Stop #38: Knoxville, TN

Stop #38: I’m making my way to the East Coast. Knoxville was the closest hotel I could find to use my points at in the area of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I decided to explore Knoxville a bit on my first day. I had tried to go to the botanical gardens in Nashville, but they were closed on Mondays. Womp womp. So when I got to Knoxville, I decided to check their botanical gardens out. It was like Miss Havisham‘s Botanical Gardens.

It was as if someone had spent a lot of time and money to create this beautiful place and then neglected it for years and years. It was a little creepy, to be honest.

After the gardens, we went downtown. We explored the World’s Fair Park a bit. Honestly, I feel like World’s Fairs are something I know very little about. Were they like the Olympics in that cities would build these parks and spend all this money with the expectation of lots of tourists and inflow of money, but in reality they were a big money pit? I need to look into this.

After the world’s fair park, we went to the Market Square area. Knoxville itself was cute. I enjoyed it. A little artsy, a little foodie, a little history. I would go back.

The next day, we headed towards the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. On the way, you pass through this bizarre touristy, amusement park, small time theater area, including Dollywood. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop at Dollywood, but I was quite intrigued by the craziness of the Pigeon Forge area, including the upside down building that I was able to snap a picture of while stopped at a light.

The Great Smoky Mountains were pretty breath taking. The drive was serene, peaceful, and not as scary or steep as those in other National Parks I’ve been to so far. There were sunny spots and then all of a sudden you would be in a cloud. It was crazy. These pictures don’t really do it justice, but it was beautiful to see the clouds and mist rising through the mountains and trees.