Since we arrived in Pigeon Forge, more and more Christmas decorations have appeared every day. Hallowe’en is the start of the holiday season here, with Thanksgiving a few weeks after then Christmas and New Year shortly after that. Last night we took a walk around before we had dinner to get a look at things all lit up. Sadly not all of the lights have actually been turned on yet but it was lovely seeing those that have.

We woke up this morning to a slightly cloudy start but as we had only planned to walk along the very long road that our hotel is on and do a little present buying we weren’t too worried. Within an hour of being out though, the temperature had hit 25°! 🌞 We must have walked at least a mile and a half until we found a general store I had read about, where there are live bears. These bears have been living at the store for over 25 years after being rescued from a kill farm. You can go through to the viewing areas around their large enclosures and even buy a pot of fruit and biscuits to feed them. They were so beautiful, and very smart, they definitely knew where to stand to wait for the food. We may not have seen mountain bears in the wild yesterday but this was a pretty good second option. It was a very long hot walk back though afterwards.

This evening has been somewhat surreal…we have been singing Christmas songs and seen a live Nativity which featured real camels carrying the 3 Wise Men. Our hotel room overlooks Dolly Parton’s Stampede, which we discovered when we first arrived here, is a show and dinner venue. Tonight was opening night for the Christmas show, so we felt we couldn’t really miss it.

The food was lovely, although eating soup and biscuits (a cross between a warm scone and bread), a whole roast chicken, a pork chop, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and apple turnovers with no cutlery was an experience, to say the least! Our ‘elf’ kept our drinking jars full the whole time too. The show itself was such good fun, lots of horses and amazing riders, kid’s chasing chickens, racing pigs, tricks and songs. Lots of audience interaction too which went down better with some than others. It even snowed in the arena, and of course we saw Father Christmas. Mum found herself a handsome cowboy to sing to her as well, but sadly we had to leave him behind because he had another show to host after ours 🤠🤠🤠

We have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow, nearly 400 miles, as we are Memphis bound to stay at Graceland so I’ll say good night and Merry Christmas for now!! H xx