Dollywood

I WENT TO DOLLYWOOD for the first time for my musician friend Hillary’s birthday about ten years ago. Being at Dollywood with a country music star really works in your VIP favor, and we had the absolute best time. But I hadn’t been back again until this spring. I was speaking in Pigeon Forge when a friend from the Dollywood PR team, Amber, invited Emma, my tour manager for the weekend, and me to come to the park.

From the first minute we walked through the gate, we were smiling and having fun. We rode roller coasters and toured Dolly’s Tennessee Mountain Home and the chapel—both exact replicas of the real things. We spent a surprising amount of time looking at the bald eagles in the bird sanctuary and we ate cinnamon bread. I didn’t know this before that trip, but the cinnamon bread is legendary. Before it’s baked, the loaves get absolutely drenched in butter and then smothered in cinnamon sugar. And when they bake, they bake all the way through but are still somehow incredibly gooey. Emma and I split some and were in awe and heaven and every other word you can use to describe that kind of delicious.

It felt sweet, in a more than just a cinnamon sugar kind of way, to be there with Emma. In a new season where Eliza was no longer my travel buddy and coworker, and when my new assistant, Jenna, wasn’t available to go, Emma was the perfect companion. Emma is a touring professional, so I knew I could trust her with the work side of what we were doing. But she’s also a very close friend who knows me really well and loves, loves, loves to have fun. In fact, she rode roller coasters I wouldn’t ride because I didn’t want to scramble my brains and risk getting a migraine.

It was a really fun day.

I GOT AN EMAIL from Amber early in the fall, a few months after that trip with Emma, that there would be a Hallmark Christmas movie filmed at Dollywood, and in the email she asked if my friends and I would be interested in being extras.

My amateur heart answered yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.

If there is a Venn diagram of the Hallmark Channel and Dollywood, I promise you I am the center where the two circles meet.

My friends Jami and Jennifer came with me to Dollywood because they are the official Hallmark Christmas movie experts in my life. They watch many of them, they love most of them, they dislike a few of them, and they can talk about all of them. Every year we record an episode of the That Sounds Fun podcast about Hallmark Christmas movies. We talk about the best ones to watch, our favorite actors and actresses, the ones that make us roll our eyes, and the scenery that seems real and the scenery that seems fake. (Canadian mountains look nothing like the Smoky Mountains. Just a thought, Hallmark. Love you, mean it.) So when this opportunity to be an extra came to me through the same friend from the PR team at Dollywood, and I knew Jami and Jennifer would be on the podcast soon for our yearly episode, I asked and Amber said it was fine for them to come with. Jenna came too because how dare I have an absolutely fun and excellent experience without her?

We arrived at Dollywood at 10:00 a.m., having left Nashville at 5:30 a.m. The night before we left, I was stressed and tired and didn’t read the email sent to us by Hallmark, so I did not realize I wasn’t wearing the right-colored shirt until we had already filled out our paperwork to be extras and were walking into the park.

It’s hard to know what to expect when you’ve never been an extra in a movie before. It’s that amateur life again, isn’t it? I had such high expectations for this day—I knew I wanted to tell you about it here, I knew it involved Dolly Parton, Dollywood, Hallmark, my friends. It felt like this day, this story, was going to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that started way back with the migraines and the bed rest and the whole fall season off the road.

The park was beautifully decorated for Christmas. Lights were strung up everywhere in every color, Christmas trees lined the sidewalks, and garland and decor hung from the light poles. It was extraordinary. A few members of the film crew walked us to Red’s, the fifties-themed restaurant in the center of the park. It was around 11:00 a.m., and there was a large group of friends and family members of Dollywood employees together in there, including us, who would be extras for this movie. We picked a table, got our computers out, and all four of us got to work on some things we needed to get done. We knew there would be lots of waiting around, so we had all brought things to do.

We got to shoot one scene early in the day. It was an outside shot where a five-piece bluegrass band played in a small gazebo. We were standing in front swaying. You’ll see us doing some great acting. I’m the girl with brown hair in the winter coat. ☺

After that scene was done, we went back to Red’s around 12:30 p.m., and sat back down. It started to rain. Every now and again for the next few hours, a member of the crew would come into the restaurant and pull a few extras to be in scenes. But they never chose us.

Dinner was served, and we were getting antsy. We knew the shoot was supposed to go until 11:00 p.m., but the rain had changed so many of the shoot locations from outside to inside that they needed significantly fewer extras than originally planned. The four of us were still having fun, laughing together, telling stories, working, and snacking. We even went outside at one point when the rain stopped and took a picture for me to send as my Christmas card.

After the sun had set, a member of the crew came and collected about one hundred of the extras, leaving only about twenty of us in the restaurant. We didn’t know what to do. Should we just keep waiting? Were we missing the biggest scenes and maybe missing our chance to see Dolly Parton herself?

I had such high expectations for what the day would look like and what it could be. And here we were, leftovers in the holding pen, rain pouring outside, the clock ticking. I felt the pressure as the contact person between my friends and PR Amber.

I work really hard to be patient, to wait, to not rush things. I’m naturally not patient, so when moments like this present themselves, I feel so torn. OF COURSE I wanted to be out there, but were we supposed to let our patience muscles grow in strength? My insides were in knots, not knowing the right thing to do. Text Amber and tell her where we were or just keep waiting?

My friends made the call for me. I texted Amber.

I told her we didn’t even care about being in the movie, we just wanted to be on set and stand with her and see it being filmed. Amber walked to Red’s in less than five minutes and took us with her to set, apologizing like crazy for not realizing we weren’t in the big group of extras standing in front of the main Dollywood sign, where a stage had been erected for a concert scene with that same bluegrass band we had seen play hours before.

As we walked up, I turned and looked at the sign, and just through the opening in the D of the massive Dollywood letters, I saw sequins. Lots of them. All of them. And blonde hair. And there, just thirty feet in front of me, was Dolly Parton. I couldn’t believe it, and tears came to my eyes before I even realized it. We broke every rule and jumped into the scene, walking back and forth in front of the stage where she and the other Hallmark actors were dialoging back and forth. We ate a moon pie from catering (food that was meant for the famous people in the movie, not leftover extras like us), and we stood under the entrance portico and let the heaters warm us up while we watched the scenes in front of us. We weren’t in the movie anymore, but this view and experience was even better. We saw Dolly so clearly and so up close. I watched as the director coached and taught a young cameraman how to get the shots they needed. I got to see them build the sliding track for the moving camera and then just as quickly disassemble it and rebuild it in a new location. I saw Dolly’s nephew, who is almost famous himself, as her longtime bodyguard. It was an absolute fun feast for my eyes and my ears. None of the extras were allowed to have their phones or cameras but because we were with Amber, we were considered media, so we have tons documented from that day: pictures from up close with the Hallmark stars, selfies with Dolly in the back, shots of the set. What a gift!

They were planning to film for two days, but we could only stay for the first day. But the four of us just kept saying to each other, and to Amber, that the experience was better than we could have dreamed. Amber was sorry we weren’t seeing Glacier Ridge, the higher part of the park that was already decorated for Christmas in blues and whites and ready for filming on the second day. We had seen Main Street decorated, but we would be missing Glacier Ridge.

A little before midnight, just before the last scene of the night wrapped up, we walked back to Red’s with Amber and packed up our things. We were ahead of the rest of the extras returning from set, so the restaurant was empty. We laughed at how many hours we had spent in that place, memorialized our table, and got our things together. Just as we were headed out the door, a young midtwenties girl, who was working on the movie as a production assistant, walked in and asked if anyone else needed a ride to parking lot G. Our car was in that lot, so she said she would drive us over if we all loaded up on her golf cart.

As we started on the drive, the production assistant driver gal mentioned that one little road was shut down by construction so we’d have to take what she labeled “the long way” to the parking lot.

The park was empty as we drove, but all the Christmas lights in the different areas were twinkling. It was cold and windy but beautiful. And then suddenly, we turned a corner, and Amber had a knowing side smile on her face as we crested into what looked like thousands of blue and white lights. Glacier Ridge. The long way to the parking lot took us straight through the area we wouldn’t get to see the next night. It was silent and empty except for us.

And we were silent, too, because the view was just breathtaking, and being the only people in the moment was something special.

If we had gotten picked to be extras when we wanted to get picked . . .

If I hadn’t texted Amber . . .

If we had left early because we weren’t sure we’d be in a scene at all . . .

If we had walked back to Red’s ten minutes earlier like I had wanted to . . .

We would have missed Glacier Ridge.

And we would have missed seeing it together.

We didn’t take any pictures together up there. We were smooshed on a golf cart and bundled up to stay warm, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

THE DAY DID NOT UNFOLD as I predicted. It wasn’t Eden as I imagined it in my mind. It wasn’t the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but maybe I don’t want the pot of gold. Maybe what we’ve actually always wanted is the rainbow. That’s the only thing we can see anyway. There never has been a pot of gold. But there have always been rainbows.

That day, my friend David texted and asked how everything was going, right around when the pizza arrived for dinner, our third meal at the same table in Dollywood. I told him about the rain and the sitting and the waiting, but I also told him we were telling stories and laughing and he said, “Most anything CAN be fun. It just depends on us.”

And I said, “Yes. I want to get THAT as a tattoo.”

Most anything can be fun. It just depends on us.

Not just me and not just you. It depends on us. I think that may be the secret sauce here. Eden wasn’t complete with just Adam. Before the snake, before sin, before anything went wrong, it was already wrong for Adam to be alone.

The joys of being an amateur are better when we aren’t alone in them.

Life is just better with than without.

FUN CAN SNEAK UP on you like that. You think it’s going to be starring in a Hallmark Christmas movie, and it’s actually a golf cart ride over Glacier Ridge. It’s why I love asking my podcast guests what they like to do for fun. I love hearing the variety of answers, the many ways people have fun, and how often it involves other people, a twist in the story, or a memory worth making.

I will never forget that day at Dollywood. That park is quickly becoming one of my very favorite places. But even more than seeing Dolly Parton up close and seeing the behind-the-scenes details of a big-deal movie being filmed, I will never forget being with my friends and watching God unfold for us a day we couldn’t have dreamed up ourselves.

Oh, and by the way, since the park was closed, we couldn’t get any cinnamon bread. So the next morning as we headed back to Nashville, we swung by the DreamMore Resort—the only other place that has the cinnamon bread—and bought two loaves. It was absolutely delicious.