Construction

We’d been dodging construction events at the cabin all week.  From giant cement pouring devices blocking the road to jack hammers and other noisy tools interupting the silence and peacefulness of the mountains, the weekdays were filled with reminders of progress.  They are building the heck out of the ridges around Pigeon Forge, and are, frankly, ruining it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad there was a cabin up there to go crawl into to get away from the world, but I’d have been much happier if someone wasn’t building another line of them just below me.  Today’s incident was the most intrusive.  About 9.30 this morning, one of the workers asked us to move the truck up to the top of the hill so they could lay asphalt… right up to the porch of the cabin.  This made the outside areas of the cabin pretty useless, so we packed up our stuff for the day, and headed out to look around the arts community area of Gatlinburg.

Of course, getting to the truck now meant tiptoeing around the edge of still-hot, freshly-laid asphalt.  Not fun, and kinda silly that we had to deal with that.

The arts community area was great though.  This is a many-mile loop of little shops with everything from pottery to photography to musical instruments to tea houses.  Really nice.  We spent the biggest part of the day wondering through shops of all kinds, finding all kinds of goodies to oogle.

This was a nice end to the trip — a little touch of the country before heading back to the city and our day jobs.  This really was a relaxing trip, despite trying to cram too many things in a short week.  Next time, I’d like to take more time, less schedule, and more excursions into the park.  I need to get in better shape for that though!  🙂