Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the nation's most popular national parks - and it's free. Get out of your car and onto a trail to avoid most of the crowds in this park.
The Smoky Mountains are spectacular if you go on a day when it is not raining. You will see ranges and ranges of mountains marching off to the horizon. Because they are mostly covered by trees, and they are so close together, they donit give the same sense of grandeur as Western national parks. The Appalachians are an older, softer mountain range than the Rockies, Sierras, or Cascades.
Much like the mountain ranges themselves, there is more history in the Appalachians. The national park preserved many of the original settlers's farm buildings in the Mountain Farm Museum at the Cherokee, North Carolina visitor center.
If you go a little bit further into the park from that side, you will get to a working grist mill that mills flour or grits. In Cades Cove on the Tennessee side of the park, the original settler's building are preserved along a loop drive. Wednesday and Saturday mornings, that loop drive is only open to bicycles.
