The Great Smoky Mt. Nat’l Park is an interesting place. For one thing, it has over 800 miles of hiking trails, enough for even the heartiest wanderer. For almost 70 miles the famous Appalachian Trail winds along the loftiest peaks and scenic gaps through the center of the park, tracing with it the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. On warm, sunny weekends the park is swarming with hikers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another reason the park is so popular is because there is no charge to get in. Back when the park was created, a major highway cut through the center of the park, and it was decided that there would never be an admission charged to go through. That’s one of the reasons so many people flock here during the summer. It seemed such a let down to have an Access Pass and not be able to flash it for special treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the first day I was here I did my most ambitious, day hike in quite a while. Starting out early in the morning, I walked from Cades Cove campground along Anthony Creek, ascended almost 2000 feet to Russell Field on the AT, and then finished by closing the loop along the summit and back down. It was thirteen and a half miles, not particularly monumental, but with the climb still a good workout. The next day, I took it easy and limited my walk to a five miles hike to Alum Cave.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yesterday was my time of sightseeing. The weather has been beautiful. It is unusual to have such clear, sunny, cloudless skies in the Smokies, and every view \u00a0from the tops of the mountains was just breathtaking. I joined hundreds of visitors at the Observation Deck on top of Clingmans Dome – the highest point in the Smokies – to views of almost 100 miles. Even the lookouts along the highway afforded spectacular views, and it was hard to even find a place to park. Newfound Gap, where Roosevelt made a famous dedication speech, was equally crowded.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Later that day I drove to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. The road through town was like a parking lot, bumper to bumper traffic amidst swirling pedestrians, waddling from store to attraction to slurpy food booths. There are over 100 motels in Garlinburg alone. The Great Smoky Mt. Nat’l Park is popular, but Gatlinburg is even more popular, proving that when people pack up the kids and go on vacation to a National Park, what they really want is to be able to browse through gift shops, play some miniature golf, and ride a zip line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Karen and I have made tentative plans to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail from 5\/20 to 5\/24. We will be hiking somewhere in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry, WV, so if anyone wants to join us for our backpacking adventure, let me know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Great Smoky Mt. Nat’l Park is an interesting place. For one thing, it has over 800 miles of hiking trails, enough for even the heartiest wanderer. For almost 70 miles the famous Appalachian Trail winds along the loftiest peaks and scenic gaps through the center of the park, tracing with it the border of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelafferty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}