A Traveler’s Guide to East Tennessee
At noon on the Wednesday after Dolly Parton died, everybody at Dollywood stopped what they were doing and stood still. Employees, visitors, people who had flown in from other countries to be in Pigeon Forge that week. Angela Atchley, Sevier County’s tourism director, said it about as plainly as it can be said: everybody loves Dolly Parton.
She was born in 1946 in a one-room cabin on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, and the family moved up to Locust Ridge when she was small. She left, the way people from there do. But then, like people don’t, she came back. And she built the largest employer in the county. “I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great,” she famously said, “something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.”
The mountains are still there, and so is the spirit of Appalachia she was always talking and singing about. There was a reason to love the region before anybody outside the county knew her name, and you can still see the hospitality that influenced Dolly when you visit for yourself.
Stop at Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop on the Way Up
Your first stop on your drive to East Tennessee should be in Cornersville, off I-65 south of Nashville. It’s directly on the drive if you’re coming up from Birmingham. There’s been a truck stop there for decades, but Dolly took it over and it reopened in June.
There’s fuel, EV chargers, a general store, a dog park and, for drivers, showers, laundry and a lounge. There’s also a meat-and-three with barbecue smoked low and slow and homemade biscuits, and Cup of Ambition, her coffee brand with Community Coffee. Live music runs Wednesday through Sunday, so you can catch a show if you’re lucky. Everything is open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 10 on Friday and Saturday.
Start on Foot in Gatlinburg
There are more than a hundred trails in and around Gatlinburg, at every difficulty, which means the heavy breathing is negotiable. We’ve picked three hikes worth planning a morning around.
Laurel Falls runs 2.3 miles and takes a little over an hour. It’s paved, which throws people, until they hear it was built so fire crews could reach the Cove Mountain Fire Tower. The 80-foot waterfall at the end is the one everybody photographs.
Cataract Falls is 1.1 miles and under half an hour, most of it following the creek, which acts as background music for the walk. You pass under a bridge, climb a flight of stairs, and there’s a 25-foot waterfall waiting. It’s a good first hike for kids with an adventurous spirit.
Baskins Creek Falls is the one to pick if you want the woods to yourself. It’s three miles, takes about two hours, and is known locally as a secret people are still trying to keep. A mile and a half in you reach a two-tiered 40-foot falls with a nice place to sit down and rest a beat. Don’t tell them we told you.
Get to the Blue Plate Special in Knoxville by Noon
WDVX puts on a live radio show at noon Monday through Thursday and Saturday at Visit Knoxville, and they let anybody walk in and sit down. It’s free! On Fridays the whole thing moves to Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria and becomes The Big Plate.
The booking runs blues, bluegrass, country, Celtic, folk, funk and rockabilly, local acts and international ones. Chris Stapleton has played it. So have Sturgill Simpson, the Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, Nickel Creek, Marty Stuart, Béla Fleck and the Flecktones and St. Paul & The Broken Bones. Several of them played there before you had heard of them, which is the argument for going on a Tuesday when you don’t recognize the name on the bill.
Eat at Peaceful Side Social After Cades Cove
Townsend calls itself the peaceful side of the Smokies, and the town certainly earns the name. Peaceful Side Social sits minutes from the park and from Cades Cove, which makes it the obvious place to land after hiking the loop, when everyone is hungry.
Order the goat cheese grit fritters. There’s also a smoked trout sandwich, a fig and pear pizza, blackened steak filet bites, a seasonal taco bar, and beer brewed on site. If the kids still have energy, the restaurant has a playscape big enough for them to tucker themselves out. The outdoor seating means you get dinner with a view of the mountains.
Every check carries an automatic half percent donation that the restaurant matches at the end of the year, and the money goes to local organizations such as the Little River Watershed Association, Tremont Institute, Keep Blount Beautiful, Save Our Smokies, Team BUSAR and the Townsend Area Volunteer Fire Department. All of them work to preserve the same ground you just hiked.
Drive to Bristol for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum
Photo By Earl Neikirk
Bristol sits in the far northeast corner of the state, straddling the Virginia line, and the 1927 recording sessions made there are the reason people call it the big bang of country music. The Birthplace of Country Music Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, tells that story through theater experiences, touchscreen exhibits, artifacts and photographs.
WBCM Radio Bristol broadcasts from a studio built inside the exhibit space, so on a good day you can watch a live show through the glass while you’re reading about a 99-year-old one.
End at Dollywood
It opened in 1986 and draws around four million people a season, which makes it the biggest ticketed attraction in Tennessee and the biggest employer in the county, exactly as she intended. There are sixty rides. Lightning Rod is the fastest, with a 165-foot drop, Thunderhead is the famous wooden roller coaster, Mystery Mine drops you 85 feet straight down inside a seemingly falling-apart mill, and Blazing Fury runs you through an 1880s town while it burns. The original coal-fired steam train still leaves every hour, at a much slower pace than the coasters.
Then there’s everything that isn’t a ride. Craft demonstrations, mountain music, a walkthrough butterfly garden where a motion-activated trail of them follows you around, and a drone and fireworks show at dusk. At the Dolly Parton Experience you can walk through her early tour bus and stand in a room of her stage clothes while people on video explain what each piece meant. The original coat of many colors is in that room, in a case. Make sure you buy the cinnamon bread. They only sell it by the loaf, which is a good excuse to find somebody to share it with.
