Tennessee is a popular vacation attraction for many southern West Virginians. We all know it’s true. All summer long, people from West Virginia make one or two trips to Tennessee to fish lakes like Douglas and Cherokee, to visit Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and Sevierville and to just get away for a weekend to shop the outlet stores.

Tennessee is close and a stay there is relatively cheap, compared to taking a vacation at the beach, which can be very pricey and very far away. So, many West Virginians, particularly those from the southern coal mining counties, like to vacation in Tennessee.

But, during my visit to Tennessee last week, I would guess to say I saw no more than 30 West Virginia cars the entire time I was down south. Maybe that miners boycott of the Tennessee tourism areas — sparked by Tennessee Senator Lamarr Alexander’s anti-surface mining bill — is working.

Counting from the time I crossed the Kentucky border until the time I crossed back into West Virginia from the Bluegrass State, I probably didn’t pass or see any more than 30 West Virginia license plates on cars, trucks and SUVs.

And the entire time I was traveling in Tennessee, I only saw one Pike County, Ky., license plate.

Now, that doesn’t mean there were no more than 30 West Virginians in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and Sevierville last week, but, usually, I pass hundreds of West Virginia cars on the way into Tennessee, then hundreds more when I’m traveling through Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and Sevierville and then many more on the way back home.

My wife, Shauna, and I traveled to Tennessee to visit some comic book stores so I could gather sales data for The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, of which I have been an advisor and contributing writer for nearly a decade (you can find the price guide in most bookstores and my picture is in the back!). It’s a yearly thing and when I go, I often watch the highways and parking lots for West Virginia license plates because it makes me smile (don’t ask me why, just humor me).

This time, though, the cars traveling from Kentucky into Tennessee were scarce. We saw only one West Virginia license plate in the parking lot of our hotel (The Wilderness resort, which has a super-huge, indoors water park that is awesome) and we didn’t run into anyone from Mingo or Logan County while we were out in the tourist areas.

While eating at the Applewood restaurant on the grounds of the Apple Barn, we talked with a couple from West Virginia, but they were from up north. My wife and I later ran into a woman from Hurricane in one of the outlets (she was sounding out Hurricane the way everyone else across the country pronounces it after trying to say it like we pronounce it here).

Other than those three Mountain Staters, we didn’t run into another West Virginia resident until we stopped for gasoline in Wise, Va., where we saw Matewan Football Assistant Coach Danny “B.B.” Perkins, who was headed down south.

The Sevierville-Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg areas weren’t jam-packed with people, either.

We expected there to be a lot of vacationers trying to get one last week of fun and sun in before school starts, but the usual crowds just weren’t there last week.

I’d say if the majority of West Virginia and Kentucky coal miners really did boycott Tennessee this summer, it probably took a toll on their economy.

West Virginians like to go and take part in the attractions, like Dollywood, the Dixie Stampede, the outlet malls, the go-kart racing and the water parks, and they spend a lot of money in Tennessee and I’d say that a boycott by the miners probably hurt business at least a little bit this summer.