The time we bought a bunch of moonshine & almost got stuck in Gatlinburg, TN

May 10, 2014 by

On our recent Spring RV trip, we spent some time visiting the great state of Tennessee (you can read about our Pigeon Forge trips). After our long day at Dollywood Theme Park we I decided that we should visit the next town over (Gatlinburg) for dinner on our final night in the area. My mom had been there before, and she always raves about how much she loves it there, so I didn’t want to miss the chance to check it out.

As I wrote about in the Pigeon Forge post, there is a pretty extensive trolley system, which has Dollywood as one of the stops, and also goes between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. After we finished our day in Dollywood, we hopped on the trolley to Gatlinburg to go walk around and have dinner. As we were getting off of the trolley, we confirmed with our driver that the last trolley back to Pigeon Forge was at 10pm (can you sense the foreshadowing here?).

Moonshine in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Gatlinburg is much ‘cuter’ than Pigeon Forge. It has a walkable main street with lots of shops, restaurants, and also some of the Pigeon Forge craziness. I’m pretty sure that Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine Distillery. I hadn’t really heard much about this fancy version of moonshine. My only prior knowledge of moonshine was a story my friend told me about falling off a porch into some bushes and just deciding to lay there for a while until someone found her (after drinking her in-laws’ homemade moonshine).

The Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine was nothing like that. The store is beautiful and the marketing is brilliant. They offer samples of every flavor, and there are lots of flavors. They offer you a ‘free tshirt’ if you buy 4 jars. And yes, the moonshine comes in the adorably trendy (in an old school kind of way) mason jar. Oh, and the colors! It was the prettiest liquor store I’ve ever seen!

So we (the adults only, just wanted to throw that in there) sampled and purchased, as the kids played on our iphones (parenting 101 – let your kid play some apps while you get liquored up). Note: the samples were small, so don’t get all indignant on me here. We had plenty of time still to make the shuttle back to our campground. We walked back down the main street toward the shuttle, and stopped to get the kids some caramel apples in a cute candy shop along the way. All in all, a really great night…..until…..

We get to the shuttle spot with about 10 minutes to spare…and we are told that the last shuttle left at 9:45. What?!?!?! We specifically asked & were told 10pm. Oops! Sorry lady, but the last shuttle already left, there’s nothing we can do about it, good luck. But sir, are there any taxis or other transportation around here? Nope, sorry. Good luck. So we are stuck in a little town, with 2 kids, a bag of moonshine and 2 caramel apples. The panic starts to set in a bit. We can’t walk back, it’s too far. We don’t know anyone within hundreds of miles. It’s now 10pm, and it’s like a light switch is turned off. The shops are closed up, no one is on the street, it’s eerily quiet for a town that just minutes earlier seemed bursting with life.

My first thought (after the panic) was…idiotic Uber incident). Nope, my app told me there is no Uber here. I think it wanted to yell at me “you are in  in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, not New York City, duh” in an ultra snotty voice. Then I go to plan B, which was searching on my phone for local cab companies. I called a handful of the phone numbers that I had found, and either got no answer or was told nope, no car available. As we are walking up and down the street, feeling totally trapped with the moonshine-buzz completely gone, my husband decides that we are just going to get a hotel room for the night. I start googling to see what’s around (and to see if there are any points-earning opportunities to be had here – lemons…make lemonade).

And then I decide to try one final phone number that I found for a cab service….bingo! The guy answers and says he can pick us up in 25 minutes. OK, we can handle that. We sit and let the kids eat their caramel apples and hope that this guy really shows up and that he’s actually a cab driver and not a serial killer or something. 25 minutes later we see a minivan with the cab company name on the side turning the corner onto the street where we are sitting. And just as he turns, some crazy looking guy starts running toward us and the minivan. He seemed to have come out of nowhere. He’s shouting something about “I need that cab!” but he looks kind of scary and deranged, so we shove the kids into the minivan (still hoping that we are not escaping from a crazy guy just to get into the hands of a minivan-driving serial killer), and our minivan drives away, leaving the crazy guy panting at the curb. In hindsight, I feel kinda bad because he was probably just a guy who was told that the last shuttle was at 1opm.

PS) We made it back to our RV, and the minivan guy (who is obviously doing this as a side gig to make some cash and was actually very nice) only (ha!) charged us $20 for the 5 minute ride. Eat that, you snotty Uber app.

Links:

• Uber
• Gatlinburg, Tennessee
• Old Smoky Tennessee Moonshine
• Mellow Mushroom Restaurant
• Ripley’s Gatlinburg Attractions