Great Smoky Mountain National Park - the changing of seasons

Often times, we take comfort in the familiar – we seek it out at the end of a hard day, we retreat there during times of distress.  But every once in a while, my heart yearns for the unknown – to see something new, experience something different.  Such was my frame of mind as spring break approached.  This is my last semester teaching at the college and therefore, my last spring break and I yearned to go somewhere new.  We didn’t want to travel more than a day’s drive from Pennsylvania, but we still wanted to find somewhere we hadn’t visited before.  So we decided to visit the area around Sevierville, NC and Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

Upon arriving in the area, we quickly learned that the neighboring towns of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are highly developed tourist locations with the chain restaurants and excessive shopping that is typically associated with areas such as these.  It is also the home of Dollywood theme park, and Jim particularly wanted to visit Dollywood because his brother-in-law had done so many times and always speaks highly of it.

So we spent our first full day visiting Dollywood.  It’s a very nice theme park with lots of shows and rides and a train pulled by an engine built in 1944 as part of the war effort.  We were quite surprised at the huge lines of people and the 90 minutes it took us to park, travel to the ticket center and purchase tickets.  Not surprisingly, most of the patrons were older adults without children and very young families with pre-school age children.  Still, we learned that the wait time for most rides was 60+ minutes.  Fortunately, we were most interested in the shows and we always found seating for the ones that interested us.  My favorite show was a southern gospel group called Sunday Ride.  We also heard a wonderful duet of banjo player and blue-grass fiddle.  We kept hearing about the fabulous cinnamon bread that is baked on-site, but we weren’t willing to wait in line for an hour to get a loaf, so we left with just the wonderful aroma as a memory.

The visit to Dollywood was nice, but the main focus of our trip was the beautiful national park, so on day 2, we headed out to explore the local countryside. We started our day at the Apple Barn and Cider Mill. We had intended to stop there for breakfast, but the combination of a lot of walking yesterday, and the wonderful mountain air lulled us into sleeping later than planned. So we arrived there just in time for the start of lunch, and ordered BLT sandwiches.  Lunch was wonderful – starting with a cup of the most delicious vegetable soup that I have had since my mother’s.  Actually, lunch started with complementary apple fritters and “julep” – a combination of fresh fruit juices.  Then soup, then fantastic BLT’s made with local applewood smoked bacon.  We looked around the charming shops of fresh-made candies, jellies, and other specialty foods – finally settling on some apple butter and apple vinaigrette.

Then we made our way to the Gatlinburg Visitor’s Center where a very helpful park ranger mapped out 2 days of car trips thru Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Today we would head east, into North Carolina and ultimately the southern tip of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Thursday we would explore the western loop.  Here in Tennessee they consider this to be the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway, my friends in Western Virginia would disagree, of course, but which ever way you view it, it’s beautiful and it traverses Virginia and North Carolina.

The first views of the mountains were astounding – how could one look at all of this majesty and not see the Creator?  At one point the mountains looked like they had been molded from giant pieces of clay, with the imprint of God’s fingers still visible down the slopes.

As we continued deeper into the park, the road paralleled a creek as it gently fell over rocks smoothed by years of water.  It flowed along the road as we slowly wound our way up into the mountains.  At one point, I was walking on the path of a lookout point, when I was suddenly aware of the wonderful symphony of sounds.  Even though an occasional car passed by, the park was mostly devoid of man-made sounds. Instead, the air was filled with an occasional bird’s chirping and the joyous song of the flowing water.  I walked along, intentionally  letting the sounds of the forest and the beauty of the mountains soothe my soul, carry me away and welcome me into this  peaceful, sacred place.

We chose to travel at this time of year because this is spring break at the college where I teach.  And so many people have told us this is not a good time of year to see the park.  But we found that to not be the case.  The lack of leaves on the trees has allowed us to really view the shape and form of these majestic mountains.  The grass is fresh with bright color that is only visible in the early spring.  Red buds are bright with the tiny pops of color that will be blooms in a week or so.  Daffodils are in bloom, and beautiful crabapple trees are loaded with delicate white blooms. 

This time of year has allowed us to witness the changing of seasons even as we watch.  On one side of the road in higher elevations, ice flows still cling to rocks while lower elevations are boasting spontaneous waterfalls as the warm spring air melts the ice away.  On one side of the road we see snow and around the next curve, bright green grass. Within 30 minutes we experienced temperature changes from 72 on lower elevations to 57 at the top, then as we started down the other side, and arrived to temperatures of 77, all within about 45 minutes.

The road through the park is quite an engineering feat.  We were driving along and a flash of yellow caught my eye and I looked, expecting to see daffodils, but realized it was a traffic sign – we could see an upper road and we wondered where it went.  In a few minutes, we found out because the road we could see was actually the road on which we were driving.  We drove around a hairpin curve and started steeply up the mountain, continuing our climb parallel to where we just were.

The views from the higher elevations in the park defy description.  There are beautiful ranges of mountains and beyond those, more mountains, and beyond those more mountains, and on they go.  Jim counted 13 visible ranges at one vista. 

The particular vegetation that is native to these mountains creates a mist which makes the mountains appear to be a delicate blue in color.  So in the foreground, you see the bright color of the evergreens, then the various colors of greens, browns and finally, delicate, misty blue.

Near Cherokee, NC, we stopped at a heritage farm museum. The buildings were restored from around the area and told the story of a rugged settlement lifestyle.  An essential part of the home in this area was an “apple house”.  This was a structure, built into the side of a hill, which provided storage for the many varieties of apples that grow here. 

Apples were an essential part of the settler’s diet – eaten raw, of course, but also used in baking, making cider and apple butter, and making hard cider and vinegar.  Another important local  ingredient was sorghum.  Sorghum is a cane, rather like sugar cane, that is shredded and cooked down into a thick molasses that was also used in baking and as a syrup. Sorghum is still highly prized as a sweetener in this area and contributes to the distinctive taste of some of the local baked goods.

At this point, I must say that I thought I would be photographing some wildlife in the park, but it is a little too early in the year. So I'm including this handsome chicken because that is the only wildlife I was able to photograph, so here she is -- the Great Smoky Mountain chicken.

The day was winding down so we turned around and followed the road back up and down the mountains until we arrived back at Sevierville.  For dinner, we tried a local restaurant called Holston’s Kitchen.  What a terrific place!  It has a very cozy, welcoming ambiance with a varied menu and very nice staff.  Jim tried the shrimp dinner and I had the catfish – breaded in cornmeal and pan fried – it was terrific.

So we ended our day, watching the sun set behind the mountains and relaxing in our cabin.  Tomorrow, we’ll explore the other side of the park.  Who knows what wonders are waiting for us.

Just like the seasons quickly change here in the mountains, so the plans of men are sometimes quickly changed.  And we are keenly aware of that fact – Jim caught a bug and was very ill during the night. So our last day in Tennessee is spent with Jim resting, and me writing the finishing touches of this blog.  Do I regret our decision to come here? Not for a moment.  This is a beautiful area and we hope to return some day – perhaps after we’re fully retired we can plan a trip for late April when the mom and baby bears emerge from their dens. Until then, I will treasure the memory of the time we spent here in the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains.