In 2010, Steve and I visited the Great Smoky Mountains area together for the first time. We had both previously been married and had four children between us. We had been looking for an affordable vacation where we wouldn't waste all of our vacation budget paying for flights. Little did we know that one decision would set a future path for our lives that we never anticipated!
Flash forward two years. We are back in the area again, this time with 22 of our closest family and friends, getting married in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Two weeks after our wedding, we were back yet again, looking for a cabin to purchase! We had just gone from two homes to one and decided we wanted to invest the equity from the home sale into a cabin that our family could enjoy and that we could offer as a vacation rental when we weren't using it.
We had been on the guest side of vacation rentals many times, especially me. After I had my third child, staying in hotels just wasn't feasible or comfortable any longer, so I had stayed in quite a few rentals before we purchased one of our own. We went into this with the thought process that we wanted to offer our guests the very best experience we possibly could. Building on our own experiences as vacation rental guests was a great start.
It was September 2012 when we purchased our first cabin. Our guests really seemed to enjoy the extra efforts we put forth to make their vacation enjoyable. We enjoyed, more than we even anticipated, the fact that families were making memories that would last forever in our cabin. Today, we own three cabins of our own and manage two more for our family and friends. We've figured out that Tennessee is our happy place. We'll be moving there as soon as we can, once Steve qualifies for retirement from his position at Ford Motor Company.
We hope that you love your stay in our cabin!
~~Jody Belkowski