Pigeon Forge & Gatlinburg, TN

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again! There is nothing like a good road trip!!!!

This is way way way overdue! I can’t believe how far back I fell with just life, but that certainly hasn’t stopped our travelling! Our travel just enhances our lives. We definitely don’t get to travel as often as maybe we wish we could of course but we are always glad when we can.

So, in the not too distant past, my husband and I took an (anniversary) trip to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, TN. (click for video!)

To me, anything within a 12 hour drive is a “day trip”, so pack up the car and let’s go!
We went for a couple days and had a pretty jam packed schedule. It was our first time going to PF & Gat and there were a few specific attractions we wanted to see so we managed to get it all in! 

We stayed at the wonderful The Inn at Christmas Place. What a great, themed hotel! Pricier than your average Holiday Inn, it was well worth the extra splurge to be surrounded by Christmas everywhere you looked in the rooms, hallways, lobby, and outside all over the hotel and parking lot. We truly loved it and would definitely recommend it for an immersive hotel. They offered a basic continental breakfast free for guests, hot chocolate and cookies nightly, and there was Christmas music and even a singing Santa. Kids seemed to have a blast going on Christmas themed scavenger hunts and adults got into the right spirit wearing matching Christmas themed pajamas. It was too cute!

In our packed day plans, we headed to The Christmas Place which is a huge Christmas shopping experience. We got an annual ornament, a personal tradition for us. We played with parrots at Parrot Mountain Gardens, which was an absolute blast! So incredibly glad we chose to do that and enjoyed a bit of play time with beautiful feathered friends. 

We enjoyed the sites of Pigeon Forge, the Great Smoky Mountains, and Gatlinburg, and we headed up to the Gatlinburg Skybridge, went into the Titanic Museum and golfed.

OK. Now…I am adventurous person generally. I mean… we’ve done zip lining and parasailing. We have flown on planes many times, done cruises, been to the top of the Empire State building…. BUT… while the chair lift to the Gatlinburg Skybridge didn’t look too bad from the ground, I had an absolutely epic meltdown on it. It scared the life out of me. Adventure limit MET.

So… we got into the ride with absolutely no instruction at all, we weren’t even told to close the chest bar over us, we figured that out ourselves after we got moving. We didn’t know we had to sit specifically positioned so there was a support bar between our legs either. I never felt more insecure – literally not strapped in in any way ! I felt like I was going to slid right off the chair under the chest bar and fall to the mountain below. The ride up took a LONG time, continually stopped to let slower passengers get on and off, and swayed non stop when it was idling. The ride was terrifying. I’ve never had such a completely epic irrational (well, maybe not that irrational breakdown ever). I was thrilled to get off, that’s for sure.

We had no problems walking around the gift shop and going up the stairs to the skybridge. My husband never had a problem with the chair lift, and once I was on solid ground, I was fine. And then it came to the skybridge, and that’s where my husband met his limit of adventure! LOL! He was not a fan of crossing the 200+ foot high glass bottomed, constantly swaying bridge full of crowds of people who stopped continually in front of us making the journey across take even longer. That definitely checked him out.

There are alternatives to going around the bridge if you don’t want to cross it, but there are no options to get back down the mountain other than the chairlift of death. So we only crossed the skybridge once (well, I ran back onto it for some more videos), but I had to endure the rickety terrifying chair lift alllllllll the way back down again. It went better for me on the down side since I was more prepared, but I would definitely have preferred stairs. 

For food we ate at the highly recommended Blue Moose (just basic burgers, wings and such), but it was so good, I’d definitely recommend it. They also do pick up/take out, so we did take food back to the hotel for a late night snack which was perfect when we were starving around 10pm one night.

We had dinner at a place in front of Blue Moose called Bullfish, we ate at Bullfish one night because Blue Moose had like a 3 hour wait… and again… starving. Bullfish was…. disappointing. Not a recommend. Very very expensive, I think we spent well over $70 for 2 people with 1 alcholic drink and less than inspiring salads and fish and chips. 

One thing that we did which was totally fun, was stopped to the Chicken Guy! in Gatlinburg, right near the skybridge, and tried all 22 of their signature sauces (which, as of February 2024, we learned, they had cut down to just 10). So if you want to know what all 22 sauces were and tasted like, here’s that video which we had way too much fun doing….

But our main dinner was at Dolly Parton’s Dinner Stampede. The meal was very good, the show was great, and overall it was just so much fun. Even at the distance we were from the horses and arena, it still sent my husband’s allergies into madness, poor thing… but otherwise, we had fun! You definitely won’t leave hungry, that’s for sure, but some of the food could have been better. The soup was great. The corn cob tasted like it was soaked in water and soggy. The chicken was excellent. The pork was dry and fairly unseasoned. We didn’t totally love the food, but it was good.

And our adventures in Tennessee did not stop there either! 

We did something that as Wisconsinites, we’ve never ever done in our lives– we went to a Buccee’s! We were just in awe… really…. yes, of a gas station. Buccee’s was absolutely amazing inside and out and even the bathrooms! We could easily have spent half a day in there, and we did leave with a stuffed Buccee. Ha!

We also made a few stops on the return trip – a quick peek flying by the highway of Fort Knox, the Louisville Slugger museum, and we visited Churchill Downs and had a nice meal there.

It was a good trip! We were overwhelmed by how busy Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg were. So much traffic and so many pedestrians it was like being in Manhattan. Oh, and speaking of Manhattan… watch for my next post which I’ll try to get done soon!

2024 is definitely the year of travel for us, we have had some trips planned for years and other trips just a few months, and they all came together into 2024, so I will have lots to write about for sure!

Enjoy and happy travelling!