Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Visited May 3-9, 2022

By Janell

There wasn't too much to our time in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Initially I was going to combine Pigeon Forge with Louisville, Kentucky, but it turned out to be too much for one post. Therefore, I'm giving you a short post on Pigeon Forge now, and in just a few days I'll post Louisville.

While staying in Pigeon Forge, we ventured into Great Smoky Mountains National Park where we hiked 4.5 miles on the Alum Cave Nature Trail. It was a really nice trail, crossing over Alum Cave Creek multiple times.

Afterward we walked up a very steep path (.6 miles never seemed so long!) to Clingmans Dome (and back down, of course, but that was the easy-peasy part).

Like Nashville, Pigeon Forge also has The Listening Room. We listened to Julia Larkin, Samantha Jayne & Tarrah (not pictured). All three had beautiful voices!

We walked a couple of miles on the Pigeon Forge Greenway. There were several Canada Geese with goslings. We've never seen goslings before, so that was fun to see. Sometimes the geese were right in the path, and we were a little leery about getting by them. We've heard that geese can be mean, and these ones were protecting their babies, so we weren't too surprised when one hissed at Marty as we went by. I can't blame them! He can be intimidating.

In case you were wondering about the name, "Pigeon Forge" . . .

From mypigeonforge.com:

The first part comes from the Little Pigeon River, which got its name from the many passenger pigeons that once roosted on the banks of the river. The second part of the name comes from a nearby iron forge that was built by Isaac Love in 1817. 

The city of Pigeon Forge itself is an absolute wonderland for kiddos. Seriously, it looks like non-stop fun . . . if you're a ten year old! There were at least a dozen go-kart tracks, and a handful of mini-golf places, and then a bunch of these kinds of places with wild architecture! Needless to say, we didn't do any of these things, but we drove down the boulevard and snapped photos.

Yep, that's a real, live goat.

With all those crazy buildings, Pigeon Forge doesn't seem to have room for something as mundane as murals on their main street. We spotted these two murals just barely peeking out between the foliage from across the creek while we were on the Pigeon Forge Greenway. After the walk, we drove around until we figured out where to find them. They are on the backside of a building where very few people will ever see them. We felt bad for the artists.

While Marty was packing up the outside of the Beast, getting ready to move on to Louisville, these four ducklings followed him around. Mama was nowhere to be seen the whole time.