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On a recent business trip to Charlotte, NC, I was deposited by the National Car Rental shuttle bus to the Emerald Club aisle, where the greeter said “Y’all can take any one of those cars along the fence”. I looked over to see seven white Pontiac Azteks, possibly the ugliest of the American SUVs in its class (though the competition is fierce). I said “Do you have anything else?” He said “Not until someone returns a car”. I said “I’ll wait”. When he saw that I was serious, he managed to scrounge up a Grand Am somewhere.
My appointed tasks took only thirty minutes, so I had plenty of free time and decided to take a little day trip. I drove to the northeast corner of North Carolina, intending to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway south through the Appalachians, stopping at the Great Smoky Mountains. Unfortunately, much of the parkway is closed in the winter season, so I spent a lot of time looking for alternate routes in the same direction. By the time I arrived at the Great Smoky Mountains, it was getting dark. I drove through the pass anyway, as there is a circle route to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and back to North Carolina, and Pigeon Forge sounded like a quaint backwater to stop for a bite to eat, likely a small town diner where I could get the real Tennessee \'down home\' experience.
Extremely thick fog through the pass, along with the darkness, left me gripping the steering wheel and staring fixedly just beyond the bumper, trying (sometimes in futility) to see the centre line on the road. Unless you count a few tree branches illuminated by my high beams, I saw little of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
On the lee side of the mountains, just across the state line in Tennessee, sits Pigeon Forge. Well, it isn’t the one-horse town I thought it was and the size of the dot on the map implied. Imagine taking Harvey Street in Kelowna, and Las Vegas Boulevard (the lower-end section where the old Stardust and Wayne Newton are), and melding the two into a single thoroughfare. Then extend it by about twenty-five blocks. It is the ugliest strip of American urban commercial blight that I have ever had the misfortune to traverse. There are hundreds of cheesy motels interspersed with awful chain restaurants, Elvis Museums, Mandrell-sibling nightclubs, and trading posts that sell Smoky Mountains trash and Dolly Parton busts (busts of her head, not of her bust). Desperate to get away from it but still wanting some \"local\" experience, I followed the signs along Dolly Parton Lane to the “Dollywood” theme park. It was about the size of Fantasy Gardens, and looked a little shopworn (not unlike its namesake). I fled that and headed down Dolly Parton Parkway, the quickest route out of town.
My only regret is that I couldn’t stomach stopping long enough to find out why they named it Pigeon Forge. Did someone long ago construct clay pigeons in a kiln near here? Or was it the site of long-ago bird races, where pigeons forged ahead of their opponents and created a whole new hobby for ancestors of today’s ham radio enthusiasts? I suppose I could find out with a Google search, but I might inadvertently come across a photo of the taste-forsaken hole.
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