Chapter 23: Pigeon Forge Tennessee & The Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- traci wilson
- Jun 24
- 6 min read
Pigeon Forge is a whole destination unto itself in addition to being the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Dave said it felt like Vegas without the casinos, but I thought it was closer to a series of amusement parks, with rides and games, that really seems to cater to families. There were at least a dozen themed mini golf courses alone! It’s also where Dollywood is located, which is another big amusement park. There’s a ton of restaurants to choose from offering any kind of food you could possibly want. The other thing in abundance here—distilleries specializing in moonshine.
We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and the place was teeming with people! The traffic was crazy—it took us 35 minutes to go just a few miles! We stayed at Creekside RV Park, a private campground in Pigeon Forge. The park was small, but clean and quiet, which we really appreciated after the last experience in the Red River Gorge. It’s amazing that our RV park was so peaceful when just a quarter mile away the place was a virtual zoo! We had a back-in site with a view of the creek out our back window and a paved patio. Unfortunately it was too hot to sit outside.
We had two full days to explore the area, which we spent at the national park. Our first day, also Father’s Day, we went on a couple of hikes with the dogs. There’s only two trails the dogs can be on here, one in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina on the other end. The first hike (on the Tennessee side) was from the Sugarlands Visitor Center on the Gatlinburg trail. The visitor center was already congested with people and cars when we arrived at 8:40 a.m. and it didn’t even open till 9:00! Luckily, there was a volunteer walking around answering questions so we were able to find out where to pick up the trail, which was just a little confusing due to construction in the area. This is another national park that doesn’t require a park pass, but you do have to pay for parking which is $5 per day.
The Gatlinburg Trail was a wide dirt and crushed rock path that is two miles long and ends in—wait for it— Gatlinburg. It followed a creek and was lush and green with an arching tree canopy high above the trail, giving it a tunnel effect in places. There were an abundance of large rhododendron bushes still in bloom, and something we’ve not encountered before—Carolina silverbells—so pretty. We also passed several old homestead sites with only the crumbling remains of the fireplaces to prove a house once stood there, along with an old cemetery where the homesteaders buried their loved ones. We did four miles on this trail.
After the first hike we drove up and over the top of the Smoky Mountains on our way to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on the North Carolina side of the park. The views weren’t great at the top of the pass due to heavy cloud cover, but we knew we’d have another shot at it on the way back. Our objective was to hike the Oconaluftee Mountain trail, the only other trail in this park that allows dogs.
At the visitor center we discovered that they have a ‘bark ranger’ program here so we thought it would be fun to help our pups become honorary bark rangers. In order to accomplish this we had to go on a scavenger hunt of sorts and take pictures of them in certain locations along the trail doing various activities. That made the hike kind of fun as this trail wasn’t quite as scenic as the Gatlinburg trail. It was still pretty, following a good-sized river. We started out passing by a historic farm site that still had the old buildings, but we couldn’t go in any of them because of the dogs. We saw two female elk bedded down along the trail and some wild turkeys. There were people inner tubing down the river and a couple of fishermen along the bank.
This trail took us to the park boundary where we turned around at one and a half miles, took a picture of the national park sign, and headed back for a total of three miles. We finished our scavenger hunt with the required number of activities completed and the dogs, after we took an oath on their behalf, became honorary members of the bark ranger family. They got certificates with each of their paw prints on them, and we bought them each a bark ranger bandana to proudly display their affiliation whenever we’re at a national park. Congrats to Kenai, Zoe, and Maggie, way to go puppies!
On the way back to Tennessee, we stopped at Newfound Gap on the top of the pass, happy to see at least some of the clouds had passed, and took pictures of the valley and the state line sign which had ‘welcome to Tennessee’ on one side and ‘welcome to North Carolina’ on the other. We probably should have called it a day by this point and headed back to the trailer—it’d already been a long adventurous day—but that’s not what we chose to do.
We decided it would be interesting to check out one more well-known park location, Cade’s Cove—where up to 600 families between the early 1800s and 1900s settled the little valley and formed a community. We thought we could simply drive there, look around for a bit, then head back to the trailer, but that wasn’t the case. After a long, very slow twenty-four miles, we arrived to find that Cade’s Cove was an eleven-mile drive on a single lane road passing by eighteen different points of interest! Of course, having come all that way, we had to see it despite the fact it was already after 4 p.m. and we’d planned to go out to dinner that evening for Father’s Day. How long could it take anyway?
Quite a while, as it turned out. Plus, many of the attractions required a hike of at least a quarter to a half mile to see. Now normally that wouldn’t be a big deal, except that we couldn’t take the dogs on any of the trails and it was too hot to leave them. We did purchase a little booklet at the beginning of the tour describing each of the eighteen stops so that was helpful. There was a whole ‘mill area’ that you could walk around and look at different exhibits, but again, dogs…heat…oh well! It was an excruciatingly slow eleven miles as traffic crawled the entire way, but hey, the parts we did see were interesting.
We got back to the trailer about 5:30 p.m., fed the dogs and went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. I know this isn’t the nicest place we could have chosen, and believe me, we had many excellent choices, but we’d been wanting to go to Cracker Barrel and this was our golden opportunity since it was only two miles away and we’d not been this close to one the entire trip. So Cracker Barrel it was. I wish I could say it was everything we’d hoped for but…at least we scratched that itch!
For our final day we decided to go on a hike that didn’t allow dogs because we wanted to really experience the heart of the park and the two dog friendly trails, although pretty, were not the best the national park had to offer. So we ran them along the Pigeon Forge Greenway in the morning, then left them in the trailer and headed into the park to the Rainbow Falls Trail. This trail was 2.7 miles to an 80-foot waterfall with an elevation gain of 1500 feet.
It was spectacularly beautiful and challenging at the same time! We climbed steadily through rocks, roots, and a few sections of stone steps cut into the mountain. It followed a picturesque river through a series of smaller falls leading to the big one—rainbow falls. We had to cross a narrow stone bridge across the river to get to the main waterfall that triggered my fear of heights (Dave had to help me cross) but it was totally worth it. So beautiful!
We hiked a total of 5.4 miles, and my legs felt pretty wasted by the end. I was amazed at how many people were heading up to this waterfall with very young children in tow and many wearing improper footwear for this type of trail. As we made our way back down the mountain after reaching the falls, I couldn’t help but notice the misery on many faces that we passed as they labored up the steep and difficult path, the crying and complaining children, and the often-asked question, “how much further?” A testament to the importance of doing your research in advance!
Our next stop will be Mammoth Cave National Park. I really love exploring caves so I’m excited!
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