Gatlinburg - the perfect honeymoon

We loved just about everything about Gatlinburg. There are plenty of hotels/motels in Pigeon Forge & Sevierville that run about a night, even in high season. Great Smoky Mts. is one of the few free national parks in the US, and Gatlinburg is a wonderful town to poke through (though it is filled with Ripley's museums!)

Quick Tips:

When you arrive, stop at the visitor's center and pick up the various coupon books available in the display racks. You will safe some significant money using the coupons available (in 6 days, we estimated we saved over using the coupons).

If you have a family or are going with friends (or want a romantic vacation), I HIGHLY suggest renting a cabin. There are lots of cabin rental places and you can easily get a 2 bedroom, fully furnished (including hot tub, jacuzzi, full kitchen, washer, dryer, two bathrooms, everything you need) cabin for about - a night.

If you're on more of a budget, check out any of the motels in the area - the Microtels are rumored to be great deals.

Best Way To Get Around:

You'll need a car to get to the area and to see the Nat'l park, though you can easily poke around Gatlinburg itself on foot. Most people either drive in, or fly in to Knoxville and rent a car.

This was the PERFECT honeymoon place. We had a very secluded two bedroom log cabin with everything we needed and a view of the mountains. It had two bathrooms, a hot tub (on the deck), a jacuzzi (in the master bedroom), a fully equipped kitchen, a washer & dryer, satellite TV, wraparound porch, etc. And it was only $20 a night more than the Courtyard by Marriott we stayed in the night after our wedding! The cabin would also be perfect for families (there are also 3 & 4 bedroom cabins available through many companies). You must send one night''s rent via check as a deposit, the balance is payable when you get there via cash or credit card (no checks).

We went to Bennett's for dinner the first night, (my husband is addicted to barbeque, so we ate at various barbeque places almost every night) and it was average. (We had a coupon from one of the books we picked up at the visitor's center.) The barbeque sauce was so-so, but the sweet tea was great (I'm addicted to sweet tea, and you can't get it up north). There was also a coupon for their breakfast buffet, which we used the last morning we were there. That was WONDERFUL. All you can eat biscuits, pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, fruit, hash browns, etc for only about $5.00 each, including juice. We definitely wished we would have found the breakfast buffet on our first day instead of our last. Great food at a great price!

The highly recommended rating below is for breakfast. For dinner, I'd say "somewhat recommended".

Another place we found in the coupon book from the visitor's center (you should definitely pick up a book!). The large pizza is definitely LARGE (it fed me and my husband both dinner and the next day's lunch), and the garlic rolls are amazing. They are a bit pricey, but definitely worth it. The pizza is thin-crust (the way real Italian pizza is), and has a very liberal dose of toppings (they'll also give you half a pizza topping for half the price, which is great for us because my husband loves pepperoni & I can't stand the stuff - he got pepperoni & mushroom on his half, I had just mushrooms). The one bummer - no sweet tea. It's just not the same when the sugar's added once the tea is cold. But c'est la vie. Overall, a very excellent meal at a good price. They also have pasta dishes that seemed to be good-sized from what we saw on other's tables.

The place is located towards the back of a shopping complex, almost directly across from the OberGatlinburg ski lift stop (not the sky ride, the actual ski lift).

For one meal during your stay, take a picnic into the Park. For a wedding gift, one of our friends was thoughtful enough to give us a very nice cooler with plates, cups and a handmade table cloth. We grabbed the cooler and took it with us on the trip and used it to picnic in the park. There are several grocery stores in the area where you can pick up all the fixin's for a great picnic - meat, cheese, bread, fruit, potato salad, chips, etc. If you didn't bring a cooler with you, grab one of those cheap styrofoam coolers while you're at the store and a bag of ice. If you're staying in a cabin or a hotel with a fridge, save any leftovers for lunch another day.

There are many beautiful picnic spots in the park, and I can't begin to remember all of them. We stopped at a great little spot by a small river near the Chimney Tops trailhead. The view of the river was very beautiful, and the river was full of rocks that we climbed around on after eating. The only other people that were anywhere near us were a family with a very cute little girl (about 2 yrs old) who had on her swimsuit to go "swimming" (read splashing) in the river. The only catch is that the river is made of pure snowmelt, and every time the little girl would stick her foot in the river's edge, she'd run away because it was too cold. It was great entertainment. If you picnic here for lunch, consider a jaunt up the Chimney Tops trail.

The Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited National Park year after year. The NPS estimates 9 million visits in the year 2000 (it is hard to judge actual visits since there is free admission). Covering almost 800 square miles, the park is home to mountains, forests, streams, historic buildings, hiking trails, waterfalls, and lots of wildlife. We spent 2 1/2 days in the park, and didn't begin to see it all. The must-sees are Clingman's Dome, Cade's Cove (though this "auto-trail" is a real pain if you drive a stick shift and get behind someone going 5 mph the whole way), at least one of the many waterfalls (Laurel Falls is the easiest hike) and have a picnic at the area near the base of the Chimney Tops trail. Look for black bears (we saw two, they crossed the road right in front of our car on the way to Laurel Falls in the evening) and deer (plentiful in the Cade's Cove area). Pick up a map from the visitor center and plan out the areas you want to see before you hit the park, otherwise you'll never see everything you want to.

Pigeon Forge & Sevierville are outlet mall heaven. There are 4 or 5 different groups of stores in the area. Tangier's in Sevierville is the nicest, it has lots of brand-name stores (J. Crew, American Eagle, Liz Claiborne, Ann Taylor, Brooks Brothers, etc.). We spent a whole afternoon doing outlet mall shopping, and only spent about $150 and got a pair of running shoes, two pairs of shorts, three T-shirts, a cardigan, and two button down shirts!

For the best deals, make sure you pick up the discount coupon books from the mall offices and information booths. The books are full of discounts at most of the major stores. Things like 10% of your purchase, $5 off a $50 purchase, 30% of a non-sale item, etc. Leave room in your suitcase or pack an empty bag in the bottom so you have room to bring stuff home!

You cannot go 100 yards in this area without passing at least one minature golf course. There are dinosaur themed courses, old west themed courses, fantasy themed courses and adventure courses. We played two courses at "Professor Hackers Lost Treasure Golf". This was one of the many courses in our discount coupon book, and is right on the main parkway through Pigeon Forge.

Professor Hackers had nice courses, and it wasn't too crowded. One of my pet peeves are miniature golf courses that are so full there is a three person wait at each hole. (The wait throws off your momentum when you play cut-throat miniature golf like my husband and I do - we get more competitive at miniature golf than we do at any other sport we play.) There are three or four courses at Professor Hackers, and when they assign you a course it is on a rotation basis, so it doesn't get too crowded, at least in May. If you are on one of the courses that start at the top of the hill, you can catch a mine-car ride up to the top if you would rather not walk. The cost for 18 holes with a coupon at Professor Hackers was $6.50.

When we originally began planning our honeymoon, my husband had his heart set on a Carribean getaway at a tropical resort. Then we looked at our finances and reality set in - it would have to be somewhere cheaper. Our first choice in the U.S. was the Outer Banks of N. Carolina, but the reality of having to fly and rent a car (we were under 25 and thus faced hefty surcharges) ruled out that possibility also. A friend of my mother's recommended that we consider Gatlinburg. I hopped on the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce website and requested a free vacation guide and lodging information.

After looking through everything we got, we were sold on Gatlinburg. We got a great romantic cabin for an amazing price (see my accomodation review), and had the most relaxing and wonderful week. We slept-in most mornings, ate a late breakfast/early lunch in the cabin (using our full kitchen and things we picked up at the grocery store), and headed out in the late morning for the day's activities, then ate dinner out and either poked through downtown or came back to the cabin and watched a movie. We easily could have spent another 3-4 days there and still not have seen everything we wanted to. It was the most relaxing vacation we have ever taken. Soon after we went, two other couples we know took their honeymoons in Gatlinburg as well, and had an equally wonderful time.