DRINKING MOONSHINE WITH DOLLY PARTON'S NIECE…

AND MORE EASTERN TENNESSEE ADVENTURES

*My tribute to Dolly Parton’ s song Love Is Like A Butterfly*

So here I am in Sevierville, Tennessee, drinking moonshine with Dolly Parton's niece. “So how did you become a moonshine distiller?” I ask as blonde and bonny Danielle Parton creates a Moonshine Dollytina for me from behind the bar at Shine Girl Distillery.

Revealing that her day job is piloting planes for American Airlines, she rather cryptically explains: “If you can fly an air plane you might as well make whiskey,” neglecting to mention that in Prohibition Days this “good ole mountain dew” was produced illegally in the backwoods of the surrounding Appalachian Mountains, possibly by some of her relatives.

Later sipping from my bottle of pink Rosé Moonshine, which tasted a bit like a powerful perfume smells (other flavours include lavender, chocolate and red velvet), I checked out Danielle's Shine Girl website where she explained that her product is “more than outstanding Moonshine, it is the culmination of my unique family history … We are superstars, dirt poor mountain folks bootlegging to support (our) families.”

At least one other Parton, Danielle's 77-year-old Aunt Dolly, found another way to support herself – after graduating from Sevierville's high school she headed off to Nashville to make a name for herself as the Queen of Country Music. However, she has never forgotten what she considers her home town of Sevierville although she grew up in a remote Locust Ridge one-room cabin she shared with her parents and 11 siblings.

Nor has Sevierville forgotten Dolly. In the 1980s the town's folk and others in the area raised the funds for the bronze statue created by local sculptor Jim Gray which now resides in front of the local Courthouse – posed for by Dolly it depicts her young, barefooted and cradling a guitar. And you can have your photo made (as I did) in front of a mural of huge butterfly wings inspired by Dolly's song Love Is Like A Butterfly.

My travel companions and I checked into the pleasant Lodge at Five Oaks, dined at the atmospheric Appalachian Restaurant offering such local specialities as spicy frog legs, and the next day browsed through the Ogle Brothers General Store before visiting the hilltop Skyland Ranch featuring miniature farm animals, shops and dining. Then we headed to Pigeon Forge's opulent Dollywood Dream More Resort & Spa. Not surprisingly, it is full of Dolly photos and other memorabilia.... and you can even pay extra to overnight in Dolly's comfy and colourfully furnished touring vehicle which is parked on the grounds.

Nearby Dollywood, now partly owned by its namesake diva, began as a small theme part with limited appeal back in 1961 and is now a massive 160-acre attraction offering 11 themed areas, 50-some rides, impressive live shows (the one I attended featured another of Dolly's nieces, also gifted with an impressive voice), a variety of restaurants, some of the South's largest annual festivals, and a re-creation of the one-room cabin where Dolly grew up. Now attracting some three million visitors a year, the beautifully laid-out amusement park is amazingly tasteful – in fact, in 2022 Tripadvisor proclaimed it not only “America's most popular theme park” but also its “most beautiful one”.

However, tasteful is certainly not the term one would use for Pigeon Forge itself – the highway which bisects it and serves as its main street is lined with such attractions as an upside down house, a building topped by a gigantic King Kong, thrill-a-minute venues where you can, for instance, experience an earthquake, fast food restaurants and a half-scaled model of the famous and fated Titanic ocean liner.

Rather reluctantly persuaded to sample it by local tourism folk I came away remarkably impressed. This was largely because of the very personal approach it takes to the April 15, 1912 iceberg collision which claimed the lives of at least 1,500 of the 2,224 passengers on its gala maiden transatlantic voyage.

Each visitor to the faux Titanic is given the boarding pass for one of the passengers and at the end of your self-guided visit you discover your life story... and your fate. I was a young Irish girl, who along with her sister, both experiencing unhappy home lives in Ireland, had our passage paid by young lads who were our friends. When the ship began to sink we were rescued by the two lads, put on lifeboats and ended up living successful lives in America whereas the two lads perished.

Mounting to the upper deck via a re-creation of the famous interior staircase depicted in the 1994 Oscar-winning film Titanic my group of visitors were then directed to the stateroom of wealthy Isidor Straus, co-owner of Manhattan's landmark Macy's department store, and his wife Ida who refused to leave her husband to take up her place on a lifeboat (and who featured in the Titanic film). Then we passed by some of the costumes from the film and other exhibits to the ship's hub where a guide dressed in period costume, standing at the pilot's wheel and overlooking the looming iceberg, described the series of mishaps which led to the disaster . We then met another interpreter, an actor portraying the ship captain, who told us of his real-life trip in a submarine down to the site of the Titanic wreck off the coast of Newfoundland.

We had entered this picturesque region of eastern Tennessee via Knoxville and were soon due to exit it from Gatlinburg, 42.7 miles to its south, and all along the way there were pleasant surprises. For instance, although Knoxville has only 194,301 residents and for some time was in economic decline it is now the buzzy gateway to a major tourist area. Its attractive main Gay Street is enhanced by the opulent Tennessee Theatre staging local and touring Broadway shows, and the city also boast an opera company, symphony orchestra, jazz band, art museum and galleries, the interesting East Tennessee History Center, the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, the University of Tennessee and riverboat cruises down the Tennessee River.

In addition, it has the caché of being the last American city – 41 years ago – to stage a successful World's Fair, attracting 11 million visitors (the New Orleans one a few years later went into bankruptcy before it even opened). Two buildings remain, the 266ft tall Sunsphere topped by a gigantic gold-coloured glass sphere featuring relevant exhibits and great views of the surrounding city and countryside, and the tent-like Tennessee Amphitheatre which still stages live performances.

The city is also known for a lively country music scene – we were shushed to silence as we entered the foyer of the Visitor's Center where the local WDVX radio station was at that moment staging one of its daily Blue Plate Special performances of primarily Americana and Bluegrass music. And in Clinton, 20 miles north of Knoxville, the 63-acre Museum of Appalachia, encompassing 30 historic wooden buildings, a wide-range of exhibitions, including an impressive collection of folk art, provides a fascinating introduction into the 18th-century pioneer and later life of the region.

More of this heritage – long-abandoned log homes, barns, a gristmill and churches – is tucked away into the outer reached of Gatlinburg's 812.28 square-mile Great Smoky Mountains National Park as this was where many of these hardy mountain people lived until the area was turned into a National Park in 1940 during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Today, partly because of its relatively close proximity to many major eastern USA population centres, it is America's most visited National Park, attracting 14.1 million visitors, compared with 5.9 million to the Grand Canyon National Park.

Its name inspired by the smoky blue mist which wreaths its towering Appalachian mountains – at 6,643 feet Clingman's Dome is the third highest in the Eastern USA – the park offers some of North America's largest swaths of old growth forest, a wealth of wildlife including black bears, coyotes and wild turkeys, beautiful waterfalls, horseback riding, camp grounds and 800 miles of trails – we even strolled along a short portion of the famous Appalachian Trail stretching 2,200 miles from Maine to Georgia

*Gatlinburg - Great Smoky Mountains National Park ©Jeff Adkins*

Unlike Pigeon Forge, buzzy Gatlinburg has a real community feeling with a traditional main street, a bluegrass band playing in a local square, numerous craft shops in and around the town, and a free bus link to some of its attractions including an impressive aquarium filled with weird aquatic creatures and fascinated children and the Ole Smoky Barrelhouse where Johnny Baker served us potent shots of moonshine and other whiskey accompanied by tales of some family members who had been true bootleggers.

We spent our last evening at the 70-acre Anakeesta theme park set on a mountain top reached by cable cars and overlooking the twinkling lights of Gatlinburg far below. Its attractions included hanging bridges, zip lines, restaurants, shops and an enchanting moonlit walk through forests lit with illuminations inspired by Outer Space. A suitably other worldly end to a quite unique American adventure.

DRINKING MOONSHINE WITH DOLLY PARTON'S NIECE…

CELEBRATING AMERICA’S FIRST THANKSGIVING….

SIPPING ALONG KENTUCKY'S BOURBON TRAIL