Don't Back Down

After the somewhat disastrous events of our visit to Ghost Town in the Sky, you would think that we would throw in the towel and head home. Certainly the last thing that we'd be likely to do is check out another theme park, but I never said that we were particularly bright. So the next day, we decided to head up the road a bit and visit Santa's Land.

Now I'll be the first to admit that, in addition to not being very bright, we had lowered our expectations considerably. So this helped. Add to that the fact that Santa's Land has, to my knowledge, been in continuous operation (perhaps not during the off-season) for some forty-odd years, so despite being a bit gray around the temples, the park doesn't have to deal with the issues of Ghost Town, which had been shuttered for the last five. Finally, throw in the fact that the cost of Santa's Land was a full 20% cheaper, and you've got yourself a winner in my book.

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After visiting Ghost Town in the Sky (and not enjoying it much), and visiting Santa's Land (and probably enjoying it more than we needed to), it was time to decide where we were going to stay. If you'll recall, the original plan for the Maggie Valley trip was to try - yes - camping. We even had a whole bunch of food packed up so that we would be able to be somewhat self-sustaining for the entire weekend.

The first thought was to try and find a hotel with a refrigerator, so that the food we had packed in the cooler at least wouldn't spoil. But then it came to us that if we actually preserved the food, it wouldn't really do much good unless we could prepare the food as well - and even a hotel room with a microwave wasn't likely to help much, when a lot of what we had was designed for open-flame cooking. Sure, hot dogs could go in the microwave, and in a pinch, so can many other things - but without certain accessories (bowls and the like), cooking eggs, chili and other products was out the window.

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After spending a couple of days in the Maggie Valley area (Do: Check out Santa's Land, Don't: Bother with the reopened Ghost Town), we were on our way home and just had to stop and grab a bite to eat. As seems our custom lately, we follow a sign from the freeway that directs us to food and... there's absolutely nothing. We did it a while back for pizza and drove for what seemed like an hour before we actually found the pizza.

In this case, we never really did find what we were looking for - I don't even really remember what it was we started off to find. But we eventually found downtown Waynesville. At least, I think it was downtown. There wasn't much else around, so I'm assuming that it was downtown. And there, we eyed a small restaurant. Perfect, because with not much around - not even a chain restaurant in sight - we were getting pretty hungry.

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Now I'm not normally one to stop at a KFC. It's not that I'm above it, mind you - it's just that I don't really like fried chicken all that much. I don't really like bones. Which is odd, because back in the day, I really enjoyed chicken wings. I think it was probably the fact that I ate a ton of wings, while consuming a large amount of alcohol. But I digress.

Since breakfast didn't go too well, having stopped at Connie's Kitchen in Waynesville, and even the cookies we picked up for the ride weren't doing much, and we had spent the day out and about, we were looking for something more. Those of you who have kids know that there comes a time when it's just do or die, and sometimes you have to make a move. We decided we'd go for KFC, mostly because they had a buffet, and we figured it would at least make things snappy. Bad choice. Really bad choice.

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