Looks Can Be Deceiving (1st in series - Girls Weekend Adventure)

    

     How gorgeous is this cabin?   Looks like the perfect place for eleven women to get away for a girls weekend out...right?  Remember the old saying, "what you see is what you get"?   Well, let's just say that's not always the case.

       When we booked it online the ad said 2 miles out of Pigeon Forge and 3 miles out of Gatlinburg.  That sounded great.   What the ad failed to mention was that was just the distance to the side-road you turned off on.  It didn't count the several miles up the mountain on a less than desirable road.  Let me see if I can even come close to describing that road up the mountain.

     First, turning off the main parkway, we immediately had to make a hairpin turn onto another road.  After several curves, we turned right onto what would turn out to be a long and very unpredictable road.   This road which actually started our descent up the mountain was like trying to follow a pretzel, a roller coaster and a maze, all rolled into one.  Up and down, around corners and sharp turns, over steep inclines where you couldn't see if anyone was coming the other way, all the while steadily climbing higher and higher.  The higher we got the more narrow the road got.  We prayed we wouldn't meet another car.   There were no guard rails or safety barriers along the sides of the road and in places the pavement dropped off sharply, right off the side of the mountain.  There were at least a hundred turns (maybe exaggerated a little) we had to make and the only markers were wooden signs nailed to the side of a tree or post, none of which were lighted, making driving up the mountain at night nearly impossible.  To make things worse, the first 2 days we were there it rained causing wet leaves to cover the narrow road making it extremely difficult to see and very slippery.   But, troopers that we are, we weren't going to let a little thing like maybe driving off the mountain keep us from enjoying our trip.  So, even though our first instinct was to turn around and find the nearest hotel, we slowly inched our way up the winding road.

     Upon making it to the top, at first look we thought we had made it to heaven.  Not quite.   There were 3 levels with 1 bedroom on the main level and 2 each on the top and bottom levels.  Mine was on the lower level, which we soon found out was not the level to be on.  There were 2 major problems which turned out to be connected and were actually the same problem.  Our first clue was the sewage smell.  I'm talking raw sewage.  It was really bad.  Then we hear this noise that sounds like an annoying alarm clock buzzer, only 10 times louder.  It continued to buzz all night long.  When the maintenance men came the next day they discovered the sump pump had shorted out causing both the noise and the smell.  They replaced it with a new one.   The next day we made our way down the mountain for a fun day of shopping.  Late evening returning happy but very tired, we open the door and the sewage smell hits us in the face, followed by the incessant buzzing.  You guessed it...the new pump had already shorted out.  That night we again had to suffer the smell and noise; not very conducive to a good nights sleep.

     Did I mention the bear?   No?   Well, actually, we didn't see him, but a cabin just a few yards up the road had one on their front porch one morning while we were there.   Also, we had been told there were TVs in all 5 bedrooms, but not that 2 of them had been struck by lightening and didn't work.

      In spite of all this...or maybe because of all this, we had the best time you can possibly imagine.  We laughed until we cried.   It was such a great time there is no way I can cram all the stories in one.  Stay tuned for more to come.

Until next time...that's my view.

Kat