The Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg, TN

KIDDING! Bill loves all things of natural beauty, and didn’t think Gatlinburg would be our cup of tea; and while I can see what he means, it was an experience. I would unhesitatingly recommend Gatlinburg for families with children requiring entertainment - it is totally geared to tourism with Ripley’s Aquarium, Ripley’s Magic Mirrors, Ripley’s Wax Museum, aerial trams, arcades, kitschy shops, funnel cakes, etc. I actually loved the afternoon there.

For arts and crafts lovers, there is a 6-mile road loop featuring potters, chainsaw-carved figurines, and all manner of arts both fine and less so. For nature lovers, there is the Smoky Mountains National Park with several entrances around Gatlinburg. Saturday, we took a nice 2-mile hike with Victoria and her dog Honey Bear and our dog Pippi, until a fellow hiker FINALLY warned us that we’d face a huge fine for hiking with our dogs - YIKES. We high-tailed it back to the trailhead, apologizing all the way to our fellow hikers, many of whom no doubt would have liked to hike with THEIR dogs. Everyone said they had no problem with the dogs, they didn’t want to be the bearers of bad news, no need to apologize, we didn’t know better etc. - that Southern politeness!

Finding fine dining in Gatlinburg was a challenge. When the Greenbrier Campground staff dude said he didn’t eat in Gatlinburg and suggested the nearby Cobbly Nob Cafe and Trish’s Mountain Diner (“fantastic Southern cooking,” he said), I thought maybe Gatlinburg dining was just too expensive. That wasn’t the case - a Google search revealed a plethora of family-friendly restaurants, and I’m sure some of the restaurants qualify as fine dining but their menus didn’t interest me. We tried the Fox and Parrot Tavern, which had the benefit of not being on the traffic-heavy Gatlinburg strip, and featuring a lot of English-type draft beers and very respectable fish & chips. For food in-town, we chose the always dependable Mellow Mushroom pizzaria.

After Victoria returned to Asheville on Monday, we took another hike (sans Pippi) in the Smoky Mountains to Rainbow Falls, the largest contiguous falls (80 feet) in the park. Dorian had originally contemplated an even longer walk but thank goodness we didn’t do that - 4 hours (first 2 with a pretty good elevation gain) were enough for our first serious hike of this trip. My quads and hamstrings were complaining bitterly.

Would We Come Back Here?

Heck yes! The hikes through the national park were great and the streams clear and beautiful. We saw only a small fraction of the Smoky Mountains and I'd like to see more. I wouldn't come back for Gatlinburg specifically, although there is skiing there so if it were winter and I had my skis....

Although we tend to be state park types (oriented towards nature and solitude vs family-oriented with multiple distractions for unsolitudinous kids), we'd stay at the Greenbrier Campground again as long as 1) we were in an RV and not relegated to the infield of the lot and 2) one of the sites along the Little Pigeon River was available. Most of the RV sites were on the river. Some of the tent sites were along the river and quite nice but if you got relegated to the infield--well, there wasn't much there.

Would We Live Here?

No. Probably not. On the checklist of things we like, there weren't many boxes checked. While it's near skiing, I am pretty sure there's a heavy dependence on manmade snow and the usual fear of rain that comes with places like this. Douglas Lake is a lake near Gatlinburg created by damming the French Broad River. We never got a chance to go look at it, so perhaps we're being unfair to Gatlinburg.