Pigeon Forge

Dinosaurs and prospectors begged me to play mini-golf.  Mini-golf towers with swirling levels like high-rise parking garages.  A sign hanging from a gigantic plaster car blasting through a marquee promised "Motion Movies!"  Antique shops filled with nothing but Precious Moments rip-offs.  The gigantic "MIRACLES" theater that only played the show "MIRACLES."  Based on the electric billboard out front, "MIRACLES" had something to do with Jesus in a lightning storm.

"Please GOD say the cabin's not here."  Amy's eyes were fixed on motel after motel, all arranged into little cabins made out of what looked like the same plastic used to churn out lincoln logs, wood grain pressed in with a mold.

I felt clammy.  The Georgia peach license plate in front of me would not fucking move, and looking down the hill the orange construction cones seemed to form a graph of infinity.  When we'd booked a cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, we'd pictured some quaint little mining town, cabin at the end of a gravel road.  The website had promised that we'd hear the babbling of a creek as we slept, and the close-up picture of the exterior had made it seem like we'd be in an area much like the woods.  Besides, the name of the cabin was "Amy's Nook," hand-engraved in wood outside the entrance.  Amy had been positive fate was involved.

Off the main strip now.  The winding, contradictory directions to the cabin printed off by the rental agency playing sport with our hopes.  "Take a left at the fifth four-way stop sign" led us into the woods, "Right at stoplight #3" took us back into a subdivision where the speed limit's 15 mph, and the blue haired Georgia peach in front actually going 15.

Finally, Amy's Nook.  At the bottom of a hill, in woods as promised, but .7 miles from the strip.  Deal-hunting in Kroger's later that night we convince ourselves we have the best of both worlds and the backwoods would wait for next time.