Smoky Mountains/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge

DGS wrote:

>>>Took an extended weekend to drive down and visit from July 5-9, 2007

Well, there you go. You visited what is already the most-visited
national park on a summer holiday weekend.

> Pigeon Forge takes it to an extreme that I've
> never experienced before, even travelling all over the
> country to places as commercial as DisneyLand.

Walt Disney was so dismayed at the tacky commercialism that developed
outside of Disneyland in California that he purchased huge quantities
of land when building Walt Disney World (in Florida) to create a
buffer zone.

James

<JamesStep@> wrote in message
news:1183983122.612061.26120@c77g2000hse. ...
>> Pigeon Forge takes it to an extreme that I've
>> never experienced before, even travelling all over the
>> country to places as commercial as DisneyLand.
>
> Walt Disney was so dismayed at the tacky commercialism that developed
> outside of Disneyland in California that he purchased huge quantities
> of land when building Walt Disney World (in Florida) to create a
> buffer zone.
>
> James
>

Interesting fact, perhaps the government should consider doing the same to
Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg...

"sechumlib" <sechumlib@liberal.net> wrote in message
news:46922e8c$0$30596$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> On 2007-07-09 00:14:38 -0400, "DGS" <sdfdfd@ksjdf.com> said:
>
>> Never, and I mean
>> never in my nearly 40 years of vacationing, have I ever been anywhere so
>> tacky, tasteless, and touristy as Pigeon Forge.
>
> We're scheduled to meet some friends in mid-September at a hostelry in
> Townsend, with isn't far from "Pigeon Poop" but may be less horrible. Can
> you offer us any insight on that?
>
>> The traffic in both of these "towns" were unbelievable. Not only does it
>> take an hour to get through 10 miles of Pigeon Forge, but often the
>> highway
>> connecting the two towns is bumber to bumper. We rarely were able to get
>> anywhere in less than one hour.
>
> Again, would you think traffic might have let up in mid-September?
>

Actually we had a few tour guides tell us that Townsend is much nicer and
less touristy so you may be good to go. As far as traffic is concerned in
Sept, I can't say but I have to imagine it would be somewhat better.