Two More Weeks at Pigeon Forge

As our first trip back on the road, we just wrapped up two more weeks in the Pigeon Forge area...we really do love everything there!  Unfortunately Aaron spent our first week getting over a cold, and then it rained for several days in a row, so we didn't get to do as many things as we had hoped (since all the things we want to do in Pigeon Forge are outside!).  So this just means we'll have to swing back through again in the spring :-).

We changed things up this trip and stayed in Sevierville instead of down in Pigeon Forge.  After all the nickel and diming of the place we stayed last time, this new campground was only slightly more expensive than the Passport America location we found before, and the thought of not having to drive the RV through the chaos of the Parkway area appealed to us.  We stayed at Ripplin Waters RV Park and got a site right on the river.  So, the pros: the sites here were slightly more spacious, the campground had nice facilities (bathhouse, laundry, playground, pool, and predictably staffed office/camp store), we had a river view, the management was great (no nickel and diming! also a thank you note after we left), and we did achieve the goal of not driving into the madness of Pigeon Forge with the RV.  The cons: it was far away from everything, and it just changed management and the rates are going WAY up compared to what we paid.  Now, obviously being far away from everything goes hand in hand with not driving through everything...but it bothered us more than we expected.  When we were 10 minutes from most things we wanted to do, we thought nothing of just hopping over somewhere for 30-60 minutes.  But at 30 minutes to Dollywood and an hour or so to the closest point on the Great Smoky Mountains...unless we were looking at a minimum of a half day somewhere we just couldn't get motivated to go.  So, I give a big thumbs up to the campground in terms of pleasantness of stay, but we probably won't be back because we really missed being in the middle of everything.

Our campsite at the back of the campground

A view of Pigeon River and the Smoky Mountains from the
back of the campground

The one unique thing we did this time was go see the Dolly Parton statue in downtown Sevierville - not much to it, but it was something I'd been wanting to see.

Dolly Parton statue in front of the courthouse in Sevierville

So the rest of the photos will be of Dollywood!  They were setting up for the Great Pumpkin Luminights festival when we arrived, and it started the last weekend we were there.  My parents came to explore the area with us on that Friday.  I was most impressed that they both did the Dropline and my mom rode a real roller coaster with us!  

Axe in the stump? (vs. sword in the stone)

Cool pumpkin/squash tree

They had a display of large pumpkins - this was the largest

Moonshine tasting with my dad at 
Ole Smoky Moonshine at the Island

With my parents outside the Pirates Voyage dinner show

With my parents at the main pumpkin tree at Dollywood

One of my favorite light displays at the festival - the strings 
change color as the display plays music

It was a fun and relaxing two weeks, and now we're going to head down south for the winter.  We'll be stopping at a couple new spots on the way down, stay tuned!

Back at Pigeon Forge

As we continue our loop around Tennessee, we returned to Pigeon Forge for 10 days.  Gotta get our money's worth out of those Dollywood season passes!!  We returned to Walden's Creek RV Park as its price really can't be beat for Passport America members (though we did take a look at some other, more expensive, RV parks while we were there...just in case).  Our experience this time was much better than last time - I was able to catch up with our host the day after we arrived, and by not plugging in the car we avoided any unexpected charges.

Our second campsite at Walden's Creek - in the back of the
park this time

Our first order of business was to head to Dollywood to see Rebecca St. James, who was there as part of the Flower and Food Festival.  Aaron and I listened to her CDs a lot in college, so it was exciting to see her live at Dollywood!  

Rebecca St. James - live!

Out and about in the area we discovered that it was a LOT busier this trip than our first time through in May.  We did go on one hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Laurel Falls - but it was so busy (and hard to park) that it discouraged us from attempting any other hikes in the national park.

Laurel Falls

Aaron out on a rock in the middle of the falls

Unfortunately later that day Aaron's phone got splashed on a water ride at Dollywood and died - despite Apple's claim that that model could withstand being submerged under 3ft of water for 30 minutes without damage - so we lost his better photos of the falls.  So, PSA for you: don't trust Apple's water resistance rating!

Having not completely learned our lesson, we attempted to go back to the national park again - this time for the Cades Cove driving trail - we figured it was so far from Pigeon Forge and didn't require parking, so it would be ok...wrong!!  We went mostly to enjoy the drive and view all the old buildings on the route, but it seems that several people were there only to find black bears, and those people backed everyone up on the driving trail going ~1mph (slow enough it didn't register on the speedometer) around the 11 mile trail.  We gave up around 2/3 through and took the escape road out, and only stopped at one building because the traffic was so frustrating and we just wanted to get out of it.  We weren't the only ones with this problem...one of our favorite RV podcasts experienced the same thing in April...seems that with everyone vaccinated and schools out everything everywhere is just packed.  So, this time we did learn our lesson and didn't attempt to go back to the national park for any reason.

We stopped at this first log cabin on the trail

Cool thing I learned here - some log cabins
cut the logs at angles as you see here to 
route rainwater away from the structure

Fortunately we had reservations (read: guaranteed entry and limited crowds) for a couple of shows in Pigeon Forge.  We returned to our all-time favorite dinner show, Dolly Parton's Stampede, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  We tried out the Comedy Barn for the first time, and though it was fun, it wasn't to the same caliber as the dinner shows in Pigeon Forge, so we probably won't return.

Before the show at the Stampede

The patriotic end of show

Pre-show at Comedy Barn

Patriotic end-of-show at Comedy Barn

We discovered a couple of remote outside areas to visit away from the national park to fill our remaining 'nice days' time.  We drove up a narrow and winding road to the Bluff Mountain fire tower...I found this on Google Maps and it was well rated, and it was quite a baffling experience.  The fire tower was behind a wide open gate at a cluster of cell towers.  It was clearly commonly frequented based on all the graffiti, but there was basically NOTHING in the way of safety precautions on the rickety-feeling tower.  Aaron made it to the top but I chickened out halfway up.  You were supposed to be able to see for miles, but it was so foggy and cloudy (it rained most of the week) that we couldn't see beyond the mountain top.

Aaron at the top, unconcerned about the
risk as always. 

We also entered the Little Valley Mountain Resort to hike a nicely maintained, pretty, and relatively short Headrick Top Trail to a small waterfall.  The trail wasn't busy at all and we enjoyed the quiet and serene setting - and the beautiful resort that we drove through on the way.

At the small waterfall

And to close this out...just a handful of Dollywood pictures!

AMAZING cinnamon bread - classic
Dollywood eats!

One of the bald eagles living at Dollywood

This was a less fulfilling week at Pigeon Forge due to the rainy weather and extreme crowds, but we still really enjoyed our time there.  One more stop to go on our Tennessee trip!

Smoky Mountain Adventures!

We just spent an amazing 8 days in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!  We've been to Pigeon Forge many times, as it's a quick hop from Charlotte, but we'd only ever been for a long weekend before.  With a long weekend we would have time to hit the highlights (Dollywood, The Island, a dinner show or two), but nothing more.  This time, with over a week, we explored all sorts of new and wonderful things!!

So, first things first, we stayed at Walden's Creek RV Park right in the heart of Pigeon Forge.  This location was extremely convenient and the cheapest campground by far with our Passport America discount.  On the downside, it took several days to actually meet our hosts (despite me checking at the office every day during their posted office hours), and by the time we finally talked to them halfway through the trip we found out they had already charged us $5/day for plugging in our electric vehicle!!  This was VERY surprising - we've been plugging in our electric hybrid car at every campsite with 50amp power for the past 2 years and have NEVER been charged extra.  So the fact that not only did they charge us a rather ridiculous rate for the car but also did so without telling us or advertising the charge rubbed us quite wrong.  However, had I known that was the policy, we just wouldn't have plugged in the car (it is a hybrid after all) and then the rate would have been pleasantly low as expected, and really the location can't be beat and the campground is well kept.  So I'll post a review online to help any other unsuspecting electric vehicle drivers...

Our campsite at Walden's Creek RV Park

Walden's Creek at the campground

We got to add the Tennessee sticker to our map!

We started the next morning with breakfast at Frizzle Chicken.  This very fun restaurant had good down home food and singing animatronic chickens!!

Singing chickens at Frizzle Chicken!  Zoom in and check 
out the names!

Our first outing was to Dollywood - we love it so much, we bought season's passes, so we have to get our money's worth!  Dollywood was holding the Flower and Food Festival, which involved lots of neat shaped plants and a cool umbrella - shaded walk into the park.  These are the only photos I'm posting so as not to be ridiculous, but we went back multiple times during this trip.

I particularly enjoyed the mischievous raccoons

Fun umbrella

On our anniversary (the 20th) we started the day with a vigorous hike to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains national park.  Fortunately for us, there's a road all but the last 1/2 mile of the elevation.  But that last 1/2 mile...it's a doozy!  Very steep, though flat and paved.  The view was incredible and well worth the hike and drive.  As you can guess from the photo, it was significantly colder up there than down in town.

The view off Clingman's Dome

We stopped a couple other places in the national park before heading back for our reservations at the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud.  This is one of our favorite places to go in Pigeon Forge, and this time did not disappoint!  Dolly Parton had acquired the show since our last visit, and she made a couple of nice changes.  Overall our anniversary day was a refreshing change from our pandemic-clouded 20th last year!

One of the gimmicky displays outside
the dinner show

Our next outing was a drive on the Roaring Fork Motor Trail in Gatlinburg.  The highlight of this drive was a hike at Grotto Falls.  This trail is unique because it actually goes behind the waterfall.  It was quite a pleasant hike, much less strenuous than the ones we took earlier.  One of the coolest things we discovered here was Le Conte Lodge and the llamas that serve it.  We didn't make it all the way to the lodge, but we saw the llama trailer in the parking area.  I looked it up later and discovered that the lodge is only accessible on foot, and they use llamas to bring supplies up 3 days a week.  They used to use horses, but their hooves tore up the trail, so they switched to soft-footed llamas.  So cool!  It reminded me a bit of our trip to Phantom Ranch on mule back - supplies are carted down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule.  We're still debating whether a trip to Le Conte Lodge should be in our future.

Grotto Falls

Some friends from Charlotte and their kids came to join us on the weekend - they love the area as well!  We all went to Ober Gatlinburg together, where we rode the alpine slide and took the ski lift to the overlook.  Later we went to Paula Deen's Lumberjack Feud show - SO impressive!  There was one lumberjack who could run on floating logs like they were solid ground.  Absolutely amazing.

Ober Gatlinburg ski lift

Looking down the mountain on the ski lift

At the Lumberjack Feud

Our final incredible outing in Pigeon Forge was a UTV ride with Smoky Mountain Adventure Tours.  We had never done anything like this before, and it was such an incredible experience.  We drove up a narrow rutted dirt trail to one of the mountain tops in the Smoky Mountains - guided by someone who knew what he was doing of course.  We were going up and down scarily steep inclines with huge ruts - things we never would have attempted on our own, but where the guide goes, you follow!  I really can't express how much fun we both had with this!  Aaron drove most of the way of course, but I did do the last leg back to the shop.

Driving off the mountain top

One example of the crazy rutted roads.  It's really hard to
capture on camera

Taking a break on the mountain top.  If you look closely
you might see the dirt covering both of us, including a lovely
dusting all over my hair...

Our guide was kind enough to take a picture 'in action'

See, I really did drive!

That wraps up our week in Pigeon Forge!  We had a blast, it was so fun to be back on the road, in one of our favorite destinations, and finally spending enough time at that destination to explore so many things!  Spoiler alert: we'll be returning to Pigeon Forge later in the trip, but don't worry, we have even more adventures planned there!