The Neighborhood - All Decked Out

As promised, here are some shots of the neighborhood around All Decked Out.

This is the view as you come down the road.


That's All Decked Out on the left. As you can see, our little private road continues on past All Decked Out. There are 5 more cabins down that road, plus another one set down low on the mountain just before you get to the road entrance (right behind the mailboxes on the right). That cabin, and the one just past All Decked Out, are occupied by permanent residents, both of whom are good friends. The other cabins are rental cabins, like All Decked Out.

I walked a little further down our private road to give you a better view. The left cabin is owned by permanent residents.


Right across the road is a rental cabin. Here's the view from our front entrance deck:

The white car you saw in the previous picture belonged to guests at this cabin, but they left just before I took this picture.

People ask if there is a "view" at All Decked Out. Yes, it's what we call a "winter view." Here's the view from the upstairs bedroom window:


So that's the neighborhood. We hope you'll come and enjoy it for yourself.

The Neighborhood - Smoky Mountain Tower

From time to time, we get inquiries asking us about the neighborhood around Smoky Mountain Tower. Since we were just there last week, we took some pictures to show you what it's like. (It was a cloudy day, so the pictures aren't the best.)

This is the view from the driveway, near the front door.

As you can see, there's another house on the left, mostly hidden by the trees. You can see two cars on the right. They belong to our closest permanent neighbor (he's a good friend who actually was in real estate before he retired. In fact, he sold Smoky Mountain Tower to us!). His house is also mostly hidden by trees. Farther down the street, there are several other houses, some of which are occupied by permanent neighbors.

Now, let's walk out the driveway and look back at Smoky Mountain Tower.


On the left are the two cars you saw in the first picture. On the right is the corner of the house you saw. The driveway into Smoky Mountain Tower is in the center left of the photo, just to the right of the cars. As you can see, it's pretty "secluded."

In our next post, we'll show you the neighborhood around All Decked Out.

Fall colors: better than average

We just got home from Gatlinburg last night and the fall colors are coming. In fact, we drove the foothills parkway on Wednesday (to the Biltmore) and Thursday (coming home) and saw a definite increase in color.

It's supposed to be a great year for color, according to Kathy Gould Matthews, associate professor of biology at Western Carolina University. That's what this article says on knoxnews.com. Click to read the whole thing, or go to this link: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/oct/04/foliage-forecast-expert-expects-above-average-disp/.

There's still time to join us to witness the colors. Smoky Mountain Tower is totally booked, but we have six prime nights available at All Decked Out - Sunday, October 17 through Friday, October 22 (checking out Saturday morning). And to entice you even more, we're running a special price if you stay all six nights - only $699 plus tax. That's a savings of almost $200.

For all the details, plus the coupon code that gets you the cheap price, check out our specials page by clicking here. But hurry. This offer will be all gone after Thursday, October 14.

It's time to think about 2011

Greetings from Gatlinburg. We arrived last night and we're staying at All Decked Out - and getting some minor maintenance issues taken care of.

I was looking at our reservation calendar this morning and realized that we have very few dates available for 2010. So it's time to start thinking about 2011.

Here's the good news. As of now, we are not raising our rates in 2011. Of course, that may change as we see how the reservations come in. But if you book your 2011 stay at Smoky Mountain Tower or All Decked Out this year, you will still get our 2010 rates.

Frankly, we don't know too many other people who are keeping rates at the same level next year. If our cleaning costs go up, we'll probably have to increase our rates, too. So we encourage you to book now, while the rates are still this low. And in case you forgot, our rates have never been this low in the 14-year history of renting our cabins!

It's easy to make your reservation online. Just go to either of our Web site and click the "Book Online Now" button. Enter your arrival and departure dates, and go on from there.

To make it easy, here are links directly to our online calendar:
-Smoky Mountain Tower - www.SmokyMountainTower.com/availability
-All Decked Out - www.SmokiesRentDirect.com/availability

We look forward to having you stay with us in 2011!

Smoky Mountain Tower Queen Bonus Room

If you've been to Smoky Mountain Tower this year, you know that we made the second level Bonus Room into a Queen "bedroom." We've always had the big chemical bottle lamp that my dad made many years ago. Now we've added another bedside lamp and a clock.


The room doesn't have a closet, but we added some shelves and hooks for clothes.


Of course, we put in a big wide-screen 32" TV. It's great to just be able to lie in bed and watch your favorite shows.


The biggest problem we had was the door. The opening is configured so it's impossible to add a regular door. Our first attempt at privacy was a set of vertical blinds. But we soon discovered they were pretty fragile and kept falling down. I tried taping them up, but that didn't work, either.

Then Mark, one of our great maintenance guys, told me about an accordion door. So we bought it and Mark put it up. Now, here's what the entrance looks like:


The only thing this room doesn't have is an attached bath. You have to share a bath with the occupants of the Master King Suite or the Master Queen Suite (up or down one level), or use the half-bath in the Tower Room. But so far, our guests seem to like it. We hope you'll check it out for yourselves and let us know what you think.

Tracking the fall colors

The leaves are just starting to turn a little bit. When we were in Gatlinburg a week ago, we just started to see some slight color changes.

Like you, I'm always watching for a good site to track the changes. I think I've found one. Just click here. Or, here's the whole link to copy and paste into your browser:

http://discoverpigeonforgecabins.com/fc2010/fall_colors_2010.htm

We've got a few nights open still in October at All Decked Out so you can enjoy the colors first-hand. Click here to check our calendar and make your reservation online, before somebody else gets your dates. And how about this! We're offering a special 15% discount for any available date from now through November 7 - just to encourage you to enjoy the colors. You'll find all the details here.

We hope you'll join us for God's great fall color show.

There's a garage at Smoky Mountain Tower

If you've been to Smoky Mountain Tower, you know there is a garage! So far, we've been using it for storage - mostly things that need to find a new home. Here's what it used to look like:


But our good friend, Darren, came by recently and took all the unwanted stuff. Now it's looking better:


Those cabinets are going to be installed on the back wall. There are a few other things that need to find a new home. But our goal (we hope, we hope) is to get everything done by winter so we can offer the garage as a place to get your vehicle out of the snow! Please watch our Web site for details - www.SmokyMountainTower.com. We'll let you know right here when the job is done!