I am finally in my last semester of nursing school. It has been a grueling 2 years, and this last semester has proven to be the worst. Naturally, I have been in a dire need of a break. Thankfully, my fall break was from October 11 to October 15, 2018. I managed to take full advantage of this time ๐
After getting to sleep in late (for the first time in months), my husband and I finished packing the car and headed to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The Pigeon Forge/Sevierville/Gatlinburg area consists of three little tourist towns in the heart of the beautiful Smoky Mountains that have just about everything you would ever want while on vacation. Located in Pigeon Forge is an amusement park called Dollywood. We bought season passes back in July and this was our fourth visit since.
Right now, Dollywood (named after its founder Dolly Parton), is in full swing with its Harvest Festival. There are artisans from all over the area doing demonstrations and selling their wares. Also, there is a gospel festival going on throughout the park (for those who are interested in that sort of stuff). At night, they have what is called the Great Pumpkin Luminights.
Since it had rained in the park earlier that day, there were very few patrons roaming about. I believe they said they had about 7,000 guests show up instead of the projected 20,000; we were able to explore the park with ease. Once night fell, we were able to venture through the section of the park with all the pumpkin decorations without too much trouble. It was awesome! Once we made it through the decorations, we headed to one of the many moonshine distilleries in the area to enjoy some free samples before heading to our hotel. It was the perfect way to start our vacation!
After enjoying a hot breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to โthe stripโ in Pigeon Forge. Here we hit up the Christmas Place. My husband has fond childhood memories visiting it with his parents, and I had never been. To our surprise, we discovered a beautiful pond behind the store full of geese and ducks. We ended up hanging out there for over an hour enjoying the sun and feeding the fowl.
Once we went through all the buildings at the Christmas Shop, we grabbed a bite of lunch and headed back to Dollywood. When we got there we were greeted by droves of people. It was the busiest I had ever seen the park and we ended up having to park in the overflow parking (a first for me). Being an anxious person, crowds are just not my thing. I decided to suck it up and try to make the best of it.
We ventured around the park trying to find areas with the least amount of people. This proved to be a daunting task. However, we were able to visit with several of the artisans and watched their demonstrations. We even ended up buying some goodies.
The closer it got to nightfall, the busier the park became. In the end, we decided to leave early and hit โthe stripโ again. This time we went to The Mill. There we enjoyed some more free moonshine tastings, and even bought a jar
