Day 3 Thursday, 8/18/16:
This day also started early. And by that I mean I was walking into Crockett’s Breakfast Camp shortly after they opened. Now this is a fun (and touristy) looking place!
I was seated immediately at a huge wooden booth, and handed a menu, which was done up as an old newspaper.
Breakfast for me was a platter that I know included eggs, sausage (that was supposed to be chicken sausage but I don’t think was), fruit, a biscuit and sweet corn pone. Sweet corn pone is a spoon bread, and was delicious. Ok, all of the food was delicious, and there was a ton of good looking stuff on the menu. Good service too.
Once I’d eaten, I headed back to the hotel to set out for my last destination in the national park for this trip: Cades Cove. Cades Cove was a slow, winding, hourish drive away from the main entrance to the park. It was a pretty drive, though.
The Cades Cove loop involves lots of historical buildings, and is actually kinda mind boggling when you start to think about the fact that people lived out here. Seriously...a million miles from nowhere. It was fun to check it out.
About the same time I climbed back in the car, having explored the, let’s call it settlement area, the skies opened up. With “Smoky Mountain Rain” filling my head, I began the drive back to town.
The drive took awhile, but thankfully, the rain eventually got lighter. It was a bit harrowing for awhile. Remember, driving through this park, you’re essentially driving mountain roads. In heavy rain, this isn’t very fun.
The rain let up before I got back to the main visitor center so I took the opportunity to go and buy myself a t-shirt.
Shopping completed, it was time for lunch! I decided to try Huck Finn’s Catfish. The reviews were decent and I like catfish. And the prices are amazing too.
Huck Finn’s is in Pigeon Forge, but it was a reasonably quick drive, and very easy to find the place.
I was seated immediately, and asked whether I wanted fries or mashed potatoes with my “vittles”. The vittles are all you can eat, and served with every meal. I went with mashed potatoes, and the vittles appeared soon after. I ordered the fried catfish and got started on the vittles.
What are the vittles? All you can eat sides. And you get a plate with all of them. Specifically: baked white beans with turkey ham, cole slaw, hushpuppies, pickles and onions, and your choice of fries or mashed potatoes with gravy.
All of that plus two pieces of catfish totaled $7.99 plus tax and tip. And the food was pretty good too. It was a good lunch.
When I finished eating, it was drizzling. So, I did what any girl would do, and headed for the outlets. Just a few miles down the road were the Tanger Outlets.
I killed a fair amount of time at the outlets. They had a lot of outlets that we don’t have at home, like the Vera Bradley outlet. It’s probably a good thing we don’t have one of those at home. Especially if this whole 50% off everything in the store business is a regular occurrence…
Once I’d shopped till I dropped or something like that, I headed back to the hotel, with a brief detour back to the Christmas Place to pick up a couple more ornaments I’d seen the day before and debated. You see, my dad’s house has been under construction since a pipe burst my junior year of high school (that’d be January 2004 for those who feel like doing math to figure out how many years it’s been). The whole kitchen, dining room and entry had to be taken down to the plywood and framing because of the damage. This resulted in dad doing the addition he’d wanted, and making changes to virtually every room in the house, since he was starting all over in a large portion of the house anyway. It’s still an ongoing project, but his living room had gotten to the point where he’d bought himself a Christmas tree and seemed determined to have his first Christmas tree set up since pre-pipe burst. (And he was successful. It wasn’t decorated, but the tree WAS set up this year). Because he has a brand new tree and ornaments that were purchased in ‘95 and haven’t been used since 2003, I felt that it was not excessive to buy every ornament that was appropriate for him to stash for birthday and Christmas gifts (his stocking was easy to fill this year!)
Ornaments acquired, I headed back to the hotel to figure out the dinner situation. Since Calhoun’s had been so good, I decided to stick with the Calhoun’s Village, and try Smoky Mountain Brewery for dinner tonight.
I’m pretty sure both the hostess and the server were totally unsure what to do with a solo diner (hint...seat them, and after finding out what they want from the menu, serve them food), but other than that, service was good, and the food was great. I had a meatball pizza that had a fantastic cheesy dough, and followed it up with key lime pie for dessert.
While the key lime pie certainly wasn’t from Kermit’s in Key West, it was pretty good. It was also huge. Because of this, I decided to take Nick’s parents’ recommendation and go to the aquarium.
So remember that statement about Gatlinburg having more Ripley’s attractions than anyone ever could have imagined? Well the aquarium is one of those attractions. It’s at the far end of the strip, so it was perfect for walking off that gigantic piece of pie.
Nick’s mom had REALLY talked up the aquarium. And it was alright, and had some cool aspects (like the shark tunnel), but it seemed REALLY disjointed. And I was a little disgusted by the price tag to be perfectly honest. The AAA discount was a whopping $1. It cost me $30 to get into this place. Like I said, there were some cool aspects, but it was a one and done place for me.
After I finished exploring the aquarium, I made my way back to the hotel to plan my attack for the next day before I crashed for the night. Coming up? A day at Dollywood.
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