Kentenessee
With fall turning into winter as we continued deeper into the Union, the colors started getting a bit more drab. A perfect time to really soak in the towns that the coal industry has left behind, and approach the amazingly upkept horse pastures of Kentucky.
We were too enthralled in with the gorgeous horse ranches approaching Bourbon county to even take pictures. It felt like we were in a story book. We signed up for a tour of the Woodford Reserve distillery, which was a great look into the history of the area (the distillary itself has been around much longer than Woodford Reserve). I quite enjoyed the pairing with chocolate at the end.
We then drove through the mist and took a tour of Mammoth Cave. This happens to be the longest cave system in the World, and has been well traveled and used over the years. It is now preserved as a National Park, but during the civil war it was mined for materials to make gunpowder and exploited for the tourism.
One of the cities Kate had been looking forward to for a long time was that of a favorite TV show: Nashville. We had planned to visit a few of the hot spots, but started day drinking at the local live music scene, which ended up as our entire activity for the city!
Next up we had planned to trace the bourbon trail a bit further, but after one stop in Jack Daniels, we deiced that we’d had enough drinking for a bit and more whiskey was too expensive for how much we were tolerating it. So we took up camp for the night in the Cherokee National park and drove into Cloudland Canyon State Park for some hikes the next day. This ended up being a pretty steep hike, but followed a river a long way down with some amazing trail building. Getting on the trail early meant we had the bottom pretty much to ourselves.
The camping is quite a bit easier away from the coast, and there are plenty of little hunting and fishing pullouts. We were feeling in a pretty good groove!
And when you’re in the groove is a perfect time for a breakdown! We drove right through Dollywood and Pigeon Forge and were ready for some more camping in the mountains when the van started running really rough. I did all the troubleshooting that I could that night and we grabbed a dog friendly hotel.
Who overbooked. We were thinking we were out of options, when they mentioned that they had a honeymoon suite that they’d give us for the same price! Ok.. whatever works. Until we found the awesome Dumb and Dumber tub!
Bathtub in a bedroom is a horrible idea, BTW. Things get humid really fast, and due to the swamp air, everything smells much stronger. So our pizza delivery smell definitely solidified that we were stranded in Pigeon Forge. I was ready to get out! Weekend before thanksgiving meant that shops were closed… but three days and one fuel pump later we were back on the road!
Did a cool hike in the Smokey Mountain National Park on a cool evening and cruised back into the national forest for more free camping!
We woke up to a gorgeous misty lake on Thanksgiving day, where we reflected on the fun Pigeon Forge experience.
A couple of days later, we hit up Mount Mitchell and prepped for a couple of fun days back out toward the coast!
