It’s been a while since we’ve seen fall in the mountains…make that a long while. Our fall foliage trip this year consisted of a few nights in Pigeon Forge, followed by 2 nights in Asheville, NC. We stayed at Bear Cove Village, which is down the street from Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, TN. You can check out our Bear Cove Village reviews if you’re interested in visiting this great campground! We thoroughly enjoyed driving around in the mountains and seeing all the beautiful colors!
We spent an entire day over at Cades Cove and absolutely loved it! If you like biking, hiking, exploring, learning about history, or just being outside, I highly suggest you add this to your itinerary! We had a blast touring the Oliver homes, the Mill, the many churches, and the many other buildings on the loop. I can’t forget about all the gorgeous views and awesome wildlife we saw as well!
We love being outside and are super nerds, so this took an entire day and we didn’t get it all done. We could’ve stayed at least another half day, if not another entire day. Plan ahead by getting there right when they open to avoid tons of traffic. We slept in, ate breakfast, then got on the road for the 1.5hr drive over there, so we hit some traffic once we arrived. We plan to go back and try to camp at their campground so we can get out before the crowds. We’d love to do some biking and more hiking next time! If you have any recommendations for our next visit to Cade’s Cove, we’d love for you to comment below!
The next day we headed into Gatlinburg to check out the sights since we haven’t been there in a few years. We checked out all the activities that Ober Gatlinburg had to offer, and by checked out I mean, we watched everybody else having fun. This day was one of those times as a parent when you have all this excitement and anticipation of how the day is going to turn out and it ends up completely opposite of what you had imagined. You know what I’m referring to, right? We rallied and enjoyed the tramway and walking around downtown Gatlinburg.
cestlaviethree 