National Parks and Recreation

Hi, everyone. It’s been a minute! James and I recently got back from an AMAZING trip through the Southwest where we hit up SIX new National Parks in 2 weeks, including all of the Utah Mighty Five, something I’ve been dreaming about since we first started this journey. So as I got home and started going through pictures (so so SO many pictures) and getting ready to do my posts about each park, I realized that I never actually posted this one about the Great Smokies. We did this trip back in April! Procrastinate much?

I’m trying to give myself a little credit because this trip was kind of chaotic with James getting covid right before we were supposed to leave, causing us to push it back a week and then condense it a little so we could still see some family. And then as soon as we got back, I had about one week of normalcy before my friend Canada and I took off on a two week long van trip through pretty much the entire eastern half of the country (and some of Canada as well) as she recovered from spinal surgery. (Which, now that I mention it, I should probably post about that trip too because it was amazing and we saw so much!)

And then I got home and dove back into work (had just a littttllleee bit of money I needed to make back). And then I guess I blinked and suddenly it was 2023. Crazy how time works like that! So I guess better late than never and I hope you can forgive me for my radio silence. I shall reward you with SEVEN national parks worth of amazingly beautiful photos I have taken over the last year. And promise to never leave you hanging like this again, but let’s be real. It will almost certainly happen again.

So without further ado…Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Look how short my hair is! Man, that feels like a lifetime ago. I had the rest of my pandemic bleach chopped off just before this trip and it was legitimately the shortest my hair has been in like two decades. And I didn’t even cry! (And bonus! You can see when James was just starting to grow his hair out. Honestly blown away by how different we look just 8 months ago.)

First thing’s first, Great Smoky Mountain National Park is HUGE. And so much of it you can only get to by hiking. So given the fact that we had to cut our trip a few days shorter because of covid, we really didn’t get to see everything we wanted to. But even more reason for us to come back again in the fall when I’m sure the colors are out of this world!

So we started the trip with a drive around Cades Cove Loop. I’d heard it was an amazing scenic drive to do in the park and honestly, it was just kind of meh. Especially considering everything else we ended up seeing in the park just driving place to place.

We DID, however, see this black bear (above) and her two little cubs. I couldn’t really get a much better picture without completely clogging up traffic, but that was cool. (But again, we saw even cooler wildlife just driving around later in the trip, not to get ahead of myself.)

I wouldn’t not recommend doing this if you have plenty of time, it was just a lot of sitting in traffic for views that just aren’t as great as they are in the rest of the park. However! If you’re really into historical cabins and old churches and stuff like that, it would definitely be worth your time!

We had wanted to do the Laurel Falls Trail on our way back into Gatlinburg, but with how much traffic there was on Cades Cove and how hungry we were getting, we decided to skip it for this time. Instead we took our time driving back along Laurel Creek and Little River and stopping at the various pull outs along the way. It was a very peaceful drive.

We made our way into Gatlinburg and had to drive up the far side of the valley to get to our AirBNB, which brought us by this beautiful overlook with Gatlinburg down in the valley and Mount LeConte looming above.

We spent the rest of the night (predictably) watching the Bruins playoff game on the deck of our AirBNB and watching the sunset over the Smokies. And turned in early to get ready for a busy day of cramming in everything else we wanted to do in the park in just one more day!

And we woke up to some smoke on the Smokies!! Kind of. Again, that’s Mount LeConte, which I really wish we had the time to climb. (we’re going back! we’re going back! we’re going back!) There’s a lodge at the top that is only accessible by hiking up to it. So there are 11 crew members on staff at any given time and they each get 8 days off a month and every time they leave and return to work, they have to hike the 5 miles and 2,500 feet up the Alum Cave Trail. Talk about a commute!

The coolest thing I read was that the record for descending Mount LeConte, jumping in their car, driving into Gatlinburg for beer, and then climbing back up the Alum Cave Trail to the Lodge carrying the six-pack in their backpack was set by a crew member named John who did it in less than TWO HOURS. That’s 10 miles of strenuous hiking, plus driving into town. Insane.

We began our day with another (and in my opinion, more enjoyable) scenic drive. The Roaring Fork Motor Trail begins and ends in downtown Gatlinburg and is a beautiful five and a half mile drive through the mountains and waterfalls. It was much less crowded than Cades Cove (though that could have been because of the time of day) and had much better turnouts. There were also a lot of trailheads on this stretch for some nice hikes.

We opted to just drive the road slowly and get out and explore when the mood struck.

Which it obviously did at this gorgeous rocky waterfall oasis.

From there we headed off to do our first real hike of the trip: the Chimney Tops Trail.

This is a 3.6 mile out and back trail that starts off with a LOT of stairs. It felt like were just going up stairs forever. But the views at the top were definitely worth it!

The picture above is taken near where the trail has been closed since 2016 due to the wildfires (you could really see a lot of the damage from this trail) about a quarter mile away from the actual chimneys.

And now I really wish I could tell you I was a better person than I am, but after seeing dozens of people go around the gate to continue on the hike, I convinced James to be my actual partner in crime, and we went around it as well. This is bad! Don’t be like us. Be stronger than a Nicole who sees a really big rock she wants to climb.

So alas, we hiked up to the chimneys. It was pretty sketchy to get all the way up to the top and be able to look in (apparently it’s actually hollow like a chimney), but I still would’ve 100% done it if I wasn’t already, you know, breaking all of the rules. I’m not about to have a ranger have to come rescue me on a trail I wasn’t even supposed to be on. So this was as far as I got, much to my chagrin. Though, if you look above me to my left in the above picture, you’ll see a black figure that was this Russian guy there with all his buddies for a bachelor party trip who made it all the way to the top (while his buddies all sat at the base of the chimneys drinking beer and telling everyone who went by that that was their crazy Russian friend). This, of course, only made my desire to want to climb up the whole thing even stronger, but I somehow resisted.

Moving on.

From there we continued on down Newfound Gap Road and made it to the state line!

Which is also where we crossed the Appalachian Trail. The trail basically follows the border between Tennessee and North Carolina the entire way through the national park. Just past the state line is the turnoff for Clingmans Dome Road which brings you to the tallest point in Tennessee and the tallest point on the entire Appalachian Trail!

Now, of course my goal is to one day hike to this tallest point (all the highest points, really), but for the sake of time we had to take the easy way out and drive on up.

It was still a little bit of a hike from the parking lot up to the 6,643 foot peak, so I guess not totally nothing.

And the views were spectacular! We could not have asked for a more beautiful day.

There were signs all around the platform at the top telling you what mountains you were looking at. I could’ve stayed up there for hours. And I can’t imagine how beautiful it must be in autumn.

It was then time to head on to the next leg of our journey: the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Mitchell and Asheville, North Carolina.

But not before we were treated to some more wildlife viewing right near the visitor center!

The park lets out at the beginning (or ending, depending how you look at it) of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now, I don’t know how much you know about the Blue Ridge Parkway, but as someone who has been obsessed with this roadway since long before I actually got to drive on it, let me tell you!

The Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 mile road, operated by the National Park Service, that runs through the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina. It is the base point for dozens of trailheads, hundreds of scenic turnouts, and (most importantly) not a single stop sign or traffic light. It curves its way through the mountains and over bridges and under tunnels, never actually intersecting with another road. Amazing! I’ve been dreaming of driving the parkway from start to finish for a very long time, but sadly that was not going to be the reality for this trip. But I was going to do whatever pieces of it I could!

Trutfully, we could’ve taken the BRP from Great Smoky Mountain NP all the way to Asheville (where our next AirBNB was), but it would have taken hours! So we just did the first little section until we got to the interstate and cheated the rest of the way into the city. From there, though, we jumped back on the BRP to do a little sunset drive up to the summit of Mount Mitchell, the tallest mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains and in all of North Carolina. (Again, we WILL hike this the non-cheating way sometime soon!)

And what an incredible drive it was! The above picture was taken at a regular old pull-off on the side of the road. Not even fair. Some of the turns and drop offs were quite sketchy, but I LIVE for stuff like this so I was having the time of my life, while James white knuckled the side of the door any time I got a little to cavalier about looking around at my surroundings instead of at the road directly in front of me. He’s fine.

Finally, we made it to the summit of Mount Mitchell and basically had the entire place to ourselves.

And we enjoyed the immaculate sunset!

We began our descent back down the mountain to get some beer and food in Asheville before calling it a night, and were ONCE AGAIN treated to some wildlife magic on the side of the road. As I rounded a sharp curve in the road, I noticed a Subaru was fully stopped in the middle of the road and after getting briefly annoyed, I realized why!

Well, hello! We then quickly noticed she was a mama bear with her two cubs, at which point James started freaking out and rolling up his window and telling me to drive while I mercilessly laughed at him and told him he was safe inside the car.

And then no joke, about a mile later, we came across this sign.

At least they know! If not a bit too late for the warning.

And that about wraps up our trip to the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains. We spent the next day in Asheville, drinking some delicious beer, eating amazing BBQ, and hanging out with Benny, the best AirBNB dog ever!

And then we headed over to Raleigh to finally see some family for a delayed Easter celebration!

I absolutely loved this National Park, but more importantly, this entire little corner of the country. I HIGHLY recommend building in some extra time in your itinerary to do as much of the Blue Ridge Parkway as you possibly can, and definitely spend at least one night in Asheville. You won’t regret it!

James and I can’t wait to come back when we can peep some fall foliage and do more actual hiking instead of just driving to the top of them. But until next time!