Gatlinburg & Smoky Mountains

Traveling In

Like I said in the overview – we had left the night before so we could cut this long drive in half – but we did stop at Lake Norris (which was beautiful) just to see it so that added time.

We eventually got in around 2:30pm. First of all – traffic is INSANE here. Straight red lines – maybe because it was during the busy months, on a Friday, in the afternoon – I don’t know but from Pigeon Forge to Gatlinburg, traffic.

Hotel’s were insanely expensive. We even looked at an AirBNB but the cheapest one was 45 mins away and I’m SO glad we didn’t do that. 

We basically parked at our Motel 6 and you could walk to everything in Gatlinburg – literally no sense in driving your car in if you don’t have a hotel because traffic and parking was atrocious.

Skylift Bridge

If you want to do the Skylift Bridge – order your tickets in advance online. Day of is about $3/$4 dollars more, a week in advance is like $20 total. And if you do everything we did this trip – every dollar saved counts. 

I thought it was cool, it was a really pretty view. If you’re scared of heights, it’s over a ravine so only the center is super low drop. Otherwise, I didn’t think it was scary. There is a section with glass, that was trippy. 

Ricky I think thought – meh – He was not a fan of Gatlinburg so to pay to have this cool view of the Smoky Mountains was ruined in his opinion by Gatlinburg being right there. I still thought it was cool and worth doing. 

Buying online also saves you time in line – you get to go to a side window – and it’s good for the whole day (and I even think one re-entry that day? don’t quote me on that). So you weren’t bound to any specific time. We went at like 7:30pm so it was closer to sunset which was pretty.

Gatlinburg

I’m very confused on Gatlinburg – let me just say that.

When we were driving in – it’s tons of random museums and Titanic museum and Ripley’s believe it or not – but why there? 

Driving to other national parks – I guess I thought the crowd would be more “naturery” people in hiking gear and carrying walking sticks. 

I have no idea A.) Why Gatlinburg was as crowded as it was and B.) What 3/4th of those people were doing there. I mean this in just a matter of fact way – but they were not there to hike the Smoky Mountains and the strip on the main street is just a bunch of tourist shops, not a destination, something you may go do one day if you’re at the beach, but why there???

Pretty much we were not fans and I don’t think we’d ever go back. 

The Smoky Mountains on the other hand were AMAZING

Smoky Mountains

• Grotto falls

There was a good amount of people on this hike, but didn’t seem like it until you got to the end. There were a lot of people standing under the falls and taking pictures – huge families – which was cool, but we never went in the falls because there was never a break in people taking photos.

• Chimney Tops

The following morning we left early because we needed to get to Biltmore in Ashville but we decided to do a hike first.

We chose to drive the longer way through the mountains so we could see more views and Chimney Tops was along that road (no cell service though so look it up before you go)

This hike was rated harder and at first we didn’t know why but oh my gosh the last .7 miles is straight up stairs FOREVER. 

We started at 8:30 which was perfect, we found parking and no one was on the trail yet. I think it took us two hours to do the hike but we were BOOKING IT because we needed to be on the road by 10:30am. By the time we were done there was zero parking and a TON of people going up. If you have knee issues – I wouldn’t do this or bring sticks to go down. 

The view the whole time is greenery and waterfalls and a creek you don’t see the mountains at all until the end of the trail. I didn’t mind but I know Ricky wanted it to be more scenic along the way because we have greenery everywhere by us. 

Again – hiked this in our chacos. Amazing

It was cold though at 8:30 in the morning so I wore long sleeves, layers would be best for the Smoky Mountains. 

• Driving Through

We really just wanted to see the Smoky Mountains and had we known we could just drive road 441 and have a few really beautiful lookout points – I don’t know if we would have hiked Chimney Tops just because of our time crunch.

So this is me telling you, if you don’t have time – along 441 once you get to the top there are multiple places to pull over and take in the view, snap a few pictures and really see the Smoky Mountains.

We didn’t get to stop because Biltmore has reservation times to see the house and we were going to be late so we chugged along – Next Time for sure though!