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Las Vegas done Jed Clampett-style = Pigeon Forge
Posted By katie allison granju
Byron pointed me to this travel feature from the Columbus Dispatch, in which the writer chronicles his recent visit to East Tennessee’s top tourist destinations.
A few of his observations:
This popular vacation destination on the Tennessee-North Carolina border is one of the most American places I can imagine: a mixture of the sublime and ridiculous, the magnificent and trivial, the grand and tacky.
If Las Vegas had been founded by Jed Clampett and Smokey Bear instead of Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, the result would be Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg.
I followed the stream of humanity up the steep asphalt trail to the lookout platform at the peak of the Smokies. I was rewarded with an amazing sight. The clean early spring air allowed visibility for miles. I gazed out at the nearby peaks; then beyond the park boundaries to the east and west to Pisgah and Cherokee and Nantahala national forests; to the Cherokee Indian Reservation to the southeast; and, finally, to the north, over Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, almost to Knoxville.
Pollution from nearby towns and cities, as well as distant power plants, makes such views rare in the Smokies. But for at least a day, the souvenir shops and theme parks and traffic jams, while visible on the horizon far below, seemed a world away.
Apr 29th, 2008
