Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Great Smoky Mountain are a mountain rising along the Tennessee-North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a sub range of the Appalachian Mountains.

The park was established in 1934, and, with over 9 million visits per year, it is the most-visited national park in the United States.  The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is within a day's drive of a third of the population of the U.S. making them very accessible for weekend trips and full-length holidays.

The name "Smoky" comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. This fog, which is most common in the morning and after rainfall, is the result of warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico cooling rapidly in the higher elevations of Southern Appalachia.

My brother Greg and his wife Kate visited the park this past spring.  They told us to head to the visitor's center first and pick up a map.  I asked a park ranger for ideas of places to visit that would be accessible and enjoyable for our young crew.  We only had the afternoon to explore.  He recommended a 2.2 mile hike to Laurel Falls.  He also said many people visit Clingman's Dome.  When I heard it was in North Carolina (I'd never been to that state before) and the Appalachian trail ran through, I knew we had to go.  The major things I wanted to do/see in the park were: The Appalachian Trail, visit North Carolina and hike a few miles since Trey needed three three-mile hikes to earn his Webelos badge.

In southern Appalachian vernacular, a gap is a low point in a mountain ridge. New Englanders call such places “notches” while westerners refer to them as mountain “passes.” At an elevation of 5,046 feet, Newfound Gap is the lowest drivable pass through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Rockefeller Memorial honors a $5 million donation from the Rockefeller Foundation to help complete land acquisitions to bring about the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

It also is the site from where former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally dedicated the park on September 2, 1940.

The Appalachian Trail crosses over Newfound Gap Road and straddles the state line between North Carolina and Tennessee for most of its length through the park.

View while driving on Clingman's Dome Road

After our hike to Clingman's Dome we drove through the park towards Gatlinburg.  The mist remained high above in the mountain tops where we came from, but below the storms had passed it was beautiful and bright.