When I realized our son had Voting Day off from school, I quickly floated the idea to husband that we do a long weekend away since he’d only miss one day of school. He was in! (He’s almost always in, haha)
We picked Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg as our destination because it’s a nice short flight from Chicago, which is great when you only have a few days. Also, we’ve heard so many people mention how fun it is, and we were hoping to have some pretty autumn views, even if we missed the peak colors.
I didn’t go into the trip with many expectations, but it ended up being perfect for our family – in fact, when it was time to leave, both of our kids teared up! Here’s a breakdown of the cool stuff we tried in our 3 days in Tennessee:
1. Rent a cabin with a view
Going into the trip, one thing was for sure: I was renting a cute cabin for our stay! We ended up finding one in Sevierville that was perfect for our group of 6 (Auntie and Uncle joined us), and it was so lovely to sit on the deck in rocking chairs and watching the sunset over the trees.
2. Explore Ripley’s Aquarium
We hit up Ripley’s Aquarium our first night in town. We had fun exploring here (my favorite part was the long moving walkway through a giant tank, so you can see fish and sharks swimming all around and above you), and there’s also a kids’ play area in the middle, to burn off some energy. It looks like there’s an adorable penguin parade, but only once a day, so we missed it.
While we did enjoy it, I’m clearly spoiled by Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium because I felt like it was too much money for the experience. Probably wouldn’t return, but nice to see once, and a good option for a rainy day.
3. Try out a mountain coaster (and feed some goats?)
Mountain coasters were something I’d never seen before this trip to Pigeon Forge. They’re a roller coaster that has sort of a bobsled-like car and a track that goes down the side of a hill, and lets you control the speed to an extent. I was also surprised to see so many!
We decided to try out the Goats on the Roof coaster, because our 3 year old wasn’t quite tall enough to ride, so I thought we’d have fun with the goats while we waited. Sure enough, the boys loved the ride and our suburban selves enjoyed watching the goats and feeding them (even though our feeding caused some fights between them!)
We didn’t have enough time to try others, but we’d definitely like to hit up more if we come back – they are fun and pretty reasonably priced (which is not true of everything in that area!)
4. Play a round of Mini Golf
…or two. Or three. There’s so many mini golf courses, which we were big fans of! I was initially super disappointed that we couldn’t try the unique-sounding Hillbilly Golf because it was closed for maintenance, but we easily found other ones we wanted to try.
We first tried Toy Box Mini Golf, which was visually super fun! it featured big versions of classic toys and the course itself wasn’t too hard for our mini golf novices. The next day, we hit up Davy Crockett Mini Golf. For me, the visuals weren’t as impressive here, but the holes were more fun and more difficult, so I’m glad we worked up to it! We had lots of fun at both
5. Visit The Island (no boat needed)
I actually hadn’t come across The Island in Pigeon Forge in any of my research; we just came across it, randomly seeing a big ferris wheel on the way to Publix (lol). We visited here our second night and I really liked it! The Island has free parking, and once you’re in, there are bars/restaurants and shops, the aforementioned ferris wheel and other kid rides, and a really great fountain that would sync up with fun music.
We ended up getting wristbands for the kids to ride some of the attractions – what was really nice was that they didn’t charge us adults to ride when our littles were short enough to need a chaperone. The wristbands were good for 48 hours, so if we had stayed an extra night, I’m pretty sure we would’ve come back for round two. The ferris wheel was fun, with a pretty view, and we went around 5ish times. My favorite part, though, was the fountain (think: Las Vegas Bellagio water show, but a bit smaller) – when “Bohemian Rhapsody” was blasting with the perfectly synced-up water, I was hooked!
6. Take a hike in The Smokies
I was ambitious with this one, haha. We’d never really hiked with the kids before, beyond checking out some very flat (thanks, Illinois) trails at the local forest preserve, which usually ended up with complaints and one or both kids in the stroller. But I figured that they’ve become pretty flexible trying different things, now that we’ve been traveling a bit, so why not.
We parked at the Sugarlands Visitor Center and very easily purchased a parking pass at the register inside, since it’s required for every car. We hit up the bathrooms, then made our way to the trail. After consulting Alltrails, I decided that Cataract Falls was a good place to start. It’s a very, very easy half mile-ish walk to a small waterfall. We decided to continue on, following a sign that looked like it was pointing to Laurel Falls (Narrator: it was not pointing to Laurel Falls. Laurel Falls was 11 miles away.)
Despite our poor navigation, and Peep’s recurring complaints, we did pretty well! We got to see some fall colors, breathe fresh air, play around in a creek, and try something new, doing 2 miles round trip! My two biggest takeaways from this adventure: 1) Don’t be afraid of trying new stuff! If it hadn’t gone well, we would’ve wasted a $5 parking pass, who cares, and 2) If you’re doing a hike, download a map to view offline! My rookie self did not realize that internet would be spotty higher up and it caused us to get frustrated at times.
7. Embrace your tourist side in Gatlinburg
After our hike, we decided to grab lunch in downtown Gatlinburg. Be aware that parking there is a little annoying/pricey. Most parking seemed to be $20, but the aquarium was $10 – it does require a little extra walking, though.
After lunch with a nice, cold beer, we wandered around Gatlinburg. Ice cream at Chocolate Monkey was tasty and cute, and we popped into little shops here and there. This type of window-shopping activity is not usually my favorite, but combined with grabbing a meal, it’s kinda fun to take a look around.
So, would we come back?
I think so! There were actually a lot of other things that we didn’t have time to do, like Dollywood and the WonderWorks museum. Plus, when the kids are a bit older, there are other activities I think they’ll love, like go-karts and more coasters!
