Viewing entries tagged
Great Smoky Mountains
It's always a surprise when I stumble across the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. This summer I will have lived in North Carolina for twenty years and through this whole time the Mountains-to-Sea Trail has been like an old friend who keeps popping up again - someone I knew and liked throughout my life but never got to know intimately even though we share interests and keep rubbing elbows over the years.
What do you think of when you hear the phrase "national park"? Maybe sweeping vistas of canyons, volcanoes, geysers and glaciers? Maybe mountains - bare and rocky or green and hazy - that rise and fall in reams and rows and out of sight? Maybe wildlife like bison or wolves or thick-horned, hardy ungulates? Maybe your favorite public playground, or a distant, inaccessible place? The national parks are indeed this, and so much more.
Gatlinburg was crazy. Imagine Disney World covered in camo, $6 parking and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. But my stomach was empty and my camera batteries were dead and I just wanted a quick recharge at a fast food place where I wouldn’t bother anyone or be bothered, so I ventured down from a long sunset at Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park through the dark twisting mountain path into the bright lights of the valley. A gas station and big sign proclaiming “GATLINBURG: Gateway to the Smoky Mountains” bedazzled me when I emerged from the forest and it took me several minutes to get my wits together.
