Smoky Mountains

Pigeon's Forge is the place to stay if you want to go to Smoky Mountains. It's a white, blue collar paradise. This is the place to go to hear country music, southern drawls, ride go carts, and have tail gate parties in pickup trucks.

The park itself is nice. But after all the amazing mountains we had seen in Alaska, Canada, and California these were nice hills. The fog rolls in and covers the mountains that makes it look like smoke.

We didn't see any animals in the park though. They are supposed to be everywhere but we didn't see any. Maybe all the people scared them away. We were there over a holiday weekend and all the crappy motels were all full.

On the border of the park is an American Indian reservation. Unfortunately it's like they have no pride left. We saw sitting around doing nothing but drinking all day. There are two sides to the park. All the motels and tourist hot spots are on the side that is not the reservation. There is nothing on the reservation side except a casino. This small casino hardly attracts any visitors. With all the land and people that flock to this park, these guys are sitting on a gold mine. They can attract big money to their side if they want to. But they don't. I asked around and the consensus was that they are content getting their monthly checks from the government.

One of the saddest things I have seen in regards to animals was witnessed in Pigeon Forge. There was a souvenir shop that advertised that they had live bears. I love bears so we went to check it out. For $5 bucks you can see and feed some apples to 2 black bears.

These poor animals were much fatter than they should be and maybe that was because they stuck in a tiny cage no bigger than most people's family rooms. Every visitor got a cup full of apples that they basically threw at the bears. There were apple pieces all over the floor of the cage along with bear poop. The bears just sat there. They looked mentally sick. We felt so sad for the bears that we left right away. I almost threw up. It was disgusting how they treated those poor animals.