Last weekend Travis and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. We wanted to go somewhere for the weekend and after much discussion (and after we found out all the teepees were booked in Cave City) we decided to head to the Smokey Mountains for a weekend with Dolly Parton! We had been once before, but it was years ago!
The queen herself! We ended up parking in "Dolly's Earrings." I was worried it would be super crowded with long lines since it was a holiday weekend, but the longest line we waited in was to pay admission. It was over an hour! They really need to figure that out.
The first time we went I bought TONS of stuff with Dolly's face on it. Playing cards, mugs, magnets, rain ponchos...this time I was much more picky. Though I loved these kettle corn buckets! I resisted.
Travis' review of Blazing Fury. It is a pretty lame indoor roller coaster with wax figures. I kind of love it though.
If you didn't know, Dolly really loves butterflies. When we first walked in a lady asked to take our picture (you know, the kind that work for the park and try to sell you a photo.) I'm so mad I forgot to look at the photos before we left, because they make you pose with your hands out and photoshop a butterfly into your hands! Dang I wish I had seen it.
The Mystery Mine ride is so fun! It is half inside and at one point your cart cranks straight up for what seems like a LONG time! I love it.
My little lumberjack.
There are two different rides where the bystanders can shoot water at the people on the ride. Awesome!
Sadly Dollywood is not vegan friendly. The only things we could find listed online were french fries, apple sauce, and salad without dressing or cheese. We called to see if we could bring in our own food and on the hotline they said absolutely not. I hid some food in our bags anyway, and they didn't even look in our bags. SO if you are going and are a veg just sneak stuff in. They don't really seem to care. We brought vegan chicken salad sandwiches and bought some fries. This place had the BIGGEST slices of pizza I've ever seen! Each slice was easily two feet long! It was amazing!
All the lines were pretty short. We usually waited about 15 minutes, and that is because Travis always wanted to sit in the front. And I didn't puke! Though I felt like I might after this big wooden coaster. It was just a little bit too long.
Scenes from a theme park. Gimme that E.T.!
This was next to a random fake graveyard.
Since the last time we visited they really cooled it on the Dolly Parton stuff. It really felt like it was just in this one section that had a museum and some shows. I'm bummed we forgot to come back to see this one.
Always willing to pose for me.
Did you know Travis proposed to me on a Ferris wheel? We try to ride one on our around our anniversary every year.
I was so excited for this cheesy interactive song medley presentation and was bummed to find out that they took all the interactive stuff out! No more butterflies flying, no fake leaves falling, no real guy coming out to play banjo. But they kept the super cold rain part. Haha!
I'm always down for a carousel. Even if the children who cut us in line took the deer I wanted to ride! Haha. How dare they!
The only souviner we brought home was a set of hand cut silhouettes. Aren't the cute? The guy who made them just held up the paper and cut them while looking at us.
This picture makes me laugh every time I see it. Run Travis!
We stayed at Dollywood almost until closing. It was a great day with beautiful weather. We went to dinner at the only vegan friendly place I know of in the area. Thank goodness it's a good one! We love Mellow Mushroom.
We got calzones and cocktails and both were great! The drinks were STRONG so we nixed our plan to ride go karts and headed back to the cabin to look at the stars from our hot tub.
What a great day!
