Heading there for a wedding with an extra day and a half to do our own things. Any recommendations on some top hikes to do? Any other need to do things in Gatlinburg?
Great Smoky Mountains
- Thread starter CJ Beat Hard
- Start date
We're hitting four roses and buffalo trace on Thursday
Clingmans dome was pretty cool. Quite the workout with a kid on your shoulders. Was just outside of Gatlinburg.
You could hike up Mt. LeConte near Gatlinburg. You can choose from five very different trails to get up there. If you coordinate right, you can hike up one and down another. The lodge on top is a great place to stay, but you need to book way ahead of time.
I'd avoid the driving trails. It seemed to me that that is what most of the Pigeon Forge type peoples go-to which made it not cool at all. Tons of cars bumper to bumper. The plus side is the trails were almost vacant once you got off the hot spots. You can hike a good section of the App Trail that's really cool.
This. The Alum Cave trail is the best IMO but it's a tougher hike up or down. Lots of good waterfalls in the area if you like that kind of thing. If you like to hike, check out Rainbow Falls...moderate difficulty but worth it. If you have kids, Grotto Falls is pretty easy and it's a very cool waterfall - you can walk behind it.
Chimney Tops is pretty challenging, but awesome once you get up there.
So if this is your first time in that part of Kentucky and Tennessee, neither of those are my favorite distillery tours. The best imo based on the whiskies they offer for tasting, the beauty of the buildings and surrounding area and in depth knowledge offered on the tours are:
1) Wild Turkey (Best beauty of the site as the tasting room is on a hillside cliff overlooking a river, widest selection of bourbons offered and you can frequently meet the famous old retired distiller and he will engrave his signature and your name on the bottles)
2) Maker’s Mark (most in-depth tour, other than my tour of Opus One it was the most enlightening tour of all the booze tours I’ve been on and that’s hundreds of liquor distilleries, wineries, cideries, and beer and sake breweries. They also have a famous Chihuly art installation that you see on the tour.)
3) Dickel (albeit it’s in Tennessee, this is a far better tour and especially tasting than Jack Daniel’s)
4) Woodford Reserve
5) Angel’s Envy
6) Bulleit
7) Buffalo Trace (very nice buildings but you don’t get a wide variety of bourbons to taste on the tour as they only let you try their cheaper swill and the tour itself is unexciting)
8) Four Roses (actually other than Wild Turkey, they probably offer the most variety in their tastings and the tour is informative but the grounds are a giant sh*#hole)
9) Jack Daniels
10) Heaven Hill
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