Fall 2025: Pumpkins, Snow, and the Tail of the Dragon
Fall 2025 gave us the break we needed in Pigeon Forge. From October 15 to January 4, we settled into the Smokies for Dollywood days, quiet side trips, Jeep projects, early snow, Christmas scenery, and enough time to remember why staying put can be part of the adventure.
After recovering from the summer to forget, we decided to just move to Pigeon Forge for an extended stay and to enjoy some quality Dollywood time. After everything that happened earlier in the year, we needed some fun. We decided an extended stay from October 15, 2025, to January 4, 2026, in Pigeon Forge would gave us a comfortable base in the Smokies. We could spend lots of Dollywood days, a few side trips, get some Jeep projects completed, and have enough fall-to-Christmas scenery to remind us why we like staying put once in a while.
Rubi Tries to Pass us!
This was our maiden trip with the new motorhome and the Blue Ox towing setup that was also replaced. Unfortunately, it did not go as well as we had hoped! We had some other small moves in Wisconsin but this was our first major traversal between states. Somewhere around Louisville, Rubi gave us a very clear reminder that even new equipment needs to be watched closely. What started as a normal interstate transition quickly turned into a shoulder-of-the-road inspection, a rest area teardown, and a decision to finish the drive to Pigeon Forge with the motorhome and Jeep separated.
When transiting from one interstate to another, somewhere in Louisville, we noticed Rubi was trying to pass us on the clover leaf! We were able to get over to the side of the road and found that there was no major damage. We believe we lost the latching cotter pin that keeps the Blue Ox pin inserted into the mating between the motorhome and the Jeep, a 99 cent part is really what keeps it all together and it must have disappeared. Fortunately, we had kept those as spares from the previous setup and hooked up to get down the road to the nearby rest area for a deeper inspection.Once we made it to the rest area, we were able to see that the entire Blue Ox mechanism had become compromised at the pivot point where the tow bar connects to the coach. So we disconnected Rubi and we drove the motorhome and Jeep separately the remainder of the way to Pigeon Forge.
Leaf Peeping in the Smokies
Dollywood’s fall festival is the Harvest Festival by day and the Great Pumpkin LumniNights by night. There were lots of beautiful colors before the snow came in November. This was the kind of extended stay where the season changed right in front of us. We had bluegrass shows, pumpkin displays, glowing night scenes, candy corn selfies, chilly crisp mountain air, and quiet drives out toward Townsend and Cades Cove loop. Dollywood gave us the big polished fall scenes, while the Smokies gave us the cold clear streams, roadside food stops, and those little mountain trips that make a stay here feel comfortable.
Nighttime at Dollywood brought out a completely different kind of fun in the autumn colors of lights. The lights were bright, the air had that fall evening feel, and we grabbed a selfie in front of the huge guitar made from pumpkins.This glowing pumpkin spider was one of those Dollywood displays that was more fun than spooky. Yes, even Jason the spider hater thinks so too! It had just enough creepiness to fit the season, but enough color and charm to keep it cute.
This pumpkin owl looked like it had been keeping watch over Dollywood’s crafters area . The glow, the carved faces, and the splash of green light gave the whole scene a fun little Halloween-meets-mountain-fair feeling. We have seen plenty of pumpkins, but this one had enough personality that it had its own line of people waiting for photos of it.Dollywood knows how to do fall without being shy about it. Cheerful pumpkins by day, something else at night!Rhonda Vincent and The Rage brought the bluegrass energy to Dollywood during the autumn festival guest line up of acts. All of the live acts are included in your gate ticket, we enjoyed several of her hour long concerts the week she was at Dollywood.We found a perfect fall backdrop at Dollywood, complete with huge candy corn characters and candy corn stalks ready for the fall harvest. The crisp Smoky Mountain fall air and the autumn festival settings all came together for one of those easy little moments that makes this trip stick in our memory.Dollywood tucked a good reminder into all that fall color: autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go. That is a pretty solid message for a season built on change, leaves, and cooling air. We loved how the quote sat under the canopy of rustling leaves.The pumpkins take on a different personality at night! These glowing pumpkins seemed to float through the fog and trees, giving this part of Dollywood a storybook feel after dark.Burger Master in Townsend had that classic roadside stop feel that just fits a fall day in the Smokies. It happened that we were there on their last day of the 2025 season, so it was a little bit of “chef’s choice” like on the last day of grade school! We will definitely be back during the next season!The Tremont area near Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park gave us one of those classic mountain scenes: cold clear water, mossy rocks, and fall leaves hanging on just long enough to make everything look like a painting.That is not a dumpling, that is the hard slimy layer on top of the gravy that formed under the heat lamp! We do not understand why everyone raves about the Apple Barn restaurant in Pigeon Forge. We got a peek into the kitchen and it is just steam tables and industrial cooking on scale to improve their ROI and decrease wait times to turn over tables.
Christmas in the Smokies
Dollywood is actually closed for Halloween night, and for a few days that follow for the conversion over to the Christmas season. This year snow came early in November and it punctuated a brisk change in seasons. One minute we were still talking about pumpkins and fall leaves, and the next minute Rubi and the motorhome were sitting in actual snow down below the mountains. From there, the whole area shifted into Christmas mode with snowy ridge views, decorations at the motorhome, a Christmas Day museum stop, and Dollywood dressed up with butterflies, lights, and the steam train back in service.
Rubi and the motorhome looked pretty uncomfortable in the early November snow! We had accumulating snow down below the mountains on November 10, 2025! Granted it only stayed around for an hour or so, it was still jarring to have happen this early.Other than for the snow earlier in November, this is the first time we have seen snow this far down the mountains. From Pigeon Forge we could see a full blanket covering all of the national park.Penguins standing guard over the Christmas package at the door to the motorhome.Dollywood is closed on Christmas Day, so we headed out for something a little different at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge. The attraction name does not really explain it well. While there is an exhibit about the actual Alcatraz, it is more about all different types of crimes in history. One example was this exhibit on crimes portrayed in movies or television, whether factual or fictional. Added to the category of “once and done”, but it was worth a visit on a cold quiet day.The big pink butterfly made this Dolly Experience entrance impossible to miss. The colors are mounted on plastic tabs that flicker in the wind, giving it an amazing glistening glow.The trains were not part of much of the fall landscape, the train was out of commission for many weeks. When it returned it was ready for Christmas with a wreath on the front like a Norman Rockwell painting. The trains have spewed noxious smoke for years, but now they have been converted over to oil for a cleaner park experience. We can even hear them from outside of Pigeon Forge at our campsite in the country.
Rubi has a Nice Rack!
As part of our building out of Rubi’s “overlanding” capabilities and for overnighting on trails, we needed to add a capable rack and some storage to Rubi. This became one of those projects that sounds simple until the hard top has to move, the roll bars need to be exposed, and the weather reminds us that topless Jeep work in December is still December Jeep work. The JCR Offroad rack gave Rubi a much higher weight rating rack useful for gear and storage, and once it was on, we had to take her out for a proper test run. The Tail of the Dragon was a pretty fitting shakedown drive for a Jeep wearing new trail gear.
We slid the hard top back to expose the roll bars, which was a step required for mounting down through the hardtop from the new roof rack. It was way too cold to take her on a spin being truly topless!The new roof rack is done! We are happy with the JCR Offroad rack, which has solid posts down through the hard top that tie into the roll cage. Yes, potential water infiltration point, but so is using the window hinges like most JK roof racks use. The next step was to mount the Roam boxes on top, but of course we were missing parts to accomplish that.Instead of heading into the busy national park, on December 27 we headed out with Rubi on the Tail of the Dragon. She was sporting her new roof rack! Rubi handled great on the hundreds of turns of one of the most famous driving roads in the country. We had to pull over on numerous pull-offs to let the sports cars and motorcycles by so they could have their high-speed fun.
