First of It's Kind

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn.--Tennessee's Soaky Mountain Waterpark in Sevierville will debut a water coaster promising to be the first-of-its-kind.

Soaky Mountain Waterpark announced the opening of the water coaster which will be known as "The Edge" will open to the public on Wednesday after first being announced last November. The slide will feature two lanes on a 70 foot tower.

The two slides will have riders sit on double tubes before they are dropped three stories into a valley. Riders will then be propelled up a hill into an enclosed tube and dropped again where they will blast up a wall and dropped once again feeling extreme G forces.

At the end of the line, riders will see which of the two is the winner of the duel. In a statement release when the attraction was first announced, Soaky Mountain GM Dave Andrews says "Our new water coaster, fittingly named, ‘The Edge’ is going to be a showstopper! 

It will be perched on the edge of our waterpark, and span two football fields in length. It’s fusing together WhiteWater’s Master Blaster water coaster with their iconic Boomerango. But, we are not adding just one slide, we are doubling it for a dueling thrill!”  READ MORE...

THe Iron Mountain

It’s not often we get a glimpse into the road not taken.  There was a movement in the early 1900s to preserve the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains and create the national park.

But that movement came with consequences. Whether those consequences were good or bad depends on your point of view.

Ultimately, people lost their homes, their land and their way of life for the greater good. Communities were erased. Bizarre fairly lands built for the amusement of the ultra-rich were abandoned back to the mountains.

Loggers who were clearing great swaths of the forest were forced to look elsewhere.  I think by and large, we’re all quite pleased with how things turned out. We love the national park, and the areas surrounding the park drive the local economy.

But what if things had turned out differently? What if the parks had remained private land?

Maybe it would have turned out like Foxfire Mountain Adventure Park, located not far from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Sevierville.  It’s a wonderful place with lots of manmade adventure, where you can hike the natural beauty of the Smokies.

Foxfire Family Adventure Park in Sevierville
The park was founded by the Postlewaite family. Prior to 2009, it was chiefly a cattle farm. By 2009, the family was ready to sell the farm for financial reasons.

However, during an Alaskan vacation, Marc tried ziplining. They called the realtor, took Foxfire off the market and built an adventure park, offering some of the best ziplining in the region.  READ MORE

Dolly Parton

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee was at 34%.

Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate.

That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood.

They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day.

As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels.

That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education.

The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge.

What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

Happy 74th Birthday Dolly Parton!

Most Wanderlusted Vacation

According to WVLT TV, Knoxville, TN

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -Have you taken a trip to Sevierville recently? According to Airbnb, Sevierville has been named as one of the most ‘wanderlusted’ destinations.

Airbnb says more than half of the people who had Sevierville at the top of their wanderlust list were most likely to seek out its signature unique landscapes when visiting.

Airbnb’s other top “wanderlusted” destinations include:

1. Los Angeles, California, United States
2. Sevierville, Tennessee, United States
3. Seoul, South Korea
4. Atlanta, Georgia, United States
5. Paris, France
6. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
7. Bali, Indonesia
8. Mexico City, Mexico
9. Cape Town, South Africa
10. London, United Kingdom

COMMENT:  I have been to 6 of the 10 destinations and while I am glad that Sevierville got this honor, I would not rank the city SECOND in this list...  in fact, I would not have included this city in this list at all...  in fact, I would probably have ranked Gatlinburg in this list before Sevierville...  simply because there is just not much to do in Sevierville.

There are 3 cities that are only a couple of miles apart in that area:  Sevierville, then Pidgeon Forge, then Gatlinburg and Sevierville by far is the one city where tourists spend the least amount of time...  but it is necessary to pass through when heading towards Pidgeon Forge and Gatlinburg...   

Note:
Airbnb is an online marketplace that connects people who want to rent out their homes with people who are looking for accommodations in that locale. It currently covers more than 100,000 cities and 220 countries worldwide. 

The company's name comes from “air mattress B&B.”Airbnb is an online marketplace that connects people who want to rent out their homes with people who are looking for accommodations in that locale. It currently covers more than 100,000 cities and 220 countries worldwide. The company's name comes from “air mattress B&B.”