Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg "Do's and Don'ts"

Our family has visited the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg area a number of times and we always leave saying we'll be back.

Since we have visited several times, we've begun to compile a list of "do's and don'ts" regarding a visit to the Smokies.  This list is really just my opinion. You may have other tips. Feel free to share below.

Do:

• If you can afford it, skip the hotel on the strip and consider renting a cabin. We've stayed at Dollywood Vacations, Star-crest Resort, Sugar Maple Cabins, and The Preserve Resort. By staying in a cabin, you can cook your own food and enjoy great views and activities during your down time. It sure beats stuffing the family in a one-or-two room hotel.
• Visit the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. I'm amazed at how many people never make it past Gatlinburg. The park is beautiful...and it's free!!!
• Climb to the top of Clingman's Dome in the park. It's a hike, but the view is worth it.
• Visit the Foothills Parkway on the west end of the park. Great views, fewer crowds, and totally worth the drive.
• If you plan to spend your time in the carnival atmosphere of the Parkway in Pigeon Forge or the main drag in Gatlinburg, bring lots of cash. You can burn $100 in less than 5 minutes.
• Paid destinations we found to be a great value: Ripley's Aquarium, Cirque de Chine, Applewood Farms, Dixie Stampede.
• Plan lots of picnic lunches. Whether in the National Park or on the strip, you'll save a ton of dough by packing your lunch. Our favorite picnic spot in Pigeon Forge is Liberty Park next to the Old Mill Restaurant.

Don'ts:

• Avoid arriving on Saturday afternoon / evening. The traffic is the worst. Think "travel one mile in one hour" type of traffic.
• Avoid the Walmart on the parkway for grocery shopping.  There are several other grocery stores off the strip that are less crowded. Try the Kroger on Rt. 321, Light #3.
• Don't forget good walking shoes. There is lots to see and a lot of walking. Flip flops don't cut it.

I'll update this list as more things come to mind. If you have tips you'd like to add, just post below.

Cirque de Chine: Put on your Pigeon Forge, TN "to do" list

We've been to Pigeon Forge several times. One of the reasons we keep coming back is the wide variety of quality attractions and the great access to nature that the area has to offer.

While you have to be careful about which attractions you chose, some are worth the investment of both time and money. Cirque de Chine at the Smoky Mountain Palace is one of those attractions.

If  you like demonstrations of physical strength, daring stunts, and blazing motorcycles (yes, motorcycles), you will enjoy Cirque de Chine.  The cast of 40+ individuals hail from China and bring a variety of talents that kept our entire family engaged.



Quality venue
When you arrive at the Cirque venue, you'll be pleased to find a well kept, fairly new facility that looks fairly classy for the Pigeon Forge / Gatlinburg area. One gets accustomed to the "down home" feel of the south. Here you feel like you are in a much more urban environment. It feels more like a nice movie theater than anything else. It's air conditioned, has nice theater seating, has clean restrooms and facilities. We reserved our tickets on line for the 2pm show on a Tuesday, but there were plenty of seats. If you do reserve on line, you'll save $3 a ticket.

Amazing talent
There is some pretty amazing talent at Cirque de Chine. Each segment of the show lasts about 10 to 15 minutes accompanied by great lighting, dramatic background music and amazing feats of balance, strength and daring. Consider the following:

• 8 to 10 ladies riding a single bicycle...with ease.
• A woman performing daring acrobatics 20 feet in the air using a 30 foot long red drape.
• An incredible demonstration of balance.
• And a juggling act you have to see to believe.

Sounds like a circus, right? It is, but it is performed with an element of grace and Far Eastern nobility that is totally out of place in Pigeon Forge. I think that is what makes Cirque de Chine so appealing. You really don't expect to find entertainment like this on a strip that promotes events like "Dixie Stampede" or "The Comedy Barn".

The kicker act is the finale which entails 4 motorcyclists riding 30 to 40 mph in a giant 40 foot steel sphere. Incredibly dangerous. Elegantly performed with class and penosh.

Good value 
Our visit to Cirque de Chine cost $92 for all five us of us. As mentioned before, we bought tickets in advance on line and that cut $15 from the total price. In terms of value, you get a nicely paced show that is off the beaten path of the "hillbilly" theme that dominates Pigeon Forge. The show was two hours long with a 15 minute intermission.

Recommendation
For my teenaged sons, they all liked the acts and are still talking about some elements in passing. I think that's a good sign.  You can spend $90 to $100 a lot quicker and in a less satisfying manner in a ton of places in Pigeon Forge.

We thought this one was worth the money.

Exploring at Tuckaleechee Caverns

Vicki & the boys @Tuckaleechee
Visitor Center

If you are up for a moderate adventure on your trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, you may want to set aside some time visit the Tuckaleechee Caverns.

For our family, we can only take so much of the Parkway drama in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. So on our second day at The Preserve Resort near Townsend, I pulled up Google Places on my iPad.

(Note: If you haven't tried Google Places, it is a great location-based mobile site / app that allows you to find nearby attractions that may wind up being hidden gems. Gotta love mobile technology.)

Look close: Can you see the woman
in a flowing dress (dead center)

Tuckaleechee Caverns is about a 10 minute drive away from where we are staying and maybe 25 minutes from Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg.

Moderate adventure
We've been to a couple of cave tours in our day, namely Ohio Caverns in East Liberty, Ohio, but nothing that compares to the scale of Tuckaleechee caverns. It's hard to believe this cave was found decades ago by bored 6 and 8-year-old (!).

They say this is about
30,000 yrsold. No touchy!

You know right from the start you are in for a treat when you have to walk down 87 pretty narrow steps to get into the cave. Oh, and that's after you walk into the basement of the Tuckaleechee Caverns visitor center.  There are two main areas of the Caverns. The first is an up and down hike that will take you into a vast chamber that measures 300 x 300 x 400 feet. You could fit a football field in this chamber, up, down and all around.  In here, they shut off the lights to show you just how dark that dark can be. Hard to imagine those little boys explored all of that area with small lanterns!

This is the huge cavern. See the
little man in the middle. It's about
300 x 300 x 400 ft

There are a number of gorgeous rock formations to take in as part of the trail. The imagination doesn't have to run too wild to see things in the shadows, but you never feel like you are alone or in danger. The tour is well lit, but you will want to wear your tennis shoes and hang onto the rails.

The second part of the tour is much more flat and takes you to several waterfalls and springs. At one point, they even let you take a sip of the water that is running in the underground stream that help create these caverns. BEST WATER EVER!

Great Value
Like most attractions in the Smokies that aren't in the National Park, you have to pay-to-see. But this is a pretty good value. For $81, our family of five took the tour. It last over an hour and fifteen minutes and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.  Another perk is that on a hot summer day or a cold winter day, it's a moderate 58 degrees Fahrenheit all the time.

Recommendation
Our family gave the Tuckaleechee Caverns "thumbs up" all the way around. It was a great little "adventure" to begin our week of vacation in the Smokies. We'd recommend it to families that are mobile. There are so many steps that this can't be recommended for folks who are immobile. Definitely no wheelchair access. We saw many families with small kids and it didn't seem to be a problem.

Best way to shop for groceries in the Smokies

If you ever decide to go to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg and stay in a cabin, you really have to give serious consideration to the services of the Smokey Mountain Grocery Store.

A Great Solution

We are frequent visitors to this destination. We love to stay in different cabins and take in the variety of attractions in the area. The one thing we always dread is that initial trip to the grocery store when we first get to town. Hauling a weeks worth of groceries from the Buckeye State to Gatlinburg is not ideal, especially since we're already packing luggage for five already in our Honda Odyssey.

In preparation for our most recent trip to the Smokies, I came across a Facebook post by the folks at The Preserve Resort (where we stayed). The Preserve was responding to a post by a pending visitor looking for the nearest grocery.

We've been here at least a dozen times. I'd never heard of SMGS, so I hit the link to check it out.

This is an AWESOME service. My wife made up her list. She sends our sons to the store often, so this was no big deal. She also has a "master list" already created based on past trips to this beautiful region. We then went to the SMGS website, uploaded everything we needed, entered a credit card and that's all it took!  Easy as pie.

Great Customer Service

We could get used to this. Neither of us like to go shopping for groceries, especially on vacation.  The folks at Smokey Mountain Grocery were great. We uploaded the list two days prior to our arrival at The Preserve Resort.  The next day, we got a phone call seeking to confirm the list. It was pretty straightforward.

Then on our drive south, Victoria's iPhone rang. They were checking on an alternative to an item we had listed but was not available.  Then a few hours later, Victoria remembered she needed whipped cream for a jello cake she was going to make. No problem. 

Great Value and Convenience

When we arrived at our cabin (after 7 hours in the van), we walked in to a fully stocked kitchen, with all our food ready to go.  As Victoria looked through the list, she checked several price tags on the food. Same price. No mark up. Now some items (like milk) are just more expensive in a tourist area like Pigeon Forge. We can live with that.  But for just an additional $25 fee to do the shopping for us, it was well worth it.

The folks at the SMGS even called the next day to make sure that we had everything we needed!  This is a great service that I'd highly recommend. 

We will use Smokey Mountain Grocery Store every time we pay a visit to the area in the future.

Our Stay at The Preserve (Townsend, TN)

We're spending a week at The Preserve, a mountain top resort on northern edge of the Smokey Mountains, near Townsend, TN.

Getting There
Be prepared for a beautiful ride as you make your way from Pigeon Forge to this secluded destination. It's only about 15 minutes away from all of the attractions along the main drag in Pigeon Forge and is moments away from the Townsend entrance to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

When you are arrive at The Preserve, you are greeted by a rustic chapel (a popular wedding locale), main facility, pavilion, swimming pool and beautiful view.  We arrived late on Saturday night, picked up our check-in packet and zipped quickly down to our cabin, the Blissful Bungalow.

A Great Value
We've vacationed in this area for several years, and our family agrees that the quality of the cabin and the value are unparalleled.

The cabins at The Preserve are top-quality, modern log cabins that hold all the conveniences of home and much more. On top of the fully equipped kitchen, this particular cabin has a nice 52-inch HD TV, pool table, foos-ball, hot tub and a gorgeous view of the Smokies and natural wild life. It's quiet and relaxing, but there is plenty to do. These cabins are not commercial hotel rooms. They are privately owned homes that are luxurious, comfortable and cozy.

If you are planning a trip to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg for a week, seriously consider renting a cabin like this rather than staying in a hotel. The view itself is worth it. Additionally, you'll be able to prepare your own food. For our family, that is a big deal. We like to eat out, but doing that 7 days in a row makes for cranky bellies and longing for a home-cooked meal. A thumbs up to the Smokey Mountain Grocery Store. We pre-ordered all our groceries and they delivered our goods prior to our arrival. More on this service in a future post.

Service
You'll also be impressed by the customer service and responsiveness of the staff. Our first evening here, the upstairs air conditioner had frozen over. We found a note on the door stating that the service man should pay us a visit that evening to fix. Let me tell you we were all shocked when he showed up (7PM on a Saturday night) and fixed the problem. I thought for certain there was no way a service man would come to fix the problem on a Saturday night. Apparently, no problem!

Always Something New

We've rented cabin's like this at least a dozen times and have rarely been disappointed. We've come to really enjoy the nature and the variety that this area offers. While we're not fans of the commercialized tourist trap that is the Parkway in Pigeon Forge, we've found the area has so much to offer that every time we come back we find something new that we really love. We also have favorite attractions we'll take in almost every time we are here.

If you want to know how to "do" Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, we're building up quite a bit of experience.

I'll try to share some of those tips in coming posts.