Trip Location: Tennessee
Number of Days: 3 days/3 nights
Stops: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Being that we live on the east coast, it’s not always easy for us to explore national parks for a weekend, since most parks are at least a 5 hour flight away and then some decent driving time on top of that. With our goal of seeing every national park in the US and our limited PTO, Great Smoky Mountains National Park was the perfect weekend getaway for us.
Logistics
Great Smoky Mountains National Park is by far the most visited of all the US national parks with over 10 million visitors per year. It’s free, easy to access, absolutely beautiful, and right outside the mountain resort town of Gatlinburg. This is seriously the perfect place to go with large groups, families, or even for a romantic getaway. There’s something here for everyone to do!
We flew into Knoxville and the plan was to rent a car. However, the car we requested was not available so they offered us a free upgrade to a truck and Chris quickly jumped on that opportunity. When I first heard truck, I thought SUV so I was thinking this is fine. But no, this was a huge Dodge pick-up truck. We didn’t realize at the time that this massive truck was probably not the best choice when driving around the narrow, windy roads of a national park. Lesson learned.
We decided to rent an airbnb in the mountains outside of the park in Pigeon Forge. The house was cute and rustic with a hot tub overlooking the mountains, and just the perfect place for us to have a romantic and adventurous getaway.
Bear Country
So, let me just start by saying, this is Bear Country! Biologists estimate that there are about 1,500 bears living in the Smoky Mountains, which is approximately 2 bears per square mile. And…I’m kind of terrified of bears. I also happen to see them almost anytime I travel somewhere that bears inhabit. Well this trip was no different. We saw multiple bears every day we were here, mostly just off on the side of the road. We would know that we were coming up on bears because there would be a bunch of cars stopped along the road. Many people travel to places like the Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah in search of bears and never get to see them. We’ve even spoken to locals in these areas who say they rarely ever see bears. Well, it’s too bad I couldn’t give them some of my luck.
Day 1 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Over the next two days we spent time exploring the park. We started with the Cades Cove Loop, an 11 mile one-way loop road through a valley surrounded by mountains. This is the place to go to spot wildlife in the Smoky Mountains. However, other than deer (which we see in our yard daily), we actually didn’t spot any wildlife here. But, we would soon learn that there would be plenty of other opportunities to spot wildlife on this trip!
On the way out of Cades Cove, we stopped at The Sinks, which is basically a large hole in the river bed at the base of a cascade/waterfall. The sun had finally come out and we were really just looking for somewhere to kick our feet back and enjoy the nice weather for a change. Chris joined some others in jumping off a small, 15-20 foot cliff!
One of our first hikes of the weekend was the Laurel Falls Trail. This was an easy 2.3 mile hike to a beautiful 80-foot waterfall. This was also our first bear encounter of the trip. A baby cub was not even 20 yards off the trail. The momma bear was nowhere to be seen, but that certainly doesn’t mean she wasn’t around somewhere. If there weren’t other people on the trail with us, I would’ve definitely turned around and went back to the car. I’m glad we kept going, because we were rewarded with this beautiful waterfall.
If you want to read more about the Laurel Falls trail, be sure to check out DQ Family Travel‘s post about hiking the Great Smoky Mountains.
Later in the day, we decided to drive the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, a 5.5 mile one way loop road. This road was a bit narrow for our massive truck, but we managed! This drive offered some nice viewpoints and waterfalls. There were some hikes in this area that we were interested in doing, but we we didn’t have much daylight left, so we stuck to the drive.
Day 2 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park
The next day we got a really early start to hike the 11 mile round trip Alum Cave Trail to Mt. LeConte. At the trailhead, we came across this car that must have been parked in the lot from the night before. The owners were probably up camping at Mt. LeConte. A bear had broken into the trunk of this car in search of food. Their entire back windshield was shattered. Just one more reminder (as if I needed any more) that we were, in fact, in bear country. Don’t leave food in your car!
Luckily, the hike to the summit of Mt. LeConte was really interesting and unique, offering a lot of great photo ops because after hiking the 5.5 miles with an elevation gain of 2,763 feet, we finally got to the top and couldn’t see a thing due to all the fog and clouds. Being that we didn’t spend much time at the top, we actually finished the hike in a decent amount of time, which allowed us to explore more of the park.
After the hike, we made our way towards Clingmans Dome, we tried some other hikes but quickly got caught in rain and decided it wasn’t worth being wet, cold, and uncomfortable. In case you haven’t noticed by now, the weather was really unpredictable for most of the weekend, which is not uncommon for spring time in the Smokies. We finally got to Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the Smoky Mountains (and Tennessee) at 6,643 feet, and again, clouds and fog completely obstructed our view.
So instead, we hiked out to Andrews Bald, a relatively easy 3.6 mile (roundtrip) hike. After 1.8 miles, you reach this wide open grassy area. The views from here were so incredibly beautiful and my favorite of this entire trip (granted many of our views were obstructed). It is so crazy how just 2 miles back from here, you could barely see 5 yards in front of you. Don’t let bad weather deter you from exploring. In any mountainous area, which means many national parks, the weather is unpredictable and changes quickly. If you don’t like it, just wait a few minutes or drive a few miles.
Sunset was quickly approaching so we hurried back to our car and stopped at an overlook to catch this epic view, which was the perfect ending to our weekend getaway!
Planning a trip to the Smokies? Pin it for later!
