"Male bears wear hats!" and other observations made in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
I just got back from my (much needed) week-long vacation in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Though not as exotic as say Costa Rica (ahem, Mark) or the Dominican Republic (ahem, Roman), it still provided me the opportunity to relax and enjoy spending quality time with my wife, Brianne. It also afforded me the opportunity to point out the various quirks of the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area. For those of you not familiar with Pigeon Forge, you may want to go to the following website and read a little bit about it, although my first observation may tell you all you need to know:
www.mypigeonforge.com
So here are my observations about my Pigeon Forge experience!
1) Pigeon Forge is almost exactly like Myrtle Beach, except instead of being on the beach it is in the mountains (the Great Smokey Mountains, to be specific), and instead of having a plethora of all you can eat seafood restaurants, you are inundated with pancake houses. Apparently the flapjack is the official food of the Great Smokey Mountains. I mean I like pancakes and all, but not so much that I would go to a restaurant devoted to them, unless it was IHOP, in which case I would go in college with some friends to drink coffee and smoke a pack of Parliaments.
2) The main parkway through Pigeon Forge (PF, from now on since I am finding writing out Pigeon Forge rather tedious) is congested as hell. For those of you from Northern VA, think about 495 during rush hour, except with way more Confederate flags and Johnny Rebel stickers on the vehicles.
3) Speaking of the vehicles: I think there is an unspoken contest going on between Tennessee residents in which they see how big of a lift kit they can have on their pickup trucks before they get pulled over by the police. I mean, some of these monstrosities looked like they belonged in an arena somewhere running over lines of cars. And what is with the 18-wheeler exhaust pipes inside the bed of these trucks? Dude, you are driving an F-150, not a Freightliner!
4) The black bear is apparently the official state animal of Tennessee, although good luck finding a single one. I would have thought that with all the information in our cabin about "Bear safety", and the special "bearproof" dumpsters outside our cabin that maybe I would have seen at least one bear! That alone would have made my trip! I mean, store after store after store had hundreds of figurines and shirts and mugs and toilet paper holders carved into bears. Where are the bears? Show me bears!
5) Apparently, Male bears wear hats. Specifically, they wear fishing hats. In every figurine with a male and female black bear, the male bear was always wearing a hat, I guess to allow me to figure out which one is the male. I guess the figurine maker assumes that if he/she didn't put a hat on one of the bears, we would automatically assume it was a gay bear couple. Maybe the PF Town Council got together and said: "We don't want nobody thinking we got queer bears here, so you better put fishin' hats on the male bears!" I think I will make a bear figurine with two bears both wearing hats, and witness the ensuing uproar.
6) PF apparently has a fairly significant Asian population. However, I only saw Asian women, most of whom appeared to be either Vietnamese or from Laos. I saw no Asian men. I have yet to see the appeal of PF to Asian women.
7) If you want a native Pigeon Forgean to be polite to you, make sure they are not from this country. The two friendliest locals I met on my trip were: a) the Middle Eastern gentleman I met at one store, who thanked me for my business, and b) the Korean lady at another store, who asked me where I was from, and what I had done so far. The local rednecks on the other hand...see observation 8.
8) You can't go to a gas station without being pestered by the local rednecks about sitting in on a timeshare lecture so I can get discount tickets to Dollywood. I was filling up our Explorer at a Pilot, and like the sideler from that one Seinfeld episode, this creepy redneck guy came up to me and asked me if I wanted discount tickets to Dixie Stampede or the Comedy Barn. I told him "No!". Not a minute later, a lady came up to me and asked me if I had been to Wonderworks yet, and that if I came to a lecture about a new condominium complex, I could get discounted tickets for any show! I just ignored her and didn't even look her in the eye. As I was getting into our vehicle, I said out loud "Can't I just get gas without being hassled by the locals??"
9) Speaking of the locals: The first place we went to when we got into PF was Kroger's, to get some groceries for the week. The guy who was bagging our groceries was this old guy named George, and George reeked of alcohol, and looked the part (Roman and Troy: think of Chinese Santa Claus guy, but thinner, no neon green flip-flops, and this guy could still keep his tongue in his mouth). My father in law asked how that guy could function at his job reeking of alcohol. I didn't give this guy another thought until the day we decided to go to the central bus station to catch one of the trolley's. I was coming out of the bathroom and who should be walking towards me but George. The scary part, he was wearing the same uniform as the trolley drivers. Great, watch us get George the Drunk as our driver. Thank God that didn't happen!
My last two observations come as a result of being present in PF during Rod Run 2008, in which people from around the country bring their classic cars and line them up along the parking lots on either side of the main Parkway. It was great, because I got to see all sorts of old cars that had been restored. I will be posting pictures of some of those cars in the next week or so. So on with the last two observations:
9) Spectators at the Rod Run will drive any ridiculous mode of transportation up and down the sidewalks just to avoid walking. I saw several fat men driving riding on what looked like a cooler with wheels and a steering wheel. And I don't know if they were rentals, but there were some old guys riding some funky looking bicycles. One guy was riding what looked like a girl's bike, because it was pink and had a banana seat on it. The sad part is the guy didn't look the least bit embarrassed.
10) Just because you drive a 1972 Camaro SS with a loud obnoxious engine in it doesn't give you the right to drive like a dumbass. Like I previously mentioned, the traffic on the Parkway was bumper to bumper. Any time some space opened up in front of one of these cars, the driver would rev his engine and burn rubber to advance up his lane, only to have to slam on his brakes two seconds later!
I had a great time on my vacation, but there were just some things that happened that made me laugh, and I had to share them with you!
No comments:
Post a Comment