Gatlinburg, TN 2020

My Best friend Sarah and I decided back in June we NEEDED a vacation. The pandemic has taken a tole on everyone in every way. What better way to try and get away from all the madness than camping in the woods?? We decided this was the perfect idea!

I'm working on putting together a highlight video of our vacation but wanted to post an update with some photos from the trip!

---

Campsite: Elkmont

Sarah has been coming to Gatlinburg ever since she was in her mom‘s tummy! She raved about this place to me when we last visited back in 2017. This campsite was super nice and very safe! Everyone was very respectful and the campsite was quiet at night. Besides maybe that one time a Barred owl woke us up? Lol.

We chose campsite E7. It was so quaint and right by the river!

---

Hiking Plans

Going into the trip we really didn't have a set plan on what trails we did want to do. However, we did have a really awesome app called AllTrails that we relied on. This app shows you nearby trails and gives you all kinds of details on the trail such as difficulty, waypoints, other peoples experiences, as well as photos. If you love hiking just as much as I do, I highly recommend downloading this app!

We narrowed our hiking down to a few trails. Mount LeConte, Laurel Falls, and Clingmans Dome. I will be adding detailed blog posts about each hike soon!

---

Staying Cool

We got lucky on our trip with no rain (besides a drizzle on our last night) and beautiful skies! However, it was HOT. We are talking 95-100s. Luckily for us we spent quite some time in the mountains which helped cooled things down. We also went swimming and rock hopping in the Chimney Tops picnic area to beat the heat!

---

Bear Sightings

We did see a total of 3 bears during our stay in the smokies! We came quite late in the season so we didn't see any small cubs but we did see two older cubs! One sighting we got lucky and we walked right across the street! The other two bears (i only could film one, the other was too far up the hill to see) we saw on our way down to get some warm fresh Krispy Kreme Donuts!

---

SARAH GOT ENGAGED!!!!

This was such a fun secret to plan out with Sarah's bf Adam. I had pitched him the idea the day we got to Gatlinburg. I meant to ask before we left but knowing me, I had forgot lol. He decided the day before our last day he would come down and pop the question. It was so perfect because she had absolutely no idea that he was coming, we had an awesome view at Mortons lookout, and she had her fave photographer there to capture the moment!

---

We had a great trip and there is so much more I want to share coming soon to the blog! Thank you so much for reading and don't for get to subscribe for updates!