Into the city of Gatlinburg


For our last day in Tennessee, we decided to check out the city of Gatlinburg. With a morning temperature of 19 deg. and a high for the day in the low 40's again, we were sure to bundle up and make our first stop for a local little shop in the Villages area of Gatlinburg for some delicious coffee. The main strip in Gatlinbug is impossible to miss and is adorned buy more shops than you can count that have everything from interesting varieties of Jerky to indoor mini-golf, a skylift up a mountain, and soooo many whisky distilleries. Don't worry, there are more places to shop than I knew what to do with!

The perks of travelling to these cities near the holiday seasons is that they really get into the spirit of the seasons and once night set in there were beautiful little lights adorning the walk-ways. Beware of the pigeons though, they are a little bold when it comes to funnel cakes (yes I am speaking from experience).

Some of the things we did while walking around in the city was grab a day pass (about 20$) on the skylift to see over the city and the surrounding mountains. It was a fun little experience, though at night it left us as human ice cubes. We also checked out some of the live bluegrass bands provided by a whiskey distillery we passed by, however the highlight of the trip seemed to be our random discovery of an escape room.

Have you heard of these up and coming escape rooms yet??? If not, I urge you to look it up because with a large group, it made for an unforgettable experience filled with some frantic scrambling and lots of laughs to diffuse a (fake) bomb... that all looked rather real! In the end our doomsday experience was saved by our little wolfpack with a minute to spare (you're welcome, city).

As a little update since this trip:
 Gatlinburg experienced a very traumatic long last stent of (as a result of arson) wildfires that ripped through the mountains seen in the previous blog entry about the Alum cave trail as well as leading into the city. Unfortunately the sky lift we rode on and have picture of is no longer in operation due to the fires but most of the city below made it out okay. We are very fortunate to have made such awesome memories before this unfortunate event.

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