Blue Ridge Country - January/February 2019 - 18

COUNTRY ROADS

400 NEW TREES, 1,000 NEW SHRUBS

Dollywood to Expand

ollywood pushes into the "Wildwood Grove"
for its 2019 season, giving the popular park its
first new, additional area in a decade in Pigeon
Forge, Tennessee.
"Here, in Wildwood Grove, kids and their parents
now can explore and play and imagine together as a
family," park spokeswoman and superstar Dolly Parton
said at an unveil of the $37 million park expansion.
Guests enter the area through the massive hollow
trunk of a fallen tree.
Then you encounter the green, leafy canopy of the

55-foot-tall "Wildwood Tree," a structure adorned with
thousands of butterflies that dance playfully by day and
glow with a kaleidoscope of color by night.
That's an ode to Parton's 1974 classic "Love is Like a
Butterfly."
In all, Wildwood Grove includes a landscape of 400
new trees and 1,000 shrubs plus six unique ride attractions. Among them: a suspended family roller coaster
dubbed "The Dragonflier" and a hop-on tour for all
ages, "Black Bear Trail," that Parton says was inspired
by the wildlife of the nearby Great Smoky Mountains
National Park.
You can also soar inside a giant
acorn on the "Treetop Tower" or
savor southwestern flavors at a new
restaurant called "Till & Harvest."
"I've told you before about how
I'd let my imagination roam free
when I'd be out exploring in the
hills around our home in the Smoky
Mountains," Parton says. "I'd pretend that the frogs and butterflies
were my friends. I'd imagine about
what it'd be like to fly with a dragonfly or to follow a bear family
through the woods. Now, all these
things are coming true for our guests
to experience in Wildwood Grove."
dollywood.com, 800-DOLLYWOOD
-JOE TENNIS

SHRINKING THE FOOTPRINT

orth Carolina and Virginia have
both taken steps to shrink their
carbon footprint as the federal
government pulls back from actions
to address climate change. Gov. Roy
Cooper, linking global warming to the
hurricanes and floods that have hit his
state hard, announced North Carolina
would cut its greenhouse gases by 40
percent over the next seven years by
cutting energy use in state buildings,
putting at least 80,000 zero-emissions
vehicles on the road, and expanding

BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

clean energy sources.
In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam
announced the state would reduce
emissions from the transportation sector
and develop plans to limit methane pollution and reduce ocean acidification.
State regulators are also proposing rules
to cut carbon pollution from power
plants and evaluating whether to join
an emissions trading system with nine
other eastern states.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, begun in 2005, is the first manda-

tory, market-based carbon reduction
program in the U.S. Participating states
have reduced carbon from power plants
more than 40 percent while their economies have grown about 8 percent.
governor.nc.gov/news/governorcooper-commits-clean-energy-economy-nc-combat-climate-change-createjobs
governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/
all-releases/2018/september/headline829610-en.html
-CAT MCCUE

http://www.dollywood.com http://governor.nc.gov/news/governor http://governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/ http://www.BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM

Blue Ridge Country - January/February 2019

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