Museum of Appalachia — Attraction in Norris

Having always been interested in bluegrass music, homesteaders and their way of life, I decided to visit the Appalachia (living) Museum. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement, firstly the tour guides were...tour guides guiding the paying public through a memorised script with the enthusiasm of a subway employee reading a train timetable. Much was the same enthusiasm with the man handing out sassafras tea in...wait for it...very unenvironmentally friendly polystyrene cups. the house, church and school were as dismal and depressing as the worn out look of everything inside them. So having suffered all that I decided to go watch the musicians play before I had some lunch in the museum restaurant... well suffer me, they played as if it were a chore, I have never seen such miserable faces sigh when they’d finished a song...they’d have done us all a favour by putting a CD on instead. As for the restaurant..umm well they told me it was good and it wasn't, but it might have looked more agreeable had it been on an actual plate instead of round pieces of pressed polystyrene. The gift shop was full of over priced and very uninteresting tat similar to what you’d find in an amish museum gift shop. Now would I recommend the Appalachia Museum...only if you had absolutely racked your brains and couldn’t think of anywhere better to waste your precious time on. I think the owner (Elaine), manager (Jan) and the lady in the gift shop (Amanda) need to stop fooling themselves because they’re not fooling me or...

Look guys, I travel full time and there are a LOT of pioneer museums out in the world and there is a bit of romanticizing the poor aspect to the whole endeavor, BUT the Museum of Appalachia has a particularly good collection of buildings, including Mark Twain's childhood home, a 1800's log cabin used in the filming of a Daniel Boone show, a huge mill, and loads of cabins and barns.

But I think the best part of the collection is in the very first building, the hall of fame. The original director of the museum collected so many great stories - almost too many to read in one visit. It really brings everything to life and makes the museum stand above the rest.

There's also a small cafe that is very popular with the locals (go early!) and a really lovely gift shop with a lot of fun items, including a whole wall of jellies and fruit butters. Everyone there is super nice, and there are a few animals on property - some free-ranging chickens and peacocks, some goats, miniature horses, and sheep. There's a one-way path through the whole thing so you don't miss anything.

My only complaint is that it's all a bit pricey. Lunch in the cafe of chicken and dressing plus two sides, a slice of good cornbread, and a slice of hummingbird cake was almost $18. (It comes out very fast, btw.) The museum itself is $20. (I was told by my hosts that museum admission was free with a meal, but if that was ever true, it's not anymore. Everyone seems to come...

Very rude staff member dude in red truck that parks at the end of parking lot me and my fiancé got there at 8:30 this morning thinking they open at that time seen that they open at 9 and he had been driving for 4 hours so we decided to wait til they open and we stayed in our vehicle and the dude almost hit us and said your in my parking spot and then walked away we thought it was over and done with but no he comes back out 3 minutes later screaming at us asked if we were employees and we said no and he said then why are you here how did you get in and we said that we came in through the entrance and the gate was already open and then he made the comment that he’s guessing we didn’t get any sleep last night and he was yelling at us instead of directing us to where guests park he stormed off and called the cops on us for one we are from out of town and for two is that anyway to treat anyone we were asked to leave we did nothing wrong but we were asked to leave is that how staff thinks it’s ok to treat their guest we wanted to go see this museum because it’s my fiancé’s culture and where he was raised and because with my job we get free admission very upset with how our vacation has started out but aside from the interaction very pretty place from what we seen...