A local offers advice on mistakes to avoid to make the most out of your next trip to Ober Gatlinburg I had given up on Ober Gatlinburg in the autumn a couple of years ago. In the days after Halloween, the park hadn’t transitioned from fall to winter. It was understaffed and underfunded. Then Joe Baker and his partners stepped
A local offers advice on mistakes to avoid to make the most of your next trip to Anakeesta It arrived one day without much fanfare, just seemingly appearing on top of the mountain. Self-billed as Gatlinburg’s “theme park”, there wasn’t a lot to do at Anakeesta that first season. However, a program of steady improvements has seen expansion nearly every
A local offers advice on mistakes to avoid to make the most of your next trip to the SkyBridge With Anakeesta drawing traffic across the valley and Ober Mountain under new ownership, the competition for your “SkyDollars” has never been higher. But the eldest of the major mountaintop attractions isn’t ready to wave a white flag of surrender. The park’s
A Smoky Mountain resident talks about experiences he wouldn’t try twice at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge While I can’t lay claim to being the world’s biggest Dollywood fan, I’ve been visiting since the first year it transitioned over from Silver Dollar City. I’ve watched in awe and appreciation as it has grown through careful planning and execution from a kitschy
A local reflects on his least favorite winter-related experiences in the Pigeon Forge area Winter in the Smoky Mountains is split – as it is in the rest of the world, I suppose – into two segments: Pre-holidays and post-holidays. To the naked eye, there might not be much difference as the festive holiday lights stay up throughout the season,
Seven signs that indicate you grew up visiting the Smokies Almost everyone takes pride in the state where they were born and raised, or at least, where they now live. This is probably truer with people who call Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains home. One of a Tennessean’s first childhood memories is a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. You
Dollywood is a hot spot for celebrity sightings – here’s a roundup of some of the biggest stars known to frequent the park The Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the surrounding area are among the most visited tourist destinations in the world. In the mountains, there are surely few places that are more popular than Dollywood. I’ve watched over
A Smoky Mountain resident talks about experiences he won’t revisit in Pigeon Forge, TN I like to like things. When it comes to movies, TV shows, books, food and experiences, I go in with a pretty optimistic viewpoint. I want to enjoy them. The only real place where I am an especially discriminating consumer is music. I have enough songs
These are the 10 commandments of Buc-ee’s, as imagined by a Buc-ee’s superfan Society doesn’t have rules because of the easy times. Rules are born of chaos, strife or stress. For example, the guy who invented speed limits didn’t come up with them because everyone was driving a serene 55 mph. Society saw the outliers, the speed demons weaving in
The true story of how a community became “Nameless” Just about 30 minutes northwest of Cookeville, Tennessee, and about an hour-and-a-half east from Nashville, lies a town that goes by no name at all – Nameless, Tennessee. The unincorporated community has less than 100 citizens and has had mixed stories about how it gained its incredulous name. But the main