Exploring Smoky Mountain National Park
How we escaped the madness of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg for a few hours at a time, despite be thwarted at every turn
This is the third post of a three-week series. I explained how we ended up in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge for our 2026 spring break in the first post. Part two discussed our explorations of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.
I am a national parks junkie. I want to see them all. I don’t just want to visit them for the stamps, although a full national parks passport book is a worthy goal. I want to hike the trails, visit the historic sites, and sit with nature in some of the most beautiful places in the United States.
It isn’t the tourist traps and food that kept drawing me back to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg region over and over again; it was the beauty of the Smoky Mountains.
I am a mountain girl, but when it comes to mountains, I’ve always preferred the majesty of the mighty Rockies over the soft crests in the Smokies. However, our multiple trips driving through the national park and hiking up to waterfalls have been enough to give me a healthy appreciation for the crown jewel of the American Southeast.
And I couldn’t wait to share it with our kids.
Our first adventure roadblock was discovering that Laurel Falls, one of my favorite hikes in the entire park, is closed until 2027 as the park repairs and upgrades the trail leading up to the falls. We were thwarted from taking our children to the falls when they were toddlers because of a rainstorm and the presence of multiple black bears in the area. Now I was being prevented from getting a family photo in front of the famous falls by construction crews. So, I swallowed my disappointment enough to accept an evening drive through Cades Cove after a day of exploration in Gatlinburg.
Our 25-mile drive on winding roads from the Sugarlands Visitor Center to Cades Cove came to a halt when we encountered an emergency vehicle rerouting traffic because of an accident that was blocking the road in both directions. We had to turn around to find the alternate route to the entrance of the 11-mile loop. Frustrated, but not yet deterred, we made a stop at The Sinks, a man-made bend in the river running through the national park. It fed my need to see a waterfall and got our kids climbing on rocks, a favorite pastime even though they are full-grown teenagers now.
Then we took the recommended detour to the other entrance to Cades Cove. It was long and I was getting hungry and frustrated, but the rest of my family was determined to make it work. So we didn’t give up. We kept going until we got to the entrance of the one-lane road, 11 miles of meandering through the historic community of Cades Cove.
We saw old cabins, different styles of southern country churches, graveyards, an old mill, black bears, and even a young couple getting engaged in a field. I don’t know what it is about Cades Cove, but I love it. It is a lovely and peaceful step back into history, but also a witness to both ecological and historical preservation.
The next day, my family promised me a hike in the mountains, but first we were going to drive all the way to the state line in the national park and see if the road to Cliffman’s Dome was still closed for the winter. It was…for one more week. Frustrated that we wouldn’t be able to climb to the high point of the park and get a panoramic view, we accepted the pictures we took at the state line and headed back down to look for a hike in the Tennessee portion of the park, stopping a few times along the way.
We ended up on the Chimney Tops Overlook Trail. The trail didn’t look simple, and at 3.5 miles round-trip, we knew that we would get a workout, but it was far more than we expected.
It was beautiful, with rushing creeks and waterfalls and spring growth making a bright appearance.
And it was steep, full of stairs and climbs that none of us had done in a really long time. The only one not winded was our 14-year-old, who was taking a weeklong break from track practices and football workouts. Even with me still running up to ten miles a week, I spent the next several days struggling to move, muscles I hadn’t used in a long time making it clear that I had neglected them for far too long.
But the views? Gorgeous. And it was the last item I needed to knock off my list for the spring break trip.
No, we did not get to Laurel Falls. No, we did not get to replicate our family photo on top of the Cliffman’s Dome Overlook. But we still got to have some valuable time together as a family, climbing through nature and reaching a worthwhile peak.
The national park may not have been everything I wanted it to be when we made last-minute plans to spend our spring break in eastern Tennessee, but it was everything I needed before we all jumped right back into the busyness of the end of the school year. And now my kids will actually remember this national park stop instead of just listening to their parents’ stories about black bears and rain-soaked adventures. That made the whole trip worth it.
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