Great Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Caves

A view of the aptly named Great Smoky Mountains

As we draw nearer to the end of our YOFO, our appreciation of the National Park System and what it offers to citizens and visitors to this great land is nearly immeasurable. Left to our own devices, what remains of the wilderness spaces, the wild waterways, the rockin’ geological wonders, the remnants of Native American societies and early American history would be devoured by developers, mining, other capital enterprises seeking to profit exclusively from the few remaining serene spaces, and of course pollution – which is already affecting flora and fauna in many of our parks. Our visits to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Mammoth Caves National Park was no exception to this observation.

The Great Smoky Mountains in many ways is like the great early western parks. The Smoky Mountains straddle the Tennessee – North Carolina border, and claims to be less than a day’s drive from nearly one-third of the US population. At nearly 11,000,000 visitors per year, it receives nearly twice the number of visitors than any other National Park. It is an “open” park. There are no entrance fee stations, and you can access it from several places on its perimeter. And you should go take advantage of this oasis.

We’ve already decided we would like to return here to explore this park in more depth. It has over 850 miles of hiking trails and, unusual for a National Park, over 550 miles of horse trails. We only got a taste of it. We camped in a couple of locations, first at Smokemont Campground and then we moved north into Elkmont Campground. Smokemont was a good location to hit several hiking trails including the Three Falls loop. We also visited several old mills, some still in working condition. The Park Service makes a good effort to preserve the history of early settlers to this region. And there seemed to be plenty of wildlife out on display as we saw both elk and black bears frolicking in the woods. At Elkmont we drove through Cades Cove (saw more bears!) and got in a trail run along the Little River Trail to Cucumber trail loop. The Little River Trail was one of the most beautiful trail runs we’ve done all year!

We also visited Clingman’s Dome for some spectacular views of the mountains. They get their name from the smoke-like mist that seems to hang over them most of the time. On the recommendation of the miller at Mingus Mill, we tried a local, somewhat touristy place in Pigeon Forge, TN, called The Old Mill. Solid country-style chow. Dean ate chicken livers (a rare treat) much to the feigned disgust of his dining companion, Dawn! As with many of our National Park visits, our stay at GSM NP was enough to let us know that we had only scraped the surface of the potential in this park. We would certainly go out of our way to revisit. And since we don’t tend to be wed to any particular “way,” I suspect we’ll be back.

We got snowed on in GSM NP. Also, it’s windy on mountains.

Next destination was Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. On the way there we stopped at a campground in the Big South Fork National Recreation Area (NRA – an unfortunate acronym in this day and age). We’ve come to appreciate the NRA’s as something like small National Parks but with looser restrictions and more opportunities to mountain bike, kayak, fish etc. We had a chance to check out some amazing vistas and see an elevated coal sorting machine called a tipple and walk across the river on the railroad trestle.

Bats are “like fuzzy chicken nuggets” (yes, that’s a real quote!)

Mammoth Cave turned out to be a delightful surprise. We had already been to several National Parks featuring caves (Wind Cave, Great Basin, Carlsbad), so we did not have high expectations for this one to offer anything new. But as with many of the underrated parks, this one proved to be a lot of fun! We took a couple of cave tours: The Historical Tour, and the next day the Domes and Drips tour. Both were illuminating, offered local color in story form and a glimpse into the early history of the caves and the surrounding area. It is also the first National Park we have seen with a developed set of mountain biking trails! Nearly every National Park forbids bikes on trails, but Mammoth had an area set aside just for mountain bikes; they also have horse friendly trails. We were skeptical, and imagined a gravel road labeled for mountain bikes, but it turned out to be a nice figure eight loop of trails developed specifically for mountain bikes. They were mostly beginner with a few intermediate sections, but still made for a fun afternoon peddling though the woods.

As we left Mammoth Caves we made the turn toward the northeast to head back to Pennsylvania. But it was not without some unwanted excitement. Along the way we stopped at Twin Knobs Campground in Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. This turned out to be a beautiful area on a large lake, that also offered mountain biking (so we availed ourselves again). I wish that was the exciting part, but unfortunately we also discovered that we had broken a leaf spring on the trailer suspension sometime on the way to Mammoth or just after leaving it. We limped the YOFOhome into a local truck/trailer repair place. Lucky for us, Kentucky happens to be horse country (Kentucky Derby and all) which means it is also trailer country. We found the replacement spring we needed and in about half a day we were back on the road again. In the meantime, we took the opportunity to enjoy Twin Knobs so we did some mountain biking (22 miles worth) that was much more challenging than the Mammoth trails. We rewarded ourselves with fine Kentucky dining at “Pops BBQ.” Well worth the stop if you’re traveling along KY801 near the intersection with US60. We’d probably consider it worth the detour from I-64, but we are suckers for large portions of good brisket.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.

After a one-night stay at Gerald Freeman Campground near Sutton WV, we found our way back to where it all began and Silver Lake Farm, Chuck Stodter and Julia Chain proprietors. But before you jump to conclusions, YOFO is not quite over. The fat lady ain’t singing! We have two more trips planned; the first will take us to Cayuhoga Valley National Park in Ohio on our way to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan with Travis, Jess, and Kady. And our final YOFO hurrah will be to Shenandoah National Park. THEN we’ll have to declare victory on YOFO1, since Dawn’s year of leave without pay will conclude. But notice we said YOFO1…too presumptive to be thinking about a YOFO2? Stay tuned.