November 22, 2018 – Pigeon Forge, TN, USA

After celebrating Thanksgiving in Michigan, it was time to continue the festivities away from home. Monika came up with the idea of visiting Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg in Tennessee as they were voted the top spots to visit in USA during the Thanksgiving break. The group agreed readily and we took care of the logistics – hotel, food, and other road trip related items.

It was my first time visiting the state of Tennessee, so I was happy with the fact that I would get to tick one more state from my bucket list. The second reason for my elevated excitement was the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, the next item on my bucket list of National Parks. And the third and last reason was the road trip itself. I have been enjoying my time at the US for the last three years and I have realized that road trips make me the happiest on the great american roads and I don’t seem to get enough of it.

With all these three reasons, we embarked upon our 10+ hours road trip to Pigeon Forge. Now, as I mentioned, it was my first time visiting Pigeon Forge. When I heard about this place for the first time, the name sounded weird to me. I chose not to do any research about the place and prepared myself to be blown away by any surprises that it had for us. Fortunately, all these surprises turned out to be good surprises and the first glimpse of this place came when we were driving to our hotel through the streets of Downtown Pigeon Forge. Man, it felt like it was a scene from a movie, with never ending scenery from different places and movies, some of which I had seen and some not so much, but I must say, everything was eye catching.

Upon reaching our hotel, we all freshen up quickly so that we had enough time to go out and explore some nearby places. Now that I think about it, it just feels unreal that after driving for 10+ hours, we all had energy to go out and have some fun.
The kids made sure they got to play some arcade games and got to try some cool rides. The adults chose to skip the rides and arcade games and decided to party once back in hotel. It was a memorable night with a couple games of Uno and Sequence with many vodka shots in between.

Next stop: Gatlinburg, TN, USA