Saturday 29 September - Day 39 - Gatlinburg and Dollywood

Paul and I went our separate ways today - there was an optional excursion to Dollywood that I decided to do but that Paul didn't want to try.
In case it isn't obvious, the "Dolly" is of course Dolly Parton. I was quite concerned that it would be totally over the top country music and Dolly Parton but it was not so.
There were all sorts of shows - mostly country or gospel of course, but also a really good one featuring music and dancing from the 50s and 60s.
This is a photo from one of the other shows - this one is a Dolly Parton "Family Reunion" show and so of course was mostly country.  Up on stage here there's an uncle, a niece, and two cousins of Dolly's.

There are also a lot of craft exhibits - the sort of stuff you might expect like glass blowing and quilting but also an operational forge where they make things like house signs but also other functional stuff, a wagon maker (I could have purchased an 8 seater wagon for about $5000) and rustic style furniture.  They also have an area set aside where a lot of bald eagles live - these are ones that cannot be released into the wild as they couldn't survive.  They have a large area on the side of the mountain where they can fly around and also some are shown in cages from time to time.  There's also a show about them - all trying to raise funds for further research  help for the birds.  This is one of them; called America:

And of course there are the usual scary rides that you find in any fun park - being a coward, I didn't go on any of them  :-)
And finally, being the USA, there's food - huge serves, almost all full of fat or sugar or both - but really nice.
We spent about 5 hours there, and I could easily have stayed longer.

While I was off at Dollywood, Paul had a restful day in Gatlinburg.  Although, he did go for a ride on the chairlift and got some very nice pictures - here's a few of them:

For dinner tonight we wandered down to a local grill bar.  We both had a win with our main course again - as in, we both ordered something that was both a reasonable size and tasted really good.  But, Paul decided to have dessert - Fried Icecream.   OMG!!!  It was a a chunk of icecream about three normal scoop sizes, covered and fried of course, but then sitting on a dinner plate inside a huge tortilla-like edible bowl, and just covered with cream and chocolate sauce.  They delivered it with two spoons so clearly I had to help Paul with it!!