Located on the quiet side of Gatlingburg, close to the Art Trail, The Sleepy Bear Motel is the perfect overnight (or even longer) place to stop if you are visiting The Smokey Mountains national park. The rooms are spotlessly clean with comfortable beds and a small but adequate bathroom. Rooms have a balcony overlooking a creek where you can sit and watch the ducks! There is a micro-wave in the rooms as well as coffee-making facilities if you should want to eat in your room but there is an excellent steak-house, The Alamo, a short walk up the road and a very good Pancake House, literally across the road, for breakfast, (there is also a pizza restaurant nearby which we didn't try) and, the trolley runs right by the door if you should want to leave the car and go into Gatlingburgh itself. Patti, the owner?/manager is friendly and welcoming, ready to offer help and assistance if required. She also brews good, complimentary coffee in the mornings. All-in-all it was an excellent place to spend a relaxing night.

Like the other poster, the Sleepy Bear is a family tradition for us. I have stayed there since I was a child, and I took my wife there for our honeymoon back in 1993. We have stayed there ever since, and in the SAME ROOM each visit. It is our "home away from home" when we are in Gatlinburg. It is a simple, but clean motel, located just far enough from town to be peaceful and quiet, yet close enough to be convenient to everything. We love the motel, and don't stay anywhere else. I would feel funny taking my family to another motel. We love the back deck with the stream, and the ducks love to be fed also. We recommend this motel to anyone who is going to Gatlinburg.

We love the Sleepy Bear Motel in Gatlinburg, TN. It has recently been remodeled and always is clean. We love spending a little extra and sitting on the back patio over the creek. The ducks are so entertaining to watch and it's so very serene back there. We've stayed there for over 10 years and always love to come back.

We usually stay at the Clarion when we come to Gatlinburg, but we were attending the Gatlinburg Highland Games (as a side note, these are some of the most scenic games we go to, as nice as the Grandfather Mountain Games to me, for any of my kilted brethren who may read this) and wanted a place close to them, and the Sleepy Bear was the closest. What a find! It is an older 2 story external corridor (you've seen the same motel all across the country if you have done any traveling at all) and had VERY competitive rates. I was skeptical at first, but the desk staff and owner were very friendly and helpful, pointing out the best restaurants and routes around town and even their favorite trails to hike in the National Park, some of which I had never been on. The desk clerk , Andy,helped me with my kilt, he's a fellow Scot and a member of the same Clan I am (MacLean of Duart), and lent me one of his spare kilt pins, I had left mine at home, Great people! The rooms were your standard motel room, 2 queen beds, tv fridge and the like, and were clean as a pin, as cleanliness is something I will not compromise on in where I stay. THey had a pool but it was not open (it was barely in the 60's one day and 80 the next). We had one of their creekside rooms, which had a balcony overlooking the creek, and that is where I spent all my down time, There were ducks who had just had ducklings and I could see trout and small mouth in the creek. Above all the place was quiet. WHen you stay in downtown Gatlinburg, there is always someone driving or people walking and talking by your room, and that's fine and really doesn't bother you when you are there. But here it is quiet, less traffic, no one walking by, and you are not bothered with excessive street lights, or traffic light, signage light, etc., that often keeps people up. We had access to all the food, shopping and activities a downtown, but were out of the grind at night and only a mile away. It was a good week!Now we have two favorite places to stay in Gatlinburg!!!