tourist central pt. 2

Well, the entire reason for our weekend getaway was to get to Tennessee. On Sunday morning we got up bright and early and headed out to check off a new state from our list! We spent the night just outside of Cherokee, NC the night before and the road to Tennessee was a straight shot down a beautiful mountain road through the falling leaves.

Neither of us had been to this part of Tennessee before. My only experience was in Nashville and Memphis. We tried to find a cute little town on the state line we could hop over to, check it out, and head home. Pigeon Forge sounded cute enough right? After all, it is named after a little bird. How bad could it be...?

Coming into town there was a boot store that, naturally, we had to stop in. The main street seemed cute enough. At least for the few feet we actually drove of it before stopping to check out some authentic Tennessee cowboy boots!

After a quick, unsuccessful but cheap, shopping trip we headed back out to see the cute little town everyone told us we had to see. And we thought Cherokee was bad...

Traffic was awful, everything was one way, tourist traps as far as the eye could see! There was mini golf, museums, dinner shows, and anything that you could possibly imagine from an entertainment perspective. I bet we sat in traffic on the main strip for 45 minutes before deciding to get the heck out of there! Dolly Parton must have really been the only thing to come out of that town; talk about beating a dead horse... Everything was Dolly Parton! Craziness.

We did a quick Google search, hopped on a side street and headed out of town. We were hungry so we tried looking up a nice Tennessee cafe to get some lunch. We found the Moonshine Country Store and "Cafe." Note that 'Cafe' has quotation marks because there was no cafe there... It was an adorable little store with wood siding, a pond and all sorts of knick-knacks inside but no food to be found. They did, however, have a whole bunch of BBQ Sauces, salsas and dips we could sample. I found my favorite BBQ sauce to date there! It's called Fighting Cock Sauce and although it's name is questionable, the taste is most definitely not. I'm almost out and I'm half tempted to drive three hours and fight Pigeon Forge traffic just to get some more! If anyone happens to find it in a less crazy spot try some for yourself and send me a bottle!

Anyways, BBQ sauce rant aside, after that we stopped in at 'Boss Hogg's BBQ' on the way back home. It was a tiny little restaurant right on the side of the road. The kind you look at and know that every bit of food inside is banging! I'm not sure if it was affiliated at all with the Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard because it had no Dukes paraphernalia inside but it got me to stop in. 

After a nice meal of Tennessee BBQ in our bellies and enough touristy adventure for one weekend, we headed back home to Carolina to check off a new state on our map!