The Perfect Day in Gatlinburg 

Planning your way to Smoky Mountain perfection

In the Smoky Mountains, perfection, if you’ll forgive a bit of poetic license, is like the Little Pigeon River. It’s fed by a series of prongs and tributaries and streams from all sorts of sources. Finding perfection is to follow the path of your passions until the reach the main waters flowing throw downtown.

In other words, there are a lot of versions of perfection.

For some, it will start with a mountaintop sunrise. For others, it will be with a stack of buttery pancakes, sticky with maple syrup. You can find perfection through shopping and drinking and homemade candy. And that is just before noon. It can also be a trip under the sharks at Ripley’s Aquarium. Or it could be a Gondola ride up the mountain to Anakeesta.

For us, a perfect day in Gatlinburg comes in experiencing a wide range of everything G’burg has to offer.

The path to perfection

Finding a perfect day in Gatlinburg starts with staying in the immediate vicinity. Few perfect days ever start with a long drive. Pick out a cabin up in the mountains or a downtown hotel. I like hotels that overlook the water, especially when its warm enough you can leave the balcony door open a bit and listen to the roar of the water below.

Get to bed early, we’re going to need energy. There is a perfect day that involves a hammock by the water, a good book and frequent naps. However, this ain’t that day.

The perfect morning

We’re up early and making our way to the Pancake Pantry. That way, we beat the crowd that really starts arriving between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Our order, specialty pancakes and a side of breakfast meats – bacon, sausage or country ham and a refreshing beverage.

If you don’t want to spend time sitting down to eat, we would also accept a trip to the nearby Donut Friar in the Village Shops. Either way, you want to start your perfect day at a Gatlinburg institution. You don’t get more G’Burg institution-y than the Pancake Pantry or the Donut Friar.

Having sufficiently carb loaded, it’s time to get into the mountains. My recommendation? The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. It is a drive through the mountains that features multiple trailheads, historic cabins, and stunning mountain views.

But we need to work off our carbs, so we’re going to get out and explore the old cabins – especially the possibly haunted Ephraim Bales Cabin. But our main goal is going to be the fairly easy hike to Grotto Falls. You can do much more significant hikes from trailheads on the Roaring Fork. However, the hike to Grotto Falls is one of the more memorable in the mountains.

We’re going to hike on the Trillium Gap trail. We need to get there as early as we can because parking can be hard to come by. It’s a 2.6-mile roundtrip hike through old-growth forests and rhododendron to a unique sight in the Smokies, a trail that run behind the waterfall. It is important to remember that even though this is a short hike, wearing the right gear – especially good shoes – is important. With the trail going behind the waterfall, it can be slippery and muddy.

After exploring the mountains, we’re heading back to downtown Gatlinburg to do some touristy things.

The perfect afternoon

Depending on how hungry we are after our heavy breakfast and trip to the mountains, a swing into Tennessee Jed’s for some fantastic sandwiches might be in order. But, if we’re good to go, it might be snacking as we hit the shops along the strip. There are plenty of places where we can get something to tide us over to a big dinner.

Options include a sausage from Stanga’s Big Sausage or Pizza, a corndog from Fannie Farkles. This is our time to explore the shops – I’m a fan of the Village Shops – explore the downtown Ripley’s Attractions and play the arcades, hit the Escape Rooms, a mountain coaster or seek out some mini-golf.

I generally think the Ripley’s Aquarium is the best of the downtown attractions. However, it’s expensive and takes a lot of your time. In a day where we’re trying to get a lot of things done, the Believe it or Not Museum might be the better option.

If you want to play mini-golf, Davy Crockett’s on the edge of town on your way to Pigeon Forge is probably your best bet.

The Perfect evening

Again, there is a version of this where you find yourself a spot in the high mountains with the view of the sky – preferably the Western sky. But any direction kind of works where you can watch the sun go down. To be clear, this spot should not be on one of the deep hiking trail in the mountains – you don’t want to be on the trails at night.

But for our perfect evening, we’re going to have a nice dinner. Could be the Peddler, the Greenbrier, Chesapeake’s or the Cherokee Grill. We could even target another East Tennessee icon, Calhoun’s. But we want a place where we can treat ourselves after a long day of Gatlinburging.

Don’t rule out Anakeesta for your evening. The Clifftop dining and after dinner drinks as the sun sets and the stars come out is quite a sight. Then the Chondola ride back down the mountain at the end of the evening, when the air is cool and the bright lights of Gatlinburg are glowing below, is the best ride in the mountains. However, while I really like Anakeesta, I don’t enjoy having to pay just to ride up the mountain and buy dinner and drinks. It can also can get quite crowded.

No, I would say our perfect evening ends with a fine dinner followed by a walk down the strip to one of the distilleries. There we can get a small flight of drinks or at one of the restaurants with a bar that overlooks the strip for the nightcap.

Finally, it’s back to the hotel or cabin where we can listen to the roar of the water, close our eyes and get ready to seek perfection all over again in the morning.

What does your perfect day in Gatlinburg look like? Let us know in the comments!