We love the Great Smoky Mountains!

We’ve been visiting this area for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is bringing picnics into the mountain parks and eating and playing in the stream. We loved exploring the mountain parks and seeing all of the wildlife. Matt and I are so excited to continue making the memories with our family. (And we hope you’ll follow along our cabin build as we share that journey on instagram!)

I wanted to share more about our trip in hopes that if you are interested in travel to this area that it may give you a few ideas. This was a pretty short trip for us and my parents booked our rental using VRBO. It was a pretty small rustic cabin triplex but slept us all comfortably.

Hiking:

Growing up hiking/walking the trails was not something my family did but Matt and I have been wanting to explore them all! So this was our first trail and since we had Tess (1 year old) with us we decided to do an “easy” walk. Laurel Falls was approximately 1.5 mile walk up to a space with an 80 foot stepped waterfall drop. It was mostly paved and we took our stroller. Our total hike was only 1.5 hours roundtrip. We loved the views, waterfalls, and felt very safe throughout. Highly recommend this one! We downloaded the app “FatMap” to get detailed info about the hiking trails in the area. It was very helpful and I definitely recommend the app as well.

Laurel Falls Trail

FatMap Hiking App

Whitewater Rafting:

My parents wanted to take Taylen (age 4) on a beginner’s whitewater rafting trip and found a company called “River Rat” that provided this service. Usually we drive to Nantahala Outdoor for rafting and kayaking but they had a blast on this particular trip and they all enjoyed it.

Gatlinburg Sky Park:

We purchased tickets online via their facebook page but it really didn’t matter because you still have to stand in line to get your actual ticket. Sooooooo.. don’t necesarily recommend that. The SkyPark gets you on a chair lift and takes you up to an overlook above Gatlinburg. You can hang out and enjoy the views, grab food/drinks, and then cross the Skybridge. This attraction offers some of the best views of the Smokies and we are so glad that we did it! I bet the sunset views are even more spectacular! Our only concern was the chair lift doesn’t have harnesses and our girls did great, but we were a little nervous about them squirming around during the ride.

Dollywood:

Awesome roller coasters, yummy food, and plentyyy of fun things to do for kids of all ages… we always enjoy visiting Dollywood. We didn’t have to pre-purchase tickets or make any reservations, we just showed up and hit the park for the day. The girls had a BLAST!

Let me know if you have any questions about our weekend trip to the Smokies! Thanks for following along!

XX,