he told about the impending British attack were not able to get their militia gathered together to be effective participants in the battle.


• “Mavens” – People who provide us with new information. People who accumulate knowledge but are not passive collectors. They want to share what they know. They educate and help without persuading.


• People like the lady you always ask which store has the cheapest price for an item


• The guy you ask for a restaurant recommendation


• The road warrior who knows which hotel in Chicago is undergoing noisy renovations and which is close to live blues music.


• “Salesmen” – They persuade us when we are unconvinced. They get us to make decisions or change our minds. They build trust and rapport quickly. They infect others with their emotions.

If you’re a direct marketer, trying to get a public health message out, or trying to teach pre-schoolers you want your message to be easily remembered or “sticky”. The trick is to figure out how to package your message in a way that it is not part of the majority of information we encounter in a day we simply forget or ignore. The information needs to motivate us to action to spread.

• When Yale University wanted to encourage students to get tetanus shots at the campus health center, they found little difference between using a “high fear” brochure showing gruesome pictures of suffering tetanus victims and “low fear” brochure with toned down verbiage and no pictures. Only 3% actually took the time to get inoculated. By simply republishing the two brochures with a campus map with the location of the health center circled and giving inoculation hours increased the inoculation rate to 28% of the campus. With the possible exception of new freshman, most of the students probably already knew where the campus health center was and didn’t actually need the map to know where to go to get the shot. Something about the presence of the map they didn’t need made the tetanus information “sticky.”


• At the insistence of child psychologists, the creators of educational kids show Sesame Street originally intended to never mix real actors on street scenes with The Muppets. Psychologists did not want to confuse kids with what was real and what was fantasy. However, when they studied pre-school age children they discovered they stopped paying attention to the adult actors in the street scenes and went back to their toys. Against all professional advice, they found that their “epidemic” of educational information was “sticky” when human actors and Muppet actors where mixed in the same scenes.

Rapid spread of information, rumors, opinion, disease, etc. is also heavily dependent on Context – the conditions and circumstances of the time and place.

• An article of fashion becomes a trend when the people others consider “cool” adopt it first.


• Syphilis spread in Baltimore when the city simultaneously tore down crime-ridden housing projects (causing those people most at risk to disperse throughout the city) and cut the staff of the free clinic in half to save money (it took victims longer to get treatment)


• Paul Revere was arguably more successful spreading the word of an impending British attack because the people who needed most to receive his message were at home asleep instead of out running errands.


• Bernhard Goetz became an unlikely urban hero when he shot subway muggers at a time New Yorkers were most afraid of violent crime in their city.


• The leadership of the city of New York attribute much of their success in driving down violent crime to an emphasis on rigorous prosecution of those painting graphitti on subway trains, breaking windows, jumping subway turnstalls without paying, etc. They believe that if residents see others get away with the “little things” that context encourages others to see what they can get away with in an escalating fashion.

I highly recommend this book. It has made a difference in how I evaluate events in the world, how I view changes in culture and opinions, how I respond to marketing, and the way I look at supposedly “hot” trends.

The view from the Redondo Beach Pier looking across the water towards Palos Verdes.