Pigeon Forge is a town where the main road is literally filled with every garish building you can think of to lure in the tourists who flock there every year. A lot of people (like us) go to the area for the national park (Smoky Mountains are the most visited NP annually) but get sucked in to the carnival type atmosphere of the town. There is maybe, 5 feet between most of the buildings and there are go-kart tracks and putt putt golf courses, fudge shops and ice cream parlors and retail shops for as far as you can see.
We pulled into our RV park and collapsed on the couch to try to process all that we had seen. The next day we went into the national park and visited with the rangers to get the lay of the land. We decided to do a couple of small hikes with the highlight being able to reach the back of a waterfall. Did I mention that the park is the most visited annually? This means you are "combat hiking" and you can't really escape to find nature. ;) The next day we decided to drive an hour and half through the park to get to the NC side where we wanted to do a hike that involved 3 waterfalls. We put on the bug spray, filled our packs with food and we were off. We only walked about 3 miles and found all of the falls. Two of the falls were located in an area along the river where people were walking with inner tubes to go down the river. We felt really dumb all geared up for such a short and well populated hike! Haha! After that we decided to be done with the Great Smoky Mountains and thought we'd give Pigeon Forge another shot.
We did a little shopping at the outlet mall and noticed across the parking lot that there was a moonshine store and they were doing free tastings. Well! When you go to TN, you HAVE to taste the moonshine! We walked right over and literally bellied up to the bar. We had a tasting of 14 different flavors, one of which was 100 proof, straight moonshine that they called "Ricky Bobby In A Jar"! Hahaha! That was a lot of fun and if you're ever in the area I highly recommend going into Smith Creek Moonshine.
Our last day we wanted to see why Dollywood is such a big thing so we bought tickets and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!! They have a few "big kid" rollerocoasters and the atmosphere is so family friendly, I found myself smiling a lot just because I was there. Another place that I would highly recommend.
I was sad to leave the area and we hope to be back again, hopefully in the fall time to see the leaves change. Beautiful area (despite the main strip of Pigeon Forge). ;)
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