Day 3 - Pigeon Forge KOA

We stayed two days in Pigeon Forge, TN. The campground is nice although they are packed-in, at least the section we are in. This week leading up to the weekend is a huge car show. People put chairs out on the sides of the main drag like they are waiting for a parade to begin. All of the old cars are parked in all the parking lots of various stores facing the road for miles in both directions. Around 8 PM the people cruise in their cars in the right lanes on both sides of the road to look at the cars parked. Also the old cars also cruise along in the right lanes for the people in their lawn chairs to ogle at. This is what DH saw last night when he went to the drug store. It reminded me of when I was in high school, we would go up to Burlington, NJ and cruise High Street.
The guys all had their cars lined up on either side of High Street. My friend Phyllis would drive us in her Ford, dubbed "The White Wonder" which stood for "I wonder if it would start?" Today we went to Gatlinburg which when I was a kid was quite honky tonk. But nowadays it is tame next to Pigeon Forge. We stopped at the welcome center and I bought 3 all day passes to get on and off the trolleys. The fair for the trolleys was $2 each.
We parked in a handicap spot that was on a hill, so to get out of the car, I had to use my feet to hold the door open. Both MIL and DH could essentially just fall out as the door swung out easily. You would think they would put the handicap spaces on level ground. We rode the purple trolley to the main hub which was at the Ripley's Believe IT or Not Aquarium. We did not go there and instead hopped a red trolley to go to the Space Needle which is 460 feet high with an elevator. From the glass elevator you can see the open back steps that they would use to descend should the elevator malfunction. Up on top there were the wacky mirrors which amused MIL and myself. DH who has no fear of heights was up close to the railing looking straight down. I couldn't get any closer to the railing then 6 feet away and my legs were feeling like jelly. We left there and walked down to Star Cars. MIL sat outside while we went in to look at cars used in TV shows and movies. Just to name a few we saw the Mitsubishi Galant bright green street racer & Dom Toretto's Charger from The Fast And the Furious movie, the original Bat Mobile, Beverly Hillbillies jalopy, the General E Lee from Dukes of Hazzard, The Aston Martin from Janes Bond, Ghostbusters mobile, the yellow Jeep pick-up truck from Twister, and the motorcycle from Terminator 2.  There were 40 cars that were all made famous either by the movie or TV show they were in or by the star that owned them. From there we decided to go to one of those "escape games" based on the recent experience of our DD#1. However when we got there, it wasn't open as they were building it. False advertisement. Then we decided to walk to see if we could find a Trolley stop and found one but it was in the hot sun and it was so hot the perspiration was dripping into my eyes while just sitting there. DH bought stale peanuts from the freshly roasted peanut stand lol. Hooray it finally came and we were shocked to find out that we were waiting 30 minutes for the trolley when we were less than a block away from the hub. So then we had to wait an additional 18 minutes for the Purple Trolley to go back to the MDX. Once in the MDX we drove to the Roaring Fork Auto Nature Trail which is a single lane one way road winding through the Gatlinburg area of the Smoky Mountains National Park. DH was looking with envy at all the people with their picnic lunches on the trail. We decided to go back to the motorhome to eat lunch. MIL decided to stay while we went to the giant knife store. The lady in the pool yesterday had told me there was a jerky store next to Margaritaville so as we were driving to the knife store, I noticed Margaritaville. So we stopped there and bought teriyaki jerky. They had every jerky imaginable from Kangaroo to alligator. We bought beef.
From there we started looking for the knife store. After driving 30 minutes down the main road, I Googled it and found it was another 30 minutes from where we were so we gave up. I said maybe we could go on the way to Nashville tomorrow. We came back to the motorhome and both took naps. The heat always knocks me for a loop and today it was 96. After I woke up to a phone call from DD#1 who was calling to lament about her latest calamity. She had a power surge after a storm at her house that knocked out her refrigerator, her air conditioner, several outlets, her cat Link messed in his cage on route to our house which she is staying at while we are away since she now has no working refrigerator or A/C, her Sandal broke and now she has poison ivy. She couldn't just leave the windows open because Link uses his nails to rip the screens and he and Mooney her other cat then escape to the back yard. So after talking to her, DH told me there was a Corky's BBQ Ribs joint in Pigeon's Forge. We went there for dinner. We had eaten at Corky's many years ago when we went to Kentucky. Funny thing is I had planned on going there in Memphis. When we came out I saw the sampling of the people, the old cars, old trucks, hot rods and the people lined up in their beach chairs. Came back and DH & MIL watched the Big Bang Theory while I worked on my blog entry.