John and Dorothy Barnes were heading into Gatlinburg for dinner, and they were also looking for a certain wood carver they remembered from last year. We explained how we came to be stranded, and they said they knew where to take us. Which was a relief. It's one thing to be in the woods. We weren't in control of everything, but there are only so many circumstances that can happen in the back country. It's simpler. Now, we were at the mercy of the world.
We drove through the town to a commercial campground on the far side of the strip. Now my friend Rick had told me Gatlinburg was a tourist town. I didn't know what that meant. I was from Miami, and he was from a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale. Both were full of tourists. They were cities.
"You know. It has things like Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum," he said. Which sounded tacky and contrived. A little forced, maybe, like going to Busch Gardens to see foreign song and dance instead of actually going somewhere foreign.
I was not prepared. Gatlinburg was kitsch on steroids, the strand at a beach only without the beach. And it was jammed full of people. I couldn't imagine wanting to vacation like this. Apparently, a lot of people did. It was a scar tucked into the beautiful Smokies, where the woods would be bathed in darkness and we should be safely tucked into our tent. Rick's pack, the one with all the food, would already be tied from a tree for the night, the routine for keeping bears away from the tent. We'd shut off our flashlights and go to sleep listening to the woods, maybe with a creek nearby. The best sites were on creeks.
The Barnes' dropped us at a campground. We paid for hookups we didn't need. Our site was hard, meant for an RV. I think we pitched the tent on gravel. And realized Rick's boda was in the Barnes's car. We resigned ourselves to buying a water bottle somewhere. We rehydrated a meal, and ate from Sierra cups with spoons, surrounded by pop-up campers with elaborate extended setups with screen houses and hanging colored lights. People cooked on grills and ate from paper plates. I looked at the families and wondered who did this. I know now that it's how a lot of people vacation, but I was way out of my comfort zone.
The Barnes's came back when they realized they had our water skin. We slept with brightness coming through the tent and the sounds of RV life. We did take advantage of where we were the next morning by taking hot showers and using the laundromat. The pool was off limits since we didn't bring bathing suits. I don't remember the walk to the post office, only that we were outsiders there, walking through an overpriced sugar, grease and neon mecca with full packs. Then we headed down the road towards the national park, which was not near the town, and got picked up once more by John and Dorothy Barnes.
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