Well we all know that I said I would write sooner and yet again I did not but let me tell you about our last few days in Tennessee. So many wonderful things to see and do that we kept busy.
We spent some time at a lovely location called The Old Mill. The Old Mill General Store shared some of the great foods and crafts of the mill which is known as the oldest continually operating grist mill. We wandered the shops (The Old Mill Farmhouse Kitchen, Pigeon Forge Pottery, The Old Candy Mill Kitchen to name a few). Lunch at the The Old Mill Restaurant was a little chicken and dumplings with fried okra which just plain makes me smile. There are other shops just off the Old Mill site to wander and for pleasure there was a great little cross stitch shop!
Finally the big event of heading to Dollywood came. Dollywood under post-pandemic restrictions was a little rough around the edges. We did take 30 minutes to get into our parking spot and another 90 minutes to get a tram into the park. Considering Dollywood was only open 10AM-6PM it did shorten our day considerably. Of course the park and its amazing theming does help after such a long wait and of course the amazing music and shows were easy to access and enjoy.
The park is loaded with a lot of roller coaster type rides and an old coal driven train through the park. This took some time to get into as they were cautiously using the COVID protocols to clean the train between runs. The scenery was beautiful but after stepping off of the train we were HUNGRY. Not all of the food kiosks were open and the sit down restaurants were up to a 2 hour wait so we grabbed a couple of loaves of the freshly made cinnamon bread and snacked. Finally we headed out around 5PM so we could go to a little barbecue restaurant for some much needed rest and food. Ultimately Dollywood was beautiful and the music just spectacular and I am sure as the world returns to a form of normalcy the wait times for rides and foods will adjust. They did have us make reservations for our day so they are attempting to plan for the crowds.
It was finally time after 2 weeks in the great state of Tennessee to head home. As much as we saw and as much fun as we had I was happy to sleep in my own bed.
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