With our original national park travel plans derailed by the pandemic of 2020, my mom and I have pivoted to exploring parks that are closer to home, including most recently the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although I’ve passed through the park’s vicinity several times in recent years, I really hadn’t spent any time in this park since childhood. (Mistake on my part due to a prior bad experience with Pigeon Forge traffic that turned me off the area.)

Our objectives for the trip were to get away and enjoy the great outdoors while avoiding crowds in a park that attracts the most visitors each year of any national park in the country. We had good success by timing our plans to avoid the busiest places at peak times and packing enough food and drinks to picnic for the whole trip! Masks were required at all indoor locations in the park, and many people even wore masks while on the hiking trails.

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Our visit was from a Sunday to Wednesday, so we had two partial days and two full days in the park. For a couple of casual hikers who aren’t in the best of shape, it was amazing how much awesome stuff we were able to see in a short period of time. Even if you aren’t a hiker at all, there are plenty of excellent opportunities to appreciate this incredible park from the comfort of your car. I’ll cover the highlights of our itinerary in this post.

Sunday: We arrived in the park early in the afternoon and took the Newfound Gap Road from Gatlinburg, TN toward Cherokee, NC. Finding literally zero parking at Clingman’s Dome in mid-afternoon, we moved on from there and instead hiked the short but very nice Spruce Fir Nature Trail before venturing further south to Mingus Mill and the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee. This was the only visitor center during our stay that didn’t have a waiting line to enter due to COVID-19 indoor capacity limits.

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A little past the visitor center, on Cherokee Reservation property, we took the short, steep trail to Mingo Falls. The reward for climbing all the stairs is a spectacular 180 foot tall waterfall that looks like it should be in the Amazon rainforest rather than the Smoky Mountains!

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We returned back to the Clingman’s Dome parking lot later in the evening and found it much less busy, which combined with the clear skies, made it a perfect time to climb the steep half-mile trail to the observation tower for amazing views of the mountains.

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Monday: With rainy weather in the forecast, we decided our best bet was to drive the 11-mile Cades Cove Loop, which turned out to be a good decision. The road from Gatlinburg to Cades Cove has been recently repaved, and it is one of the prettiest drives I’ve ever seen. Cades Cove is filled with picturesque views, along with many historic buildings that offer a glimpse of what life in the valley was like for those who first settled the area. One of my favorite parts of this day was time to ourselves at the Elijah Oliver cabin as we spent about an hour waiting out the worst part of a rain storm!

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Tuesday: We got an early start with the objective of finding a parking space near the trailhead for Grotto Falls on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. Fortunately, we were successful in getting prime parking for this very popular trail by arriving a little before 8:30 AM. The trail to the falls is a moderate 1.4 miles (each way). It is uphill basically all the way there and downhill on the way back. Standing behind this beautiful waterfall was a highlight of our trip! Although there were others on the trail this morning, we had the falls entirely to ourselves for five minutes or so! By the time we got back to the parking area, people were parked halfway down the mountain to access this trail.

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Wednesday: We got up extra early for one last hike before the drive home. The early arrival (7:45 AM) was key to getting a good parking spot for the very popular trail to Laurel Falls, which is an easy, paved 1.25 miles (each way).

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There is so much to see in this literally “great” park that I definitely won’t wait so long before returning again. It is a perfect place for a short road trip from Kentucky. From Monticello it is as fast to drive to the Smokies as to Louisville!

If you’re trying to avoid crowds as we were (which is more desirable than ever in the era of COVID-19), I’d recommend going on weekdays. I shared a couple examples of this, but I can’t stress enough the importance of either getting up early or going late in the day to see the most popular locations in the park. If the parking lot is full when you get there, go do something else and come back later!

One more tip: Take advantage of the Chimneys Picnic Area. Be sure to drive around to the picnic spots that overlook the rocky Little Pigeon River. I’ve never seen a more beautiful picnic area in a national park!