It all comes down to preparedness.
I was prepared for Gatlinburg. Vaguely aware that it was a street or two of a thousand tourist traps stuck together, I wasn’t surprised to see that it was just that. Located just adjacent to one of the main park entrances, the main street of back-to-back Ripley’s museums, souvenir shops, curiosity shops, fudge shops and restaurants are squished together so closely that it’s almost comical. Traffic on the main drag is slow and bumper-to-bumper. At least it’s compact.
I was not prepared for Pigeon Forge. If Gatlinburg is the gateway to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, then Pigeon Forge is the gateway to Gatlinburg. Like Gatlinburg, it’s unavoidable when entering the park from the north, and contains tourist traps galore – more than I’ve seen anywhere. Unlike Gatlinburg, it’s not walk-able, and unlike Gatlinburg, it’s seemingly never-ending.
We managed to survive Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, explored the park just a bit and then met up with Veronica and Barry. Our log cabin is located just outside Gatlinburg proper, yet it’s up in the wooded mountains requiring the navigation of some very steep hills to get there. And it’s every bit as rustic and cool as expected. My morning runs would be challenging with all these hills.
Bookended by rainy days, Tuesday, October 13, the day we would spend almost entirely exploring the park, was a beauty. I had been aware that the Great Smokey Mountains National Park is our most visited national park. But one would think that even with the beautiful fall foliage, October would still be off-season. I was therefore definitely not prepared for the crowds and traffic.
If one can disregard the traffic, the park is stunningly beautiful - as wonderful as it gets. Between the lower elevations and the highest point, Clingman’s Dome, there are green deciduous forests, then deciduous forests with the changing bright yellow, orange, gold and red colors of autumn, and finally coniferous forests. Although the day was bright and sunny, some of the trails were still covered with running water and mud, and this caused us to change plans a bit. We walked the steep paved path to Clingman’s Dome, only to find a cloud had arrived at the top just before we did. That was ok; we’d seen some great vistas from just below the summit anyway. Then we hiked some other trails leading up to the Appalachian Trail and wound up once again at the still-cloudy top. Barry and Veronica don’t do as much hiking as Debbie and I, but this day’s hiking was fine for all.
Barry then drove is to the Cades Cove area, which is in the western part of the park. The road winds along a river, so it took much longer to get there than we thought. The traffic on the main north-south park road had been bad enough. Once again though, I wasn’t prepared for the traffic at Cades Cove. It was simply awful – bumper to bumper at about 5mph for the 11-mile loop. The scenery in the loop itself was quite beautiful however. There were huge fields and historic farms and churches. We’d also hoped to see more wildlife than a couple of turkeys in the woods. Back to the traffic for a moment: to put the icing on this particular cake, we had to follow a smelly diesel RV for about 20 miles on the way back to the cabin.The next day was a rainy one, as predicted. We spent several hours at an arts and crafts exhibit at the Gatlinburg Convention center. Later we did manage to take a ride into the park on the Roaring Forks loop. That was another cool primeval type area with plenty of waterfalls.
On our last full day we drove through the park to Cherokee, the town, and center of Cherokee, the Indian Reservation. Just had lunch and then drove back. We did stop a few places, including a walk at the NC visitor center and sightseeing at Newfound Gap, the top of the ridge.
