Cades Cove, Tennessee, United States

5Frugalmama57 5:00 PM Mar 1, 2023

Peaceful
Our guests could pick out anything they wanted to do while staying in Sevierville. They chose Cades Cove. Even though it was February, it was very peaceful and the walk around the buildings was not as uncomfortable as when one does it in the summer. There was still traffic moving slowly and stopping occasionally to take a picture of deer. That was not bad for observers. No bears yet, but the gift shop had very reasonably priced stuffed black bears to lesson the disappointment. We found out that most of them don't come out until April.

4emily2472 5:00 PM Jul 23, 2021

Bicyclists - Things have changed from what is on the website!
My family biked the loop on a Wednesday in July 2021 when the road was closed to traffic. It was a beautiful ride, though those of who had done it 15 years ago had forgotten how hilly it was! We enjoyed the ride greatly, HOWEVER we found that the info on the website is not up to date. We showed up early because the website said the road was only closed to cars from 7am-10am. When we arrived we found it is now closed the entire day. We had also been led to believe that the rental bikes tend to sell out by 8:30am. When we arrived at 7:45am, they were already gone and we had to wait for others to return before we could begin the ride. We were finally able to start at 10:15. We learned that just last week they began a new procedure where you can reserve bikes online a week in advance. This was not readily obvious on the website. We would have reserved if we had known. Then again, it seemed some people in line had reserved online yet still showed up to find out their bikes weren’t there. The worker admitted that the system is new and they were still working out the kinks. Moral of the story - if you are renting bikes on a Wednesday, be there by 7am. I would not recommend biking the loop on other days because it is very narrow and would be difficult to share the space with cars. On the plus side, you pay for the rental bikes for 2 hours, and if you finish early they either refund some of your money or give you free ice cream. We found the ice cream to be a very happy surprise after a hilly 90 minute ride!