Summer in the Great Smoky Mountains: A Long Weekend Getaway
Tufts of clouds and the blue hazy air; the Great Smoky Mountains really live up to their name.
UPDATED: 2/5/2023
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To celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary in 2012, we booked a long weekend at a cabin in the mountains near Gatlinburg, TN, with the primary purpose of exploring the Great Smoky Mountains which neither of us had visited before.
At the time, we had 3 dogs (now 4) and found a rental house that was willing to let us bring our dogs due to our assurances that they would be crated when we were away. Our dogs are crate trained, which we have found to work very well for us. Since we both work at home, they don’t spend much time in them - really just at night or if we’re away from the house. Hauling 3 dogs, 3 dog crates, our luggage, and ourselves in our small car was quite an accomplishment and incidentally was the last time we traveled with our dogs! (For tips on how to plan for pet car while you are away from home traveling, check out our post here.)
The drive from our home to the rental house near Gatlinburg was over 4 hours, and it was a long, boring drive mostly on Interstate 81 that felt longer than 4 hours!
Dead Hemlock trees dot the hillsides, victims of the invasive woolly adelgid.
A beautiful view from the tops of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Both evergreens and deciduous trees can be found along the slopes of the Great Smoky Mountains.
The cabin we rented overlooked vast, wooded terrain with views that were particularly pretty in the dewy mornings and that would be phenomenal during peak fall leaf colors! It had a nice porch that we could sit out on and enjoy the vistas. This is black bear country, so all trash has to be in bear-proof containers. I’ve spent enough time in areas bears frequent to know not to be particularly afraid but to maintain wariness. Mostly, they’re just looking for food. But having my dogs made me a little edgier. Taking them outside at night or even on a short walk down the street was enough to get me freaked out that we’d run into a bear. On the other hand, the house we were staying in had lots of bear paraphernalia, which was much more my speed and made for some cute photos of our dogs posed with them.
When we travel and rent a house, we tend to make the most of the kitchen and do most of our own cooking. Having the dogs with us and so being home with them meant we really didn’t eat out on this trip. It was also convenient to pack picnic lunches for our excursions during the day. (This is starting to sound like a potential Yogi bear plot…hmm…)
While we visited the area for the outdoors, many people visit Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge to enjoy what I can best describe as a Southeastern Las Vegas feel with a Ripley’s, Dollywood, and other activities. That isn’t a scene we enjoy and a drive through those two towns was plenty for us and was a fairly congested route that we had to take to the house we were renting. To each their own, no judgment of those who enjoy those activities!
A glimpse at the bedrock, which provides the backbone for the Great Smoky Mountains. A few natural springs also.
About 4 years after our visit, a fire set by two teenagers lead to substantial damage in the area, killed 14 people, and destroyed many buildings. Having visited and had a sense of the small, winding roads up densely forested mountainsides with limited major roads in or out, it definitely is not somewhere you’d want to be caught in those circumstances.
As a side note, the Appalachian culture of Tennessee is very similar to that of our home state of Virginia. If you are interested in reading and learning more about that history through both fiction and non-fiction, check out our post with book recommendations here.
In our three days in the Smoky Mountain area, we were able to enjoy a number of local sites and activities:
- Hike to Clingmans Dome - Clingmans Dome is a popular stop for tourists, so I recommend getting there early in the morning before the parking lot and area become too jam-packed. The trail from the parking lot up to the dome is only 0.5 miles each way (1 mile round-trip) but is perhaps the steepest 1/2 mile I’ve ever walked. It was an exhausting up-hill climb even though I was a decently active runner at the time. Do not attempt this if you’re not in good shape or have health concerns. There’s no harm in stopping along the way to catch your breath - when clear, the views are wonderful to take in and to take pictures of.
The observation tower at Clingmans Dome.
I generally don’t like the defacing of property, but this photo looks pretty cool.
- Clingmans Dome Observation Tower - The highest peak in the park and indeed within the entire state of Tennessee, at 6,643 feet, the ‘tower’ is an oddly curved ramp that you can follow to a lookout. Even though it was July, it was windy and cool so dress for colder weather. While the views were fantastic, one disappointment were all the dying trees, which were being killed off by the balsam woolly adelgid. Sadly, we have come upon many spots contending with invasive insects, including Banff (in Canada) and in our home state's Appalachian Mountains (read about that in our other post here).
- Fly fishing - We booked a half day (4-hour) guide through Smoky Mountain Angler to show us the ropes of fly fishing and had a wonderful time, waders and all! The common catch is trout with the native species being the Brook Trout but with Rainbow and Brown Trout introduced to the area.
The bleak aftermath of the woolly adelgid infestation.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park - There are a number of different activities within the park, and you can view the park map here. The park is quite expansive and spans both the state of Tennessee as well as North Carolina.
Mingus Mill - A still-functioning cornmeal mill along Mingus Creek, nearby Cherokee, NC. We toured the mill and walked a small portion of the Mingus Mill Creek trail, which you can ultimately follow all the way to Clingmans Dome or all the way to the ocean on the 1,150 mile long Mountain-to-Sea trail, once that trail is completed. So far, some phases are complete. Mingus Mill is about an hour one way from Gatlinburg and takes small roads through the national park.
Cades Cove - This was the highlight of the trip and deserves its own blog, so check that out (coming soon).
Mingus Mill is still used to grind cornmeal…. at least for tourists.
A young girl sits beside the water sluice entering Mingus Mill from the nearby stream.
A man-made stream (aka millrace) pulls the needed water from the natural steam nearby.
Like our home state of Virginia, Tennessee can be quite hot, humid, and sticky in the summer. Given that most of the time we spent there was up in the mountains, we had cooler temperatures that were palatable (only the time at Cades Cove was quite hot) but probably the best time to visit is in the fall for the turning leaves and cooler temps. But, even so, the mountain temperatures were a welcome reprieve from the summer heat.
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Check out our other posts about Tennessee:
The Unknown Beckons
If you are like us you always want to see what’s on the other side of the mountain.