Since we’re staying “in” Gatlinburg we thought we may as well go “to” Gatlinburg so we called a cab – wait … isn’t this the 21st century? what about Uber? what about Lyft? 😂 We love this campground but it isn’t exactly what you’d refer to as “in town” or even “near town” and apparently the 3 or 4 Lyft drivers (Uber “doesn’t service your area”) weren’t up for the 1/2 hour drive out to pick-up our butts and drive back into town … so yeah, we called a cab and even though Brandon was a good conversationalist we would have preferred that he spent just a little more … any … time cleaning the inside of his windshield which did a fabulous job of scattering the light of the setting sun into a glowing haze that almost but not quite completely obscured the view of the road ahead. Fortunately Brandon was able to navigate by some sixth sense or maybe just dumb luck and we were dropped off at our destination in the middle of the Gatlinburg strip.
Dinner was very good. We chose a restaurant called Crawdaddies because nothing says Tennessee and Great Smoky Mountains like a good bowl of jambalaya 🤪. It was my birthday and I like spicy food – don’t judge. We were also so very lucky that there just happened to be a professional photographer at this restaurant and when he observed us enjoying a romantic meal he decided to add us to his portfolio. After a bit of arm-twisting we were able to obtain some copies of the pictures:
Curiously he must have run out of paper as one of these turned out to be a magnet but there must not be much metal in the refrigerator door in RV because even with my personality it wouldn’t stick.
After dinner we strolled the strip and among the 5 Ripley’s Believe It or Not!s, several “old tyme” photo studios, ice cream parlors, fudge factories, and other “fun” activities, we were able to find a, not-very-well hidden, distillery! – imagine that! a distillery … in Tennessee … right out in the open! Well we weren’t going to pass up this once-in-a-lifetime chance so in we went and, you may find this hard to believe, they actually let us purchase some whiskey & moonshine. Which we did purely as a souvenir (and 153 proof is purely enough for us 🥴):
We cannot recommend the Salty Caramel Whiskey enough, it smells and tastes just like salted caramel and is way to easy too drink (at least that’s what we’ve heard😉)
