We recently took a trip to Gatlinburg, TN. If you have never been there, it's like God took Las Vegas, Atlantic City and the Poconos, crushed them into 2 square miles of dogshit, shook well, and created a town. On the very first day I contemplated jumping into the shark tank at Ripley's aquarium. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was beautiful but the only mammals we saw were tourists.

So I decided to make the 10 mile, 14 hour trip to Bud's (traffic made me yearn for rush hour in Pittsburgh.)

What a nice store. The shop has two levels. The top level is pistols and clothing, the lower level rifles, shotguns and their 25 line indoor range. The range has a nice big window and I enjoyed watching some tourists from overseas banging away with some of the automatic weapons you can rent.

I have been interested in the FN SLP shotgun so I rented one for a little range time. I had 3 failures to feed in between some fun shooting and the range officer couldn't figure out the problem. The lady behind the rental counter was incredibly sweet and apologetic and let me use any other gun for free so I got in some pistol practice. The sales staff was very nice too and said that if I bought an SLP, all the range fees would be deducted from the price. I passed on the offer but really enjoyed the shop. It was big, most the long guns were on racks that you could access, and the sales staff were good old boys that were fun to talk to.

The trip to Bud's was a nice way to spend an hour and if you should find yourself in this hellhole, it may just restore some of your sanity.