Wild week

Each year in Pigeon Forge a week of wildlife related presentations, workshops, demonstrations, educational sessions, and hikes takes place, and most of these are free. This is known as the Wildlife Wilderness Week, and has been going on for like 18 years. This was my first time to attend and I would recommend it for anyone who has never attended. Some of the veterans of this event I spoke w/ were becoming disappointed w/ the lack of new content for the regular attendee, however, for someone who has never attended or only been to a couple I would have no problem in finding new material to learn about or hikes to participate in. I attended sessions on Hypothermia, wild turkeys, Dowsing, the current state of the GSMNP, and several other informative presentations. Another great benefit of the timing of 'WWW', is that the room rates at area hotels; those not affiliated w/ the convention center where the 'WWW' took place, were like $24/night and up, on weekdays, w/ some increases for the weekend rate. These were not independent hotels alone, the "chain hotels" were displaying these rates on their marquis/signs as well. Guess that's what happens when you have of thousands of rooms empty in the off season.