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The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States. With so many visitors the most popular areas of the park can get very crowded, especially during peak times. But the Smokies encompass a lot of land and there are plenty of places you can escape the crowds and enjoy the natural beauty of the Smokies even on the most crowded days.
Greenbrier – A few miles outside of Gatlinburg out Hwy 321 in the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park is the old Greenbrier community. If
you're looking for natural beauty and fewer crowds this is a great
place to spend a few hours. The road leading to the picnic area and
trail heads is dirt and gravel and is narrow in several places, so you
have to drive slowly. There are grills at most of the picnic tables.
The Greenbrier River is also a great place to go tubing in the summer.
Be sure to rent tubes before you get there since unlike the Townsend
area there aren't any tube rental stands close by. Of course, that also
means the river isn't anywhere near as crowded as in Townsend, either.
There are trail heads to Porter's Flats. There is also access through
the Gatlinburg Craft area from Pigeon Forge without going through
downtown Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg.
Cades Cove in the morning – Everyone knows about Cades Cove Loop close to Townsend, but few people are willing to visit early in the morning. If you can bear to sacrifice a few hours of sleep and arrive at Cades
Cove just as the sun is beginning to rise you will enjoy one of the
most peaceful and serene experiences of your lifetime. Cades Cove at
dawn is all but deserted at even the height of vacation season. You're likely to see several species of mountain wildlife in the fields around Cades Cove loop that you won't see any other time of day, along with plenty of deer (which are most active at dawn and dusk). The drive from Gatlinburg is very scenic.
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Walker Sisters' Cabin - The trail head to the Walker Sisters' cabin starts from the parking lot of the Little Greenbrier Schoolhouse in the Metcalf Bottoms area. The trail is an easy two mile round trip walk and is especially beautiful in the spring when the trail is lined with blooming rhododendron. The cabin at the end of the trail was one of the last inhabited cabins in the current Great Smoky Mountains National Park and still has traces of newspapers on the walls which were used to keep out the wind. There's also still a springhouse over the creek where the Walker sisters kept refrigerated foods and the inevitable corn crib. Overall, this homesite is one of the least disturbed in the National Park and will give you a more accurate idea of how mountain folks really lived than the artificially placed cabins around Cades Cove. This is a easy drive from Gatlinburg or Townsend, email for directions on a close route from Pigeon Forge.
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Quiet Walkways - If you're looking for a short walk with a bit more privacy than most of the well-known trails in the park, try one of the many “quiet walkways” along the side of many park rodes. These trails often lead along streams and are lined with unique mountain foliage. 441 from Gatlinburg to Cherokee has many of these great little walks.
Horseback Riding – For the athletically inclined this is an excellent way to see more of the Smokies. There are stables located just outside Gatlinburg on Highway 321 and also in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near the Sugarlands Visitor Center outside of Gatlinburg. I personally can't spend more than a few hours at a time on the back of a horse, but I love the freedom to explore that comes with riding a horse through the National Park (although all horseback tours are guided). There are hundreds of miles of less-often explored horse trails throughout the park and there's no telling what you'll find – from natural beauty to traces of former homesites. I especially love looking for signs of old homesites, like domestic flowers in the middle of the woods, piles of rocks where a chimney once stood, or pieces of old glass bottles where a mountain family once discarded trash. If your are going to the Sugarlands Visitors Center from Pigeon Forge I recommend the Gatlinburg bypass from the spur.
Share – where are your favorite “secret” spots in the Smoky Mountains ?
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