Essential to the identity of the area: a billboard on the front of Dollywood. Photo / George Rose, Getty
Essential to the identity of the area: a billboard on the front of Dollywood. Photo / George Rose, Getty
It's not like going to New York, or even California or Florida. Tennessee is another world, under the Great Smoky Mountains, a gateway to the old South. There's a twang in the voices, a plain-spoken, tough friendliness, a sense on the tangle of freeways that those monster trucks and unbelievably huge SUVs may just have driven 4,000 miles from Alaska.
As you make your way sleepily from the airport – neat little Knoxville in our case – adverts and campaign posters make it clear that four things are essential to local identity: guns, religion, doughnuts and Dolly Parton. Oh, and pride in The Vols – the Tennessee Volunteers football team, whose supporters in cheerful orange sweatshirts were all over our B&B one morning, politely lining up to use the instant-pancake machine. This place feels friendly, even when you've just driven past a business proclaiming: "Machine-gun rentals. Stop, shop and shoot!"
It was Dolly who sparked our extended-family expedition here. Once we worked out that my nephew's new job and home lie just an hour away from Dollywood – the theme park the singer founded and oversees – my brother, sister-in-law, daughter and I hit the cheap-flight websites.
The Dixie Stampede theater is on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo / George Rose, Getty
We reckoned we would whisk the hard-working nephew and his fiancee into the fantasy that is the down-home, yee-ha, country-lovin', coat-of-many-colours, rags-to-riches, pink 'n' rhinestone world of the great Dolly Parton.
We all love Dolly: big hair, big chest, big voice, big heart. She is a remarkable songwriter and a hell of a performer. Her one-liners are legendary: "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap." Or "Who does my hair? I don't know, I'm never there." Moreover, her business acumen has allowed her to build an empire: "I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes. I know I'm not dumb. And I know I'm not blonde."
With that business empire she determinedly does good: her theme park and events make her the biggest employer in her home area, with jobs providing work for thousands in what was a depressed semi-rural area.
She funds The Imagination Library, an idea she started in her home town and which offers to deliver a book each month to children for the first five years of their lives. The scheme has been rolled out across the US, Canada, UK and Australia. So far nearly 100 million books have been issued.
Back home, when forest fires made mountain families homeless, Dolly stepped in to give them each $1,000 a month, and extended her generosity with a further $3 million investment.
The Dolly Express steams on a trail out of the park. Photo / Supplied
I point all this out to try to convince you that this trip wasn't just because I wanted to prance around in a pink stetson yelling 'Yee-ha!' and sing along to I Will Always Love You. Well, OK, it was largely that. But rather than go to a theme park built around a giant mouse who wants your money, why not go to one which is about a real, pint-sized philanthropist with family values?
She has those, our Dolly: she lets her sister Stella tour with a tribute act, and with my own eyes I saw her brother Randy (a moody old mountain fox with a ponytail) and some random nieces and in-laws doing a daily show at the park.
Anyway, not very many Britons come to Tennessee and Dollywood, so off we went in a spirit of exploration. After a tour of Knoxville Zoo, we took a half-day hike through the glorious Smoky Mountains. Then we plunged towards Dollywood, through the bizarre dreamworld of Pigeon Forge. This extraordinary place, once a Bible Belt town, has grown up around the theme park and become a sort of nightmarish, surreal fairground strip.
Anything that polystyrene and concrete can create is there. The full-size front section of the Titanic did not delay us too long. Nor did the "trampoline park and ninja warrior centre", the upside-down WonderWorks centre, the four-storey go-kart track, the world's largest knife store or the sign saying: "Jewellery, live sharks, sunglasses." After this, Dollywood itself would be an oasis of sanity.
To prepare for the main event, we went for dinner at Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, joined in a bit of yee-ha in the bar, and then sat around the sawdust arena with table benches upon which food – chicken, steak, potatoes and biscuit – was delivered.
Dollywood: A Smaller, gentler, friendlier sort of Disneyland. Photo / Flikr.com, Darryl Kenyon
A rope-twirling cowboy host hollered that we had to eat with our fingers: "Ain't no forks and there ain't no spoons, you eat just like them ole raccoons!"
So we did, trying not to choke when the herd of real bison came on, or while laughing at the piglet race, gasping at the trick riders, admiring the Southern Belles in lit-up crinolines descending from the roof, and generally appreciating the sheer cheek of a mini-history of the American South which omits to mention slavery and reduces the Civil War to a jokey It's A Knockout-style contest. But it was so camp, so full of heart, that we loved every minute.
And so to Dollywood itself. We stayed in the star's DreamMore resort hotel, the high spot of which was the over-the-top breakfast buffet. After seeing my brother returning from the chocolate fountain with a plateful of multi-dipped everything, my daughter asked sternly: "Are you a five-year-old at a wedding?" Actually, by then we all were.
And yes, Dollywood itself was great. The entrance contains an exhibition on the history of gospel music, complete with creepy animatronic pastor. Further in, there is a soothing exhibit about eagles. But in most ways it is a smaller, gentler, friendlier sort of Disneyland, with more quirks. I don't actually like rollercoasters because I am a coward, but the others had a shriek-filled time while I enjoyed several turns on a brilliantly designed water ride. Then I made them all join me. I am pleased to say they got even soggier than I did. But hey, it's Tennessee, and even in autumn it was pleasantly warm.
The best ride was the simplest: we all were curiously moved, and respectful, when we rode the steam train which takes you not only around the park but outside it too, through the wild mountain forest beyond, hooting that plaintive, American railroad hoot. It reminded us that this is wild country still.
The Grist Mill in Dollywood Park. Photo / Supplied
We had visited an old shack the day before, far up in the mountain, and we reflected on the difficult life that the Partons came from. In the park itself is a replica of their home, showing how hard those mountain moms must have worked, how precarious the money the fathers brought home for big families, and how real the story is of Dolly's mother sewing rags together for the "coat of many colours" in the song. And, not least, how driven was Dolly, sitting on the woodpile with a tobacco-tin on a stick as a pretend microphone, making up her first songs at the age of ten.
In the park, the museum of her showbiz life is fascinating, with youthful letters from her first trips to Nashville, a hologram Dolly to greet you, and barmy costumes. So you nip out afterwards to Dolly's Closet (her clothes, your size) and debate whether you need more nylon leopard-print in your life.
Most touching of all was her old tour bus, with her boudoir at one end, and a "retired wig" to revere. You get a real, sweaty sense of the toughness of a determined showbiz life across America.
Then I went out, enjoyed one more time on the water ride, ate a fistful of funnel cake, saw brother Randy's show, and nerved myself for a turn on a rollercoaster. It was terrifying but I knew Dolly wouldn't let me come to harm.
One more admission: for our last night my daughter forced me to book The Inn At Christmas Place in Pigeon Forge, where Christmas is celebrated every day. The TV in your bedroom has a channel featuring just a blazing fire, Santa turns up daily at 8am and the porter is summoned by reception with the words: "North Pole calling Toy Soldier."
It is a grim thing to eat a not very good breakfast in the sweltering heat while carols play in the background. You could tell it was nothing to do with Dolly. So we swung by her home town, Sevierville, and paid our respects to a rather awful sentimental statue of her as a girl. We did this by eating a plateful of doughnuts…
