Nov 2, 2021  Fabulous Fall Colors

We left Mammoth Cave on October 21and drove south and east to visit some of our favorite Tennessee state parks. (We lived in Tennessee from 1980 - 1985). We did not remember how hilly that part of Tennessee is and we did not anticipate the beautiful fall colors thinking they would be done or past their prime while we are here.

Having lived in Oregon for almost 28 years we don’t see a lot of fall colors as we have mostly conifers so this was a nice surprise and we commented on the colors between ourselves all the time..

The first park we visited was Edgar Evins State Park on Center Hill Lake..The campground is in such a hilly area that all the campsites are built on platforms on the hillside.

Our site overlooked the lake - pretty neat! The next park we went to was Cumberland Mt State Park. It was our first time here and it was very nice with a small lake and lots of hikes. The Civilian Conservation Corp played a big part in developing Cumberland Mt SP and they have a nice museum honoring them and a lot of their work is still evident including a very beautiful bridge.

Then we spent 3 nights at Fall Creek Falls State Park. This used to be one of our favorite state parks to visit, but we haven’t been there for about 20 years and hardly recognized the park but we did recognize the waterfalls and took several hikes.

The hike to the bottom of Fall Creek Falls was very steep and not very well maintained. They also had some very neat suspension  bridges. The colors were very nice here.

Our next stop was Great Smoky Mt National Park. We used to spend a lot of time visiting here when we lived in the East. The park is very beautiful and the fall colors

were spectacular! However, it is the most visited national park in the country and everyone was here to see the colors so the traffic was  heavy and we could hardly find parking at the trailheads of the most popular hikes. We ended up hiking to Laurel Falls, one of my favorite hikes from my childhood, and we went on the Cades Cove Scenic Loop and the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. We took less well known trails like the Jakes Creek Trail, the Little River Trail and the Kephardt Prong Trail, all less crowded and very beautiful with fall colors. 

We camped 6 nights at Elkmont Campground, about 7 miles outside of Gatlinburg, and 2 nights at Smokemont Campground outside of Cherokee. We visited the Elkmont Historic Area which has restored cottages from the early 1900’s. That was very interesting to see. From Smokemont, we drove up to Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the park,

and then waited 35 minutes for a parking space. Then we walked 1/2 mile up to the observation tower with what seemed like hundreds of other people. The view was spectacular and the walk down was a lot easier! We took a 1/4 mile fir nature trail on the way down learning about the trees in the Smokies - most are deciduous trees, but high up there are more conifers and it reminded us of home.

One special unexpected treat was seeing a very large  herd of reintroduced native elk at the Oconoluftee visitor center at sunset!

Another treat was an excursion on the Great Smoky Mt Railroad from Bryson City, NC to Dillsboro, NC along the Tuckaseegee River.

It was a very nice excursion and we met a very nice cat while eating our lunch. Getting there and back was quite an adventure as it turned out there were severe wind warnings, 40 mph sustained and 70 mph gusts in the mountains that day and RT.441, across the park was closed, so it took us twice as long to get there as we anticipated, but we made it on time!

Now we are traveling on the Central North Carolina so stay tuned for more…