This is my last Gatlinburg Trip Diary post! Thanks for sticking with me. I feel like one of those people who make their friends sit through hours of vacation slides! 

We started our last full day of Gatlinburg with a morning of fishing for Chris. I sat on a blanket creekside while he fished and spent the morning reading my book, Paris My Sweet (which I finished on our drive home and it was really good!).

Sadly, Chris didn’t have much fishing luck. We went to a couple different locations, but he didn’t see any fish anywhere we went. I think he had fun, though, wearing his waders and fly fishing at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains.

After a picnic lunch, we did a motor tour of part of the Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a very scenic drive with gorgeous views of the mountains. You could get out of your car to take photos or even walk off the beaten path a bit. The best part was that we saw four black bears! They were back in the woods a ways, so we couldn’t get a good photo, but it was awesome to see!

We then headed to downtown Gatlinburg for one last day of exploring the town and shops. We played “Hillbilly Golf,” a fun hillside miniature golf course. You ride a cart to the top of a steep hill and play down the hill. Each hole had some hillbilly theme like moonshine, a wagon, or mining. It was fun!

We decided to have dinner out for our last night of vacation, so we ate at the downtown Gatlinburg Bubba Gump Shimp Co. It ended up being a really disappointing [and expensive] experience, and it reminded us why we usually avoid such cheesy chain restaurants!

Although I was sad our vacation was coming to a close, we both felt like we saw everything Gatlinburg had to offer us. Our favorite parts of the trip were definitely time spent in nature and getting to call our gorgeous cabin home for a week. We had fun taking in downtown Gatlinburg, but there’s definitely such a thing as “too much” of such a tourist trap.

On our way out of Gatlinburg on Friday, I was amused to see that they were putting up the town’s Christmas lights. Is it that time of year already?!