Come along on our Tennessee loop in a rented plane flying to Great Smoky Mountains National Park with stops in Nashville, Gatlinburg, and Knoxville.

My husband is a commercial pilot and he’s been trying to get me to agree to a small plane trip for a long time. I finally said yes as we celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary. Our first small plane adventure was a loop through Tennessee: flying to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a Cirrus SR22 rented from Jet Air Inc.

We took a four night, five day loop through Tennessee via plane flown by him: Nashville, Gatlinburg, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and Knoxville. If I had known how close we were to Asheville, North Carolina, I probably would have pushed for another day!

Flight Path from Iowa City to Tennessee

Flying to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a private plane looks a bit different than a typical layover-and-rental-car itinerary. Here’s how we broke our trip down:

• Iowa City (IOW) to Nashville (John C. Tune Airport, JWN): about 2.5 hour flight
• Nashville to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge (GKT): about 1 hour flight
• Gatlinburg to Knoxville Downtown Island (DKX): 7 minutes (barely enough time to level off)
• Knoxville to Iowa City: about 3.5 hours home

Nashville wasn’t originally on the itinerary. My husband had a commercial flight scheduled that morning that got cancelled, so we decided to leave a day early and add a Nashville stop. We didn’t even book the hotel until we landed in Nashville. We’d been to Nashville before and enjoyed it, so it was an easy last-minute yes.

In Gatlinburg, a rental car was brought right out to our plane when we landed. That treatment made me feel pretty fancy but is really standard at many small airports.

Nashville, Off the Honky-Tonk Trail

Nashville is its own beast, and this trip didn’t change our opinion of that. Broadway is packed with brides-to-be and their entourages, plus more than a few people who started drinking well before noon. That said, we’re not sorry we stopped. Here are the off-the-beaten path things we did in Nashville:

• Took an Uber straight from the airport to the Untitled Nashville Hotel at Bankers Alley, close to the Titans’ stadium, where we stayed overnight. t would have been a great stay, except the HVAC in our 8th floor room was loud and cycled on and off roughly every 20 minutes all night, worth knowing if you’re a light sleeper.
• Walked to Ophelia’s for a fantastic lasagna dinner
• Walked Broadway afterward for a while just to people watch, which in Nashville is its own kind of entertainment

The next morning we had a great breakfast at Frothy Monkey before taking an Uber back to the airport. We’d hoped to visit the Tennessee State Capitol building, but it was closed, so instead we spent our weather delay exploring The Nations while we waited to depart.

If you’ve been to Nashville once for the music and the honky-tonks, a quick return stop like ours is a good way to grab a few favorites without committing to a full weekend downtown.

The Nations

The Nations is a West Nashville neighborhood right near John C. Tune Airport. We set off in that direction to find the grain silo murals in a borrowed crew car and found a lot more.

A few things worth knowing about the area:

• It used to be a working-class, largely industrial area, home to auto, lumber, and agricultural businesses
• Its name is thought to come from its earlier history as a gathering place for Native American tribal nations
• A 2010 flood hit the neighborhood hard, and the rebuild that followed kicked off a fast transformation into breweries, coffee shops, and new housing that’s still very much underway
• The centerpiece of that transformation is the silo: a 200-foot abandoned grain silo, once part of the Gillette Grain Company. We saw the mural from the interstate and were surprised to find out that it was also painted by Australian muralist Guido van Helten just like the huge mural in Fort Dodge, Iowa! The mural’s subject is Lee Estes, a man who spent nearly his whole life volunteering in the neighborhood.
• We also stopped at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, a really cute shop that had a full Ted Lasso theme going, right down to a special flavor called Biscuits with the Boss. It was the best ice cream of the whole trip.

Gatlinburg: A Tourist Trap With Redeeming Qualities

I’ll be honest: Gatlinburg is one giant tourist trap. It’s full of attractions built to separate you from your money, and the traffic getting through town is a slog. I went in prepared not to like the area at all because of it.

To be fair, though, we did find redeeming qualities once we settled in. If you’re staging a trip into the national park, Gatlinburg is going to be part of your route one way or another. It’s just worth knowing what you’re walking into.

Rocky Waters Motor Inn

We stayed at the Historic Rocky Waters Motor Inn, now billed as a Small Luxury Hotel, and it turned out to be one of the best parts of our stay in Gatlinburg. It’s adults-only, sits right on the Little Pigeon River, and every room has its own balcony where you can sit and listen to the water running below.

The inn dates back to 1935, one of the original hotels built as Gatlinburg grew up around the national park, but it went through a full renovation in 2024 and now feels like an upscale, quiet retreat rather than the busy roadside motor inn.

Heirloom Room: Creekside Restaurant & Bar is where we had our favorite meal of the entire trip. It’s actually part of the hotel property rather than a separate restaurant nearby, so you can walk straight from your room to dinner. The restaurants leans into Appalachian cuisine, dry-aged meats, smoked pork, frog legs, and a serious bourbon list. The dining room looks straight out over the creek. It’s worth a special trip on its own, even if you aren’t already staying at the inn.

A Little Gatlinburg History

Gatlinburg has its own story worth knowing before you write it off as just a tourist strip:

• South Carolinian William Ogle set out to settle the area around 1802, prepping logs for a cabin, but died before he could bring his family. His widow, Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, and their children finally arrived and settled the land a few years later, around 1806, in what was then called White Oak Flats
• The town took its current name from Radford Gatlin, a controversial local store owner and preacher who was eventually run out of town
• Gatlinburg wasn’t officially incorporated until 1945, decades after Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in 1934
• The Pi Beta Phi Settlement School, founded in 1912, now the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, still an internationally known arts center today
• That same craft tradition lives on in the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community, founded in 1937 and still spanning an 8-mile loop of working artisan studios just outside downtown
• Gatlinburg was only just officially designated the “Gateway to the Smokies” by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2026, formalizing a relationship with the park that goes back to its founding

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Although visiting all of the national parks is on my bucket list, for some reason Great Smoky Mountains National Park wasn’t very high on that list. Maybe because it’s the most visited park in the system. Maybe because it’s in Tennessee. I’m not sure why, but my hesitation was completely unfounded. Once you’re actually inside GSMNP, it’s just beautiful. Quiet, green, hazy. Rolling hills and waterfalls everywhere! It’s hard not to love.

We didn’t get to spend enough time in the park, but we did pack our time there with amazing things. Our favorite GSMNP adventure was hiking to Rainbow Falls while we were there, a 5.6-mile, challenging trail complete with bears, thunder, and more!

Other things we did during our two days in the park including driving along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, a hike up to the Kuwohi observation tower, a stop at Newfound Gap. I even my completed Junior Ranger badge, proof you’re never too old for one. The Rainbow Falls hike deserves a post of its own, so I’ll link it here once it’s up.

Of everywhere we went on this trip, GSMNP was hands down my favorite. If you’re planning your own visit, give the park all the time you can spare.

Knoxville: The Underrated Stop

Knoxville almost wasn’t on our itinerary at all. We ended up there mostly because my husband wanted to land at Knoxville Downtown Island Airport, and I was intrigued by The Oliver Hotel. That’s it, that’s the whole reason. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip.

I honestly didn’t know Knoxville was home to the University of Tennessee until we got there. The campus sits right along the Tennessee River, practically spilling into downtown. The city has a fun college-town energy: walkable, a little bit collegiate, with a real downtown instead of the strip-mall sprawl. Market Square and Gay Street are the heart of it, packed with restaurants, shops, and lots to explore.

Once we were there, a few things stood out, starting with where we stayed.

The Oliver Hotel

The Oliver Knoxville ended up shaping most of our Knoxville experience. It’s a boutique hotel in a restored 1876 building right off Market Square. We loved the hotel perks that made the whole visit:

• Bikes, free with our stay, which we used to ride around downtown
• The Peter Kern Library, a speakeasy tucked inside the hotel, most often reached through a door in the alley marked only by a red light
• Two restaurants on site, including Oliver Royale and Tupelo Honey – where we sat at the bar for a beer and an order of fried okra

A Little Knoxville History

Knoxville turned out to have more history packed into it than I expected for a stop we’d picked almost at random. A few things worth knowing:

• Knoxville was founded in 1791 by Revolutionary War veteran James White, who built a fort along the Tennessee River
• It served as Tennessee’s first state capital, from 1796 to 1812
• In 1982, Knoxville hosted the World’s Fair, officially the Knoxville International Energy Exposition. More than 11 million people visitored over six months
• The Sunsphere, the fair’s golden observation tower, still stands in World’s Fair Park downtown and is one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks
• Even The Oliver has its own slice of that history. The building started in 1876 as the Peter Kern Bakery, which is where the hotel’s speakeasy gets its name.

Women’s Suffrage History in Knoxville

One of my favorite random travel facts from the trip: Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, known as the “Perfect 36.” It was the deciding vote that gave American women the right to vote nationwide. I had no idea, and that fact alone made an already good stop even better.

You can actually see that history downtown. Market Square is home to the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial, a bronze statue honoring three of the state’s suffrage leaders, including Knoxville’s own Lizzie Crozier French.

A few blocks away at Market Street and Clinch Avenue, the Burn Memorial honors state representative Harry T. Burn and his mother Febb Burn, whose letter to her son is widely credited with tipping the deciding vote.

Knoxville is also home to the Suffrage Coalition, which is developing what’s planned to be one of the largest women’s history museums in the country.

What’s Next: The North Carolina Side

By the time we were flying home, we’d already started talking about going back. We’d love to explore GSMNP from the North Carolina side next time. There’s a lot we missed. And if we’d realized how close we were to Asheville on this trip, we might have tried to sneak it in too. Next time.

FAQ about Our Tennessee Flying Vacation

More From Our Trip

This was the first of a few posts I’m putting together from this trip. Look for the full Rainbow Falls hike writeup soon, plus a closer look at what made Knoxville such a standout stop.