We were recently in Asheville, North Carolina for a wedding. Because we wanted to extend the trip to spend some time in Great Smoky Mountains National Park1, we flew in and out of Atlanta and drove the rest of the way.
Asheville and the wedding (and the Biltmore Estate) were great fun, as was spending several days with my siblings. It’s been a long time since we were all in the same place at the same time.
But Great Smoky Mountains National Park was a very nice coda to the trip. It’s spectacularly beautiful! There are almost always some low-lying clouds carpeting the mountains (hence their name).
More importantly, it is incredibly alive. It’s actually a temperate rain forest, which I didn’t know before this trip, so it is lush, lush, lush, with all kinds of plants and trees.
Not to mention some very impressive fungi!
As well as butterflies and birds.
The visitor center where we stopped to get maps2 featured a recreation of a mountain farm. It was fun checking out the buildings, as well as the livestock.
But I’d have to say the real treat was communing with the chickens while they gorged on apples in an enclosed orchard.
When I was walking from our car to the visitor center, another visitor told me one of the male elk that live in the park was resting down by the river. Turns out full-grown elk blend into the underbrush surprisingly well, as I went right by him (Barbara saw him before we had gone too much further).
The first time I saw an elk3 I remember thinking “That must be what Disney patterned Bambi and his relatives after.” Because real deer don’t look anywhere near as impressive as Bambi does…but elk do.
I’m pretty sure we spotted the first elk, that we met at the visitor center, when he was strolling past our hotel earlier that morning. The second dude we encountered as we were exiting the park.
I asked one of the residents we met how elk deal with traffic. She laughed and said they pretty much just walk into the roads whenever and wherever they feel like it. I guess it pays to be the biggest thing around.
I hope you take the time to visit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park someday. It’s a wonderful place, filled with all sorts of beauty…and it’s very peaceful, too, making it a great antidote to the hustle and bustle of life4.
and because I try to avoid flying through bad rainstorms in smaller planes ↩
Interestingly, the online resources at the National Park Service were rather limited — you really have to stop by a visitor center to orient yourself and pick up maps and brochures. There are several centers; the one nearest where we were staying in Cherokee was the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. ↩
up in Yellowstone, decades ago ↩
at least in the off season 🙂 ↩
