Gatlinburg Recommendations

If you plan on visiting Gatlinburg in the near future, I thought I would toss out a couple of recommendations based on Daniel's birthday weekend.

First of all, we got a smoking deal on a cabin through www.vrbo.com. We have been using Vacation Rental By Owner {VRBO} for the last 5+ years and always manage to find excellent places to stay. This year we discovered that you can get some good deals by waiting until the last minute and then requesting a discount. Another reason we like VRBO is that you can search for pet friendly places to stay.

This past weekend we stayed at the Apple Tree House in the Arts and Crafts area of Gatlinburg. It was $75/night plus a cleaning fee which brought our total to $206 for two nights. This is a one bedroom cabin that sleeps six {there is a king size bed, a futon and a pull out couch}. This cabin also boasts a game room, kitchen, hot tub and two full bathrooms {more than we needed}. It is a kid and pet friendly cabin. We would definitely recommend it. Our only negatives are no wifi {you can plug your lap top into the wall}, the TVs are small and no washer/dryer. But for the price, we give this cabin a thumbs up.

I already wrote about Bluff Mountain Adventures, but if you are looking to ride four wheelers, this is a great deal. Good price and a fun, guided ride. Definite thumbs up.

As for restaurants...

Friday we ate at the River's End Restaurant in the Nantahala River Gorge at NOC. It is a favorite for the views. We are fans of the food and stop whenever we get a chance.
 

Saturday we ate breakfast at the Log Cabin Pancake House. Daniel has been coming here his entire life and we have been coming together for the last 10 years. It is one of our favorite breakfast spots.
 

Saturday night, we tried Big Daddy's Pizzeria in Pigeon Forge. They are a brick oven pizzeria with fresh-made artisan doughs. This was the first time we had eaten here and we give it a thumbs up.

 

If you are in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area, we would recommend all of these places.

Camping

  
This weekend we headed to the North Carolina mountains to camp with some of our friends. As we headed out of town we had a brief moment of wondering if we were nuts to be heading out of town when gas supply still seems to be sketchy - my brother called on Friday from Nashville to say they were out of gas. Our concern lasted all of two minutes... we went any ways.

  
As we get older, most of our friends have kids, so camping has begun to take on a new meaning for us. We will always love our backpacking trips, but we are adapting to the kid-friendly camping experience.

 

 
It was nice to be able to relax in the woods and catch up with friends. I can never turn down a campfire, hot chocolate and smores.

 

  
The highlight for me was getting to be a part of Andrew Reynold's first smores experience. Daniel helped him roast his marshmallow and then we all enjoyed watching him bit into that first goodness of eating a smore.

 

  
Kid-camping involves a lot more catering to kids - we did a lot of reading to kids and watching the kids play, but it was a nice weekend. Thankfully there were no full-blown melt downs. I think the kids all did great.

 

  
It was the first weekend of perfect camping weather. Cool, but not too cold. No bugs. Just perfection.

 

 
We stayed at Turkey Creek which was a really great campground. Daniel and I generally try to avoid campgrounds, because we find them loud, but this was quiet and relaxing.

 

  
After breaking camp down, we headed to the Panther Creek Trail to do a little hiking... it was a lot of creek crossings, but fun. Afterwards we headed to eat lunch at NOC at the River's End Restaurant - it is always a treat to get to watch the kayakers and rafters float by while you eat.

 

I am looking forward to more camping trips in the future (as soon as the house is finished).