Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Newfound Gap

The city of Gatlinburg sits on the border of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and it is a culture shock to go from the deep forests of the park into the tourist trap excess of the city. Gatlinburg is crowded with an assortment of tacky souvenir shops, chain restaurants, Ripley's Believe It Or Nots, Old Timey Photo places and hillbilly mini-golf courses. But Gatlinburg does have a bit more charm to it than the nearby city of Pigeon Forge, which bizarrely has a Titanic and King Kong in it.

Gatlinburg looks best from the overlooks on the mountains that ring the city. At least you can't see the long line of traffic slowly making its way through the city from here.



I met back up with the family and we turned around and headed back into the park. We made the obligatory stop at the National Park sign at the entrance to take pictures. Another family was nice enough to take our picture for us, and they laughed while Elliott (our four year old) yelled out "I need to go potty!" as they were taking the picture. Our next stop was the Sugarlands Visitor Center, which was completely packed with people. We planned this trip months ago, long before the current president and Elon Musk decided to take a "chainsaw" to the federal government and then lay off a bunch of National Park rangers. Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited National Park in the country, with over 12 million visitors last year. Seeing the crowds there, on a weekday morning, was a great reminder of how important our National Park staff is. And why they need more staffing and funding, not less.

From there we headed out on the drive to Newfound Gap. We stopped at this overlook, where the morning fog was starting to be burned off by the sun. The mountains look a little barren, thanks to the damage from a large forest fire in 2016.



And then we made it to Newfound Gap, a mountain pass that sits right on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. It's also a spot where you can walk along the Appalachian Trail for a bit, if you'd like (only about 1900 miles to Maine). We even bumped into a guy who was in the process of thru-hiking the trail, and was heading back to Georgia (he posts on Youtube and is named Captain Jack). Newfound Gap sits at an elevation of 5,048 feet, and it was cold and windy at the overlook.



We then headed back down the mountain, stopping at another overlook. From here there was more fire damage, but you could see the new spring growth starting to pop up on the trees.