Cartersville? Yes, Cartersville!

We love traveling and exploring new places, but sometimes we can overlook attractions in our own back yard. Since we had work off on Veteran's Day we decided to take a day trip up to Cartersville, a city of 23,000 people about a 45 minute drive northwest of Atlanta. For a small city it has a surprising and rewarding array of things to see, and despite rainy weather we had a great time.

Our first stop was the Etowah Mounds, which is a Georgia state historic site. Built and occupied from around the years 1000 - 1550, this series of mounds is considered the most intact Mississippian culture site in the Southeast US. The small museum was mostly empty, but for a good reason - all of the items have been returned to the Tribes that own them. The museum will be redone with informative displays. Nice move, Georgia! The main part of the site is two large preserved mounds as well as a reconstructed wattle and daub house. We dodged a couple of school groups and braved the rain to explore the site and the adjacent Etowah River.

A school group climbing the main mound.

View from one mound to another.

Paul walking up the mound.

The wattle and daub house.

Autumn on the Etowah River. There was a nice nature trail here.

From here we drove into town, just a few miles away, and went to the Bartow History Museum. It's a small but surprisingly nice museum in the old Bartow County Courthouse built in 1869. Downtown Cartersville is somewhat nice, but as with many American cities there's too much parking, and there's a very unfortunate and completely unnecessary overpass road. Still, there are a number of little shops and restaurants and historic buildings.

The giant car overpass ruins the atmosphere of downtown.

Inside the history museum.

David checking out the exhibits.

The main stretch of restaurants in downtown.

Cartersville's getting ready for the holiday season!

The 1902 replacement courthouse.

This is supposedly an old slave house, behind the oldest existing house in the county.

Our next stop, and easily the biggest attraction in Cartersville, was the Booth Western Art Museum. This is a huge and impressive museum. In fact, it's the second largest art museum in Georgia, and houses the largest permanent exhibition space for Western art in the country. Of course our immediate question was "why is this in Cartersville"? David asked the employee at the ticket counter, and she informed us that an anonymous local donor funded the entire museum.

The entrance to the Booth Museum.

Paul's favorite painting.

David admiring a large landscape painting.

They even had a stagecoach.

At lunch, we were quickly reminded that rural Georgia is a world away from Atlanta. The restaurant we ate at, Ate Track, had anti-mask signs featuring Nancy Pelosi, and Ted Nugent for president stickers. The food was fine, and the atmosphere had a "1970s basement" vibe.

Ate Track.

Lunch sandwich.

Our final stop was the Tellus Museum, a huge science museum. Many science museums are understandably geared towards children, but this was more of a full museum with informative exhibits. They had interesting sections on transportation, space, dinosaurs, and rocks/minerals. We also saw a show in the planetarium, and stopped by the solar-powered house. Overall this is a great museum - it should be down in Atlanta!

The solar house.

The main lobby of the Tellus museum.

The space section.

Dinosaurs!

David with crystals.

Some very colorful hematite.

Ready for the show! We may have taken a short nap.  :)

Cartersville is a surprising destination, and absolutely worth a day trip. It's amazing a city of this size has such high caliber museums.

Memorial Day in the Smokies

Memorial day snuck up on us this year, but we made last minute plans to drive up to Tennessee and spend a couple of days in the Smoky Mountains. We found a small cabin near Pigeon Forge on AirBnB that was somehow still available. We drove up on Saturday morning, with the intention of stopping in Gatlinburg on the way. However, the town was absolutely packed. To be expected for a holiday Saturday, but it was beyond what we thought it would be. Parking lots were 100% full with gridlock traffic on the streets. Instead we drove up to Pigeon Forge and picked up a couple of alpine coaster credits at Rowdy Bear's Smoky Mountain SnowPark and Skyland Ranch. After settling in at our cabin, we went for dinner at Applewood Farmhouse. The food was bland, but it was atmospheric. We've had a lot of not-so-great food over the years in the Pigeon Forge area. The dining scene could use an upgrade!

Our cabin had a hot tub on the porch and overlooked a lush forest.

The inside of our cabin.

Paul hasn't found a mascot he doesn't love.

The unique go-cart coaster at Rowdy Bear, with the suspended coaster above.

Riding the Wild Stallion at Skyland Ranch.

Dinner time!

Hanging out by the river while we waited for our table.

The fried chicken and greens were good. Everything else was bland. David looks thrilled. Use some spices, people!

Saturday evening it rained through the night. We had been watching the forecast and it looked like Sunday might be a bit of a washout as well. But in the morning the radar looked a better than expected, and it seemed like it wouldn't rain until the afternoon. So we made this our Dollywood day! It worked out really well - although it was a bit chilly, the rain held off and the mere threat of rain kept most of the crowds away. We went straight to the brand new coaster, Big Bear Mountain, which was having some troubles and didn't open up until about an hour later. But we got on the first train of the day. It's a fun family thrill coaster and a great addition to Dollywood. We managed to ride every coaster in the park by early afternoon.

An empty Big Bear Mountain train testing in the morning.

Wheeeee!

Dollywood has a fantastic setting in the mountains.

An installation for the food and flowers festival.

It was cloudy but the rain held off.

Paul waiting to ride the drop tower.

From Dollywood we drove to a new area of Pigeon Forge called the Mountain Mile, which is essentially just a nice strip mall. We had a late lunch / early dinner at Junction 35, which had over-the-top drinks. Paul's smoky margarita came in a literal jar of smoke. We also had "Tennessee poutine!" Even though we were full, we had to get ice cream. A google search showed mostly bad chain options, but one local store stood out - Cruze Farm. This small Knoxville-based chain had decent soft serve, although they didn't have vanilla, which is bizarre.

The Mountain Mile.

Paul at lunch/dinner.

Soft serve time! David was not a fan of their "sweet cream" vanilla replacement.

Pigeon Forge is... a bit of a mess. It's essentially just miles and miles of car-centric strip malls and overpriced tourist attractions, and the target clientele is very conservative. We saw a pizzeria that was promoting an "FJB" pizza, and a store literally named "The Trump Store." The traffic is horrendous - it feels much worse than Atlanta. The redeeming factors are that the surrounding nature is beautiful, there are dozens of coaster credits (a big plus for Paul), and Dollywood is a legitimately great attraction.

Monday morning, Memorial Day, we checked out of our cabin and drove to the Cade's Cove area of Smoky Mountains National Park, which was about an hour drive away. We left early to try to beat the crowds, because the scenic drive in Cade's Cove is a one-way, one lane loop, and we'd heard (and seen videos) that it gets extremely crowded. It wasn't too crowded by the time we got there, then shortly into the loop we hit a big backup. As we slowly crept forward in the car, we saw some rangers ahead, and realized the traffic jam was caused by a bear sighting! The bear was slowly munching its way through a field. We watched for a while, then continued on our way. The loop passes through lush meadows, and past a few historic buildings. We stopped at the visitor center to check out some of the buildings and read about the park.

After the pit stop, instead of going all the way around the loop, we continued south on Forge Creek Road, a well-maintained dirt road, to head toward Atlanta. This is a very lightly travelled road, and was a nice break from the loop. Not too far down the road we saw another bear, this time only about 40 feet or so off the road. We turned the car off and just watched in silence for a while, which was nice. The bear ignored us and slowly ate its way through the clearing.

Great morning views in Cade's Cove.

That's a bear! It was pretty far away but we could see it clearly.

Looking back at the bear jam.

A historic church building.

Nice views on an overcast spring morning.

An old mill building.

Maybe Andy Dufresne's box is buried under this tree.

A black bear!

If not friend, why friend shaped? 

We continued down the road, to the turnoff to Parson Branch Road, which would take us south to a state highway and back toward Atlanta. Unfortunately, there was a sign warning that the road was an 8 mile unimproved dirt road, and 4-wheel drive was recommended. Thanks Google Maps! At this point it would have taken at least 45 minutes (probably longer, due to traffic on the loop road) to backtrack and drive to Atlanta via the more western route, so we decided to risk it. It turned out to be OK - we scraped the bottom of the car once or twice and had to drive through several streams, but we made it. Turns out the road, originally constructed in 1838, reopened last year after a six year closure. Whatever upgrades they made must have helped us out.

Not great, but our Hyundai Ioniq can do this for eight miles. Right?

We drove over dozens of streams, which luckily were paved.

Emerging off the rough dirt road, we were on a state highway known as "The Tail of the Dragon." It's a winding mountain route that is popular with motorcycles. It was a nice scenic drive. A bit down the road we saw a small parking area and an information sign. We pulled over and saw it was a short hiking trail to Yellow Creek Falls, so we took an impromptu hike! It was a nice quick stop to break up the drive. Continuing down the road, we went through Robbinsville, the only city in the area. We had lunch at Lynn's Place before we kept driving toward Atlanta.

Paul at the waterfall.

A little friend we made on the hike.

Overview of the falls.

Passing cabins on a lake.

Corn nuggets at Lynn's place! The menu said "basically fried cream corn."

After driving in to Georgia, we stopped in Blue Ridge, a cute little mountain tourist town. Downtown has a number of shops and restaurants, as well as the station for the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway, which is a four hour round-trip tourist train to another tourist town on the Tennessee border. We stopped in a couple of shops, including Mountain Man Comics.

A classic car in downtown.

The scenic railway leaving downtown.

Downtown is cute.

Yoda and R2D2 in Mountain Man Comics.

We made it back to Atlanta by late afternoon. We still have to get back to the Pigeon Forge area again to pickup some more of the remaining and new alpine coaster credits, and I'm sure we'll be back to Dollywood soon enough!