Thursday afternoon
Left from Memphis heading east on I-40. Once we passed exit 15, we were in uncharted territory, having never been further east in TN before! The leaves were barely starting to change over on our side of the state, so I was a bit concerned that we'd be disappointed in our quest to find fall colors. But as the miles went on and the elevation increased, the leaf colors began to change. Yay for fall!
We stopped for dinner in Nashville. I found a place on Yelp I wanted to try (whose name I now forget), but it was right downtown and there must have been some special event going on because we couldn't find anywhere to park. And we weren't interested in paying $10 for a lot just to eat dinner. So we hit the road again and wound up at a German restaurant, where we embraced our heritage and piled on the sauerkraut.
After dinner we still had miles to go before we slept. Tennessee is a really long state to drive all the way across, plus it changes from Central to Eastern time in the middle. We finally rolled into Gatlinburg around 12:30am. Yawn!
Friday
As the sun came up, I could see we had found fall. We bundled up (it's chilly in the mountains!) for our first stop at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We'd hoped to go up to the highest observation point at Clingman's Dome, but the road was closed due to snow and ice at higher elevations. So instead we stopped at the visitor's center to pick up a map and brochures about other things to do.
First stop: Laurel Falls hiking trail. It was about 2.5 miles round trip on a moderately easy trail. Lots of great views!
After the hike, we returned to Gatlinburg for lunch and found that the town was very crowded! Having arrived so late the night before, we didn't realize how many visitors were slumbering soundly in their hotel rooms. But the place was packed by Friday afternoon! We decided to forego the car and walked to lunch instead at Bennetts, where we devoured a huge plate of hickory-smoked meats. It was very tasty :)
Gatlinburg is a walkable town. It reminded me of Seaside, OR somewhat with all the tourist attractions, mini golf, pancake houses, and family-friendly entertainment. It's just that Gatlinburg's natural attraction is the mountains, while Seaside's is the ocean. But both get kind of crazy during high season.
After lunch, we stopped by one of the town's most popular attractions, the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery. They've taken moonshine and elevated it to an art form with 12 different varieties to sample, including maraschino cherries soaked in "white lightning." That's an intense flavor experience!
I enjoyed the bluegrass band playing in the courtyard. They also were giving out free kettle corn. The whole place was decorated for fall.
Next, it was time to embrace more nature (from the car) via the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. It had lots of lovely views of trees/leaves, and also some old historical places to stop and scout out.
One nice thing about Gatlinburg is that it's literally right next to the entrance to the National Park. You can easily go from a nature walk to the comforts of civilization, which we did by returning to town for dinner at the Mellow Mushroom (pizza place, which I now see we also have in Memphis). No, we didn't get mushroom pizza - fungus is gross! DF got his half with all meats and I got mine with all veggies. I couldn't handle more meat after the carnivorous lunchtime feast.
We played mini-golf under black lights. Here is a trippy zebra decoration.
I think after that we stopped in an arcade to play a few games. By then I was falling asleep, and I wanted to get plenty of sleep to be ready for another day full of adventures!
(stay tuned for the rest of the story of DF & Salmonista's excellent adventure)
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