Polly & I went through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on our honeymoon when I was being transferred from MCRD, San Diego, CA to Camp LeJeune, NC during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.  We've returned there many times since then.

The only problem with this national park is it probably receives more tourists than any of the other national parks due to it's proximity to such a large portion of the population of our country along the east coast.

If you've never been there and if you enjoy the beauties of nature more than the artificial trappings of tourist towns then you will really enjoy the GSMNP especially Cades Cove.  The natural beauty of the park is just astonishing.  It has clear, cold mountain streams, water falls, hiking trails, deer, black bear, turkey, otters, one lane, one way dirt roads that see very little traffic.  Cades Cove will make you wish you could move into it, stop the tourists, and just enjoy the solitude, the peacefulness of it's meadows, it's mountain sides, it's streams, it's rainbows after a shower, the beauty of the Mountain Laurel, the Trillium, the Rhododenfron in the Spring, the reds, the golds, the yellows of the trees in the fall, and the snow in the evergreens after an early winter snow.

If you into hiking pick up one of the books/maps that show the hiking trails, the distances, the elevation gain, the hardship factor, etc.  If you are not into hiking you can still enjoy the back country on several roads that are dirt, one lane and one way, and little traveled by the vast majority of tourists that for some reason never leave the paved roadways.  These roads are completely safe and useable by cars and most are of about a one hour duration depending on how long you stop to smell the roses or to listen to the rippling water of a stream.

Some of these roads are Rich Mountain Road and Parson's Branch Road, both accessed from the Cades Cove Loop Road.  Off the Blue Ridge Parkway you can travel the Balsam Mountain Road, a narrow, winding one lane, one way dirt road.  Where the one way becomes two way again is a mountain stream that is idyllic for a picnic spot.  You can travel northward from Gatlinburg to Cosby and take the road into the Cataloochie Valley where you can climb a steep hill to an old cemetery, just imagine what it was like to carry the remains up this trail.  In this valley you can observe an elk herd in the evening about 5 p.m.

In Gatlinburg you can enter the "motor road", can't think of the name right now, but it too is one way but paved that takes you through hardwood bottoms and somewhat higher elevations that will make you think of the hardship of travel in earlier days before the paved road, before the internal combustion engine.

And, at the east entrance to the park, Cherokee, NC you have to take in the visitor's center and it's restored pioneer farmstead along the Oconuluftee River.  Also, in Cherokee you can attend the nightly outdoor drama, "Unto These Hills", that tells of the Cherokee Removal from these mountains that resulted in the thousands of deaths of Cherokee on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma Territory.

And if you are really into hiking you can hike 72 miles of the Appalachian Trail's 2,200 miles that pass through the park.

Nuff sed for now, Bill Hyams, jump in and tell about some of your favorite parks.

The Fall photo below is of the Rich Mountain Road which is accessed via Cade's Cove Loop Road.   It comes out in Townsend, TN.  This is a one way road so to complete the Cades Cove Loop Road or to access the Parson's Branch Road you must go back into the park at Townsend and go back down to Cade's Cove.  If you enjoy this type scenery and natural beauty, it is worth the driving that it takes to accomplish.  There is a beautiful photo you may have seen looking down from on high into a valley with a white church building nestled among trees in the bottom.  That photo was taken from this Rich Mountain Road.

It's Wednesday, 13 October 2010 and Polly and I are once again in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park area, actually in a campground in Townsend, TN.  We've gone into Cades Cove twice since arriving yesterday and drove Rich Mountain Road again today since the Parson's Branch Road is closed due to wash outs.  We're probably  days or a week or so away from the best color but it is still beautiful here, just 14 days short of being 48 years since we came through here on our honeymoon.  We plan to hike the 11 mile Cades Cove Loop Road on Friday.

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Well, I did hike the 11 mile Loop Road.  Polly decided there were too many hills for her so she became my safety net and came along, in the truck, after a couple of hours to see if I needed a ride.  I didn't and it really wasn't a bad hike at all, I made the 11 miles in four hours.  Only saw one bear and he was quite a distance away down in a meadow in the bottom of the cove.