Of course, we wanted to visit the country’s most visited national park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.    This park is a day’s drive away from 2/3 of the country’s population. In 2018, the park brought in 11.4 million people.  What makes this park so popular?

Synchronized fireflies is one reason, but that happens in May, and you have to enter a lottery drawing to see them.  

The Appalachian Trail runs right through the park.  A bunch of tall mountains are clustered here, with some peaks over 6,000.  So there’s lots of hiking.  And (see above) lots of hikers.  

Historic buildings are scattered throughout the park, old cabins, mills, barns and churches. And don’t forget the stills and tunnels in this moonshiners’ paradise.

Some people come for the wildlife.  We saw a few deer and a herd of elk, but unfortunately the ratio of cars to critters was way out of balance so we drove on.  This explains why we didn’t see any of the bear, coyotes, and bobcats heralded at the visitor center.  

And then there is Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Why not pack as many tourist traps as you can right before the entrance to the nation’s busiest park? After all, go cart tracks, a giant replica of the Titanic, Ripleys Believe It or Not, wax museums, T-shirt shops (enough to clothe all of Atlanta four times), an upside down southern mansion, and a Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride – certainly contribute to that natural draw of the area, don’t they? We had driven into the area late and in the dark after a long drive, not knowing a thing about the area. When I saw King Kong climbing a plastic skyscraper across the road from the Hatfield and McCoy Theatre, I knew I had arrived in a special place.

Ultimately though, it was the park’s fall colors that brought us, and even though we were about a week too late to catch the “peak,” the trees didn’t disappoint.  We were able to find a few hikes and scenic drives that flamed red, yellow, orange and green among the slopes of these old mountains.  To get there, we had to (make that “chose to”) drive some incredibly narrow roads that wound crazily through the hills.   Our repeating chants of “wow” were split between reacting to the brilliant fall colors and to the distance between our tires and the edge of pavement that curved with no shoulder among these steep slopes.  Appreciating the beauty intertwined with appreciating survival.  

We hiked to Chimney Tops on a 1.75 mile climb (a lot of the trails here are pretty short) that gained 1700 feet to a spot that looked north over Tennessee.  Tragically, this was a place where a couple of kids started a fire in 2016 that eventually spread with high winds to Gatlinburg, killing 14 and forcing 14,000 to evacuate.    

We had time to explore the North Carolina side of the park with a stop at the visitor center and then a drive back up to Clingman’s Dome for the sunset.  

Another day we hiked the 5-mile round trip to Abrams Falls.   A nice hike surely, but Milissa said it was the easiest hike she’s ever done.   It meandered through the trees to end at a 20-footwaterfall, the largest in the park.  Call us West Coast snobs, but this was like walking through a city park, a comparison completed by the corresponding crowds.  On the way back from the falls, I counted five sets of hikers who were playing their own music, one on a massive speaker he carried for the benefit of anyone else who didn’t want to see any wildlife or hear the stream flowing below.   We had to focus on the fact that people were out and about, enjoying the day, and taking in the fresh air and autumn display.