Dining plus Cades Cove

...continuing with our adventures around the latest visit by Laurie’s sister Bonnie and her husband Bill.

After stopping at all those antique/collectibles shops as described in the previous post, we continued on east on US Hwy 321 to Townsend Tennessee near one of the entrances to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Before visiting the park, we decided that it was time for lunch.

On March 22^nd, I’d published a post about Laurie and my first dining experience at the Peaceful Side Social Brewery and Craft Kitchen.  We’d enjoyed the experience and we thought that Bill and Bonnie would like this relatively new dining venue as well.

Bonnie took this photo of Laurie sitting at the table with some old guy who I just don’t recognize… Time does fly by!

For the most part, we ordered “shareables” from the menu.  In this case, it was the Cajun Shrimp plus Sausage. ($13.00) The dish consisted of Roasted shrimp and Conecuh Sausage with tomatoes and chilis in pesto with sourdough bread.  It was very good but we would have liked a couple more half slices of bread to soak up the sauce.

FYI, Conecuh Sausage is a brand name for smoked sausage made in Evergreen Alabama.  This family owned business was founded in 1947.  Check out their website at https://conecuhsausage.com/about/. 

Bill and Bonnie love charcuterie boards.  At Peaceful Side Social, they call it the Appalachian Trail Board. ($13.00) It included a couple different types of salami, some Benton’s Country Ham, regional cheeses, pepper relish, pickles, trail mix and crackers.  Our server brought us some additional crackers.  Bill and Bonnie really liked it and thought that it was a great value as compared to similar items they’ve sampled in St. Louis Missouri.

FYI, if you are unfamiliar with Benton’s Country Ham and their other products, go to https://bentonscountryhams2.com/.  This is also a family owned business.  It is located in Madisonville Tennessee and Benton’s has also been operating since 1947. 

I ordered this large pretzel with beer cheese and whole grain mustard. ($11.00) It was OK but we’ve had better pretzels.  The beer cheese worked well though…

As one more shareable, we ordered a rather imaginative offering.  These were our Goat Cheese Grit Fritters. ($9.00) They consisted of fried corn with goat cheese bites and they were served with Peaceful Side Social’s ‘Comeback Sauce’.  I really enjoyed this creation!

Bill had decided to take it easy on the ‘shareables’, so he ordered a sandwich as a main dish.  This was his Smoked Trout and Avocado sandwich. ($12.00) Local smoked trout, tomato, pickled red onion, arugula and avocado were served on rustic sourdough bread.  He was very pleased with his choice.

Turnabout is fair play.  Laurie snapped this photo of Bill and Bonnie at the restaurant.  The first time we visited Peaceful Side Social, it was fairly empty.  If you look over Bonnie and Bill’s shoulders, you can see that this relatively ‘new’ restaurant has been ‘discovered’!

Peaceful Side Social Brewery and Craft Kitchen is located at 7967 East Lamar Alexander Parkway (US Hwy 321) in Townsend Tennessee.  Phone: 865-518-6300.  Website: https://peacefulsidesocial.com/.

After our late lunch, we took advantage of the rather dreary and chilly day to visit the most visited unit or place in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Dreary and chilly is a good thing as it keeps many of the tourists away and makes the scenic circle route through Cades Cove doable in a reasonable amount of time.

Trail rides in Cades Cove is big business, but on this day most if not all of the horses that are used for these trail rides were enjoying a day out in the pasture.  One horse was ‘working’ the tourist’s vehicles looking for treats.  He’d snuffle your hand and if you didn’t have anything for him he just moved on to the next possible snack.

The National Park Service and its allies have maintained a fair number of structures in Cades Cove including old family farm buildings and churches.  But, most tourist come to the Cove to see wildlife and to enjoy the spectacular scenery.  On this occasion we saw a lot of deer and turkey too…but didn’t get any usable photos of the wild turkey.

Cades Cove (valley) is located in the Tennessee section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  It was home for many settlers before they were forced to leave their homes upon the formation of the National Park.  The population of Cades Cove probably never exceeded 700 people.  With its wild life, scenic mountain views and well preserved homesteads, the Cove attracts more than 2,000,000 visitors each year.  The Cades Cove Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  

Of course the big ‘draw’ for tourists in Cades Cove are the black bears!  We’ve made the circle drive many times in the last 12+ years and this was only the 3^rd or 4^th time that we actually saw any bear.  Best of all, it was a mama bear and her 3 cubs.  We only captured 2 of the cubs in the photo but we got a decent head shot of mama. 

As always happens, a traffic jam took place with tourist getting out of their vehicles to get close up photos.  Fortunately a ranger or volunteer showed up, put people back in their vehicles and got traffic moving again.  If it had been a nice sunny day with heavy traffic, we might have spent an hour or more trying to get past these bears…

To learn more about Cades Cove, its history and its people, just go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cades_Cove.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave