May 1
We had tickets for Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner Show to finish up our “Dolly” experience. We left in the morning to make our way over to Pigeon Forge with our first stop at the Sam Houston school house in Maryville. A fellow retired teacher at the rally had told us not to miss it. Sam Houston taught here in 1812 when he was 18. The building was an interesting design in itself. The open air windows were long slats. When they were open the large beams acting as shutters folded down into the room to make long desks, one a little higher than the other for different sized children. We were fortunate to arrive when a docent, retired teacher, was between classes of first graders on a field trip. She was so knowledgeable about Sam Houston. My frame of reference for him was based on the Alamo. We sat on the benches as students as she began a mini version of his life story. He was self taught and must have been brilliant. He ran away from school repeatedly and his mother finally locked him in a room filled with his father’s books, an amazing collection. By the time he was around 14, he had studied and restudied the entire collection including becoming fluent in Greek and Latin. It was time to go work in the family store but he didn’t like that either and ran way to live with the Cherokees living with them for 3 or four years. His family finally demanded that he pay off debts collected while he was living with the Cherokees bringing him to this school to teach for one season. He ended up becoming a soldier and had quite an extensive political career. He was a good friend of Andrew Jackson. His entrance into law school, marriage, annulment and remarriage were all good stories

Sam Houston taught at this school in 1812 when he was 18 years old.
The docent filled gave us a mini course on his life.

This is the inside of the school with the shutters that
closed the windows folding down to make desks.

We drove to Gatlinburg to tour the Ole Smokey Moonshine Distillery. It was just a walk by with some explanations but interesting. An interesting fact - the cars running the moonshine were the forerunners of the stock cars that race today in Daytona. They were souped up with powerful engines to outrun the revenuers and the trunks were enlarged to carry big loads. They have an old 1940 coup on display along with a 1960’s car and an old pickup truck. All of them are in mint condition! They had a group playing good ole mountain music. They just got their license, the first issued, in 2010 and their business is taking off.

An original 1940 "stock" car used to run moonshine.
It could outrun the cops and was the forerunner of the stock cars racing at Daytona.

happy at the Dixie Stampede

Our darling waitress could deliver 8 drinks at a time with only one hand!

Dixie Stampede Pre-Show
Too bad we couldn't take photos dunring the dinner show!

The Dixie Stampede was fabulous! What a show with a meal to match. First we took seats in a pre-show room that holds about 1,000 people. Dolly doesn’t have any alcohol at any of her places but they had fun drinks served in cowboy boots. Three top notch entertainers kept us doing some foot tapping with some great mountain music and gospel songs with some jokes thrown in. Then we went into the large arena dinner room to find our seats. The seats all line the arena without a bad seat in the place. The show started out with riders on horseback doing the opening number and the cast kept up an amazing pace for the rest of the evening. We were totally spellbound!!! Dinner was served without a hitch with course after course never interrupting the show. I don‘t know how they did it. We ate everything with our fingers: yummy biscuit, soup, a whole roasted chicken, smoked pork, corn, potato wedge, and apple fritter for dessert! They had a number of amazing horse and rider acts including trick riders, pigs racing around a course, audience involvement, singing numbers and of course a silly guy that made us laugh! They had some North South competition going on but Dolly brought us all back together with the finale. It was a beautiful patriotic number with the riders in red satin shirts that lit up and Dolly singing in the background. We loved the entire evening!