Finishing Gatlinburg.

 The night before our last day in Gatlinburg, Trish and I went to Dolly Parton’s Stampede Dinner Show in Pigeon Forge.  I had been to this show long ago when it was called The Dixie Stampede…of course by now Dixie has been removed from the title.

There was lots of food!  Couldn’t do it justice, but a lot of the people we saw there were well capable of cleaning their plates. The best part of the evening was the horseback riding with riders who were really comfortable and artistic in what they were doing.  It was beautiful. (Secretly, though, my favorite part of the show was the pig racing!)

Closing patriotic salute at the Stampede.

On our last day we discovered a sweet place we had never heard of before.  It was called Parrot Mountain and is located beyond and above Dollywood.  This is a privately owned park filled with hundreds of exotic birds from around the world.

There are dozens of parrots and macaws just perched out in the open all over the place in a wooded park.  You can walk all among them and even feed many of them.  Some like to perch on fingers or sit on shoulders.  In addition there are scores more, many more rare and exotic, in their own cage environments.  We got to visit the baby birds as well and touch many of them.

Trish feeds a friendly bird.

These were some of the teenagers.

Late in the afternoon of that last day we took a ride around the Historic Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park above Gatlinburg.  This single-lane driving trail connects several Mt. LeConte trail heads which I used quite a lot in my growing up years.  

As we drove along we saw a total of four bears. Two were adolescents eating some kind of plants.  Then there was a mother with her little baby.  What good luck on a single day!

This ended our time here in the Smokies for this trip.  It was lots of fun and plenty of good walking.

Mama and baby pay no attention at all to us as we pass.