Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge

Ton of threads on this. Thought about posting in sticky....

We like the Okoee.

Ocoee is fun, but it's a couple of hours from the Gatlinburg area. I'm not sure there's any white water rafting in the immediate Gatlinburg area.

We rafted the pigeon river last year. Do the upper river for the older kids. We did the lower since we had young ones.

Plan ahead because they only release water from the dam on certain days of the week.

It is a bit of a drive from Gburg area.

Also, drive through cades cove if you’ve never been.

Go hike to a waterfall in the national park

Dollywood was also better than expected.

Just got back from a trip through Gatlinburg. The new Skybridge was pretty cool, the kids liked walking across the glass section of the bridge. The whole family loved
River Rat White Water Rafting out of Hartford Tenn. We did the Upper Pigeon River trip. Just had a blast on it.

We had a good time at Anakeesta but the coaster wasn’t nearly as fun as the one on Wears Valley Rd. We did that one at night right before it closed and it was awesome! Also, had a terrible experience with the restaurant at Anakeesta. The food truck at the top might be a better bet than the restaurant.

Smoky Mountain Outdoors and ClimbWorks do a combo package deal rafting/zip lines that we have used twice. ClimbWorks zip lines are excellent.

LINK

For tubing, you can drive Newfound Gap road through to the North Carolina side, which is a super nice drive, and tube on Deep Creek. There are a bunch of tube rental places there, as well as three waterfalls on short trails that branch off from Deep Creek trail.

You should sticky!

Yeah, if you want to do stuff, you need to squeeze it in before or after games. I swear it stays light outside until almost 9:00, so you can even begin a hike at 6 and get a good two hours in. We had a bunch of rain at the beginning of last week which messed up some of our plans. I wish we would have had one more free day to do a few things we didn't get to.

God damn a lot of you need to learn how to spell Ocoee.

Ocoee is where you want to go if you want to whitewater raft. Nantahala and Pigeon are both a lot tamer. You can hit Ocoee on the way up or way back. Try to go on a day where you can do upper and lower so you can do the Olympic course as well. It’s a shite ton of fun. Don’t bring small ones.

I’d pick Nantahala over Pigeon. It’s a cool area over there.

Close to the Ocoee near Benton, TN, you also have the Hiwassee where you can rent a tube, funyak, sit on top, or a raft and fish for trout and bass all in the same place. Took my 4 year old there Sunday and rented some funyaks and caught a few trout in between the small rapids. It’s a very tame river in comparison to the others.

Little River in Townsend is good for tubing as well.