• I've visited the Smoky Mountains with my husband every winter for the past 15 years.
• With large-scale holiday events and snow-capped mountains, this area is perfect for a getaway.
• There's so much to do, including visiting museums, going to Dollywood, and dining out.

About 15 years ago, I moved to Nashville and was excited to learn that it was located just a short drive away from Tennessee's Smoky Mountains.

Since then, it's been a regular trip for my husband and me. Our favorite time to visit is during the winter, and we make a point of doing so every year.

The mountain area is perfect for a couples' getaway (or family one) with its many activities, eats, and scenic views.

I love the range of hotel options in the area

When we visit the Smoky Mountains, we typically stay in Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg, the two main tourist towns in the area.

Both have a variety of hotels for a range of budgets.

My favorite in winter is Dollywood's HeartSong Lodge & Resort. Its luxe, rustic feel sets the perfect tone for the season, and I love its on-site dining options.

I also love the Margaritaville Island Hotel, which has a year-round tropical vacation feel. Its location is ideal as it has several restaurants and tourist attractions steps away.

The food scene is pretty awesome

I've dined at many restaurants in the area, and my favorite is definitely Smoky Mountain Brewery.

The local spot has its own craft beers on tap and tasty bar classics, like pretzels with housemade beer cheese. There's often live music, which makes it the perfect place to relax after a busy day.

I also love that Pigeon Forge has several dinner shows to choose from.

One of my favorites is the Dolly Parton Stampede, which combines a thrilling show with horses and aerial performances with a multicourse meal.

Breakfast is also a huge deal in the Smoky Mountains. The area has tons of impressive breakfast spots, and my favorite is Frizzle Chicken Farmhouse Cafe.

The food is excellent, and the restaurant is highly themed with dozens of animatronic chickens. It's unlike any place I've ever been to.

There's also so much to do in the area

I love Dollywood year-round, but the theme park is extra special during the winter because of its Smoky Mountain Christmas celebration.

This time of year, Dollywood is adorned with gorgeous decorations and tons of lights. Plus, the park has special seasonal shows and incredible winter-inspired menus.

As a seasoned theme-park reporter, Dollywood's holiday celebration is well worth the visit alone — it's my favorite theme-park event.

While in the area, I'll also typically stop at the Titanic Museum. I'm continually impressed with how it honors the passengers.

The exhibits feel top-notch with real artifacts, and my favorite is the tribute to the ship's onboard musicians.

I particularly enjoy the interactive nature of the museum experience. At check-in, visitors are assigned a passenger, and you learn about them and follow their journey throughout the exhibit to ultimately learn their fate.

There's no shortage of thrill activities in the area, either. Although I don't ski, I'm a big fan of indoor snow tubing at Pigeon Forge Snow.

The indoor snow park is a great spot for anyone who wants to have wintery fun without being outdoors.

Plus, there are great places to shop and walk around

I always visit The Island, a large dining and entertainment district that reminds me of Downtown Disney at Disneyland.

Of the many shops and restaurants, one of my favorites is Ole Smoky Moonshine, which offers tours and tastings. The area also has rides, including an observation wheel and SkyFly: Soar America, an attraction similar to Disney's Soarin'.

When we visit the Smoky Mountains, we also stop in The Christmas Place, which is considered to be the largest Christmas store in the South.

The massive shop has thousands of ornaments, nutcrackers, and other decor.

Visiting the Smoky Mountains has become my favorite winter tradition

Of course, I must mention how all of these experiences are set against the stunning backdrop of the Smoky Mountains.

The mountains are beautiful all year but particularly pretty in the winter when the tops are capped with snow. Exploring the area in December feels magical, like being inside a real-life Hallmark movie.

I love our annual tradition of visiting East Tennessee. With such a range of activities, each trip offers something new to try.

• Rents are dropping in Southern and Sun Belt cities after a surge in new apartment construction.
• Meanwhile rents are still going up in Midwestern and Northeastern cities.
• Rents are still quite elevated over pre-pandemic levels in most places, hurting affordability.

Communities across the country have struggled with soaring rents over the last few years. But recently, that story has begun to change.

While rents are continuing to rise, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, they're falling in markets across the South and Sun Belt. One likely reason? A ton of new apartments.

The US is on track to build a record number of new multifamily units this year — about 500,000, thanks in large part to Southern and Sunbelt metros like Dallas, Phoenix, Raleigh, Charlotte, Nashville, and Austin. Two-thirds of the 1.8 million apartments built over the last five years were located in the Sun Belt, the real estate analytics firm CoStar recently reported.

The building boom was made possible in part by less restrictive land-use laws and other regulations governing construction, experts say.

The new supply of apartments is expected to keep rents relatively flat in the Southeast and Southwest next year, even as the rate of new multifamily construction is expected to slow significantly, said Jay Lybik, director of multifamily analytics at CoStar.

Rents fell in 15 of 21 Southern markets — falling across the region by 1.4% — over the last year, Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies reported this fall. Meanwhile, rents in Midwestern markets have increased by 2.7% and by 2.4% in the Northeast.

But renters in booming Sun Belt and Southern cities still face affordability issues. Rents remain far higher in most places than they were pre-pandemic. Nationwide, the average rent of main residences in cities was up about 27% between October 2019 and October 2024; in the South comparable rents grew 33% over that period.

One factor impacting affordability is that because the cost of land, building materials, and labor are elevated, developers are mostly building luxury apartments rather than mid-priced or affordable units, Lybik said.

"They're building at the top end of the price point, and so you're not getting the full impact of housing at different price levels throughout the entire market," Lybik said. Markets that are seeing more affordable apartments being built "tend to be very, very far out geographically from an urban core."

Multifamily rental housing also disproportionately caters to small households of one or two people. Markets with an abundance of studio and one-bedroom apartments may still suffer from a shortage of other types of housing, like larger for-sale homes suitable for families, Lybik said.

At the same time, rent is expected to continue climbing in the Northeast and Midwest, Lybik said. Cities from Cleveland to Boston aren't building enough new multifamily housing to keep up with a resurgence in demand in walkable, high-density neighborhoods in urban cores. Over the last year, average rent rose the most among submarkets tracked by CoStar in South Cleveland and the East Village in Manhattan.

"Cleveland has not seen very much new construction coming online, and Cleveland has been very aggressive in trying to really make their downtown and the areas adjacent to their downtown very highly amenitized, very livable, and they've definitely become very popular," Lybik said.