Over the last few (non-Covid) years, we have tried to go to Europe over our spring break, and I had intended that we should do so again if we could find affordable tickets. Every time I would find a good fare online, I would go to check on it later (usually the next day), and it would have gone up by a hundred dollars or more. Happily, we had a backup.
In January, I went with a CVCA trip to Gatlinburg, my third such trip since 2017. I’d always call Meredith from Gatlinburg and tell her what a wonderful time I was having and how much I loved it in town after a day of hiking. This year, on one such call, she finally suggested I should bring her to the Smokies so she could experience it too. I had brought her here back in 2017, but only for a couple of days, and we had kids along in the form of my niece and nephew (and sister, but she’s a game soul). So, while we had fun with the family, we couldn’t do serious hiking and lots of tacky touristy stuff, especially when we were staying in a house outside of town. To experience the fun wonder of the main street of Gatlinburg, you really need to be within walking distance of everything.
So, given that Europe kept being fickle with prices, we decided to come to Gatlinburg. We decided to tag on a two-day stay with a friend in Louisville on the way. The weather all looked good, so on Sunday, after church, we drove to our friend Beverly’s house. Beverly is the epitome of hospitality – she took us out to eat on Sunday, made us breakfast Monday and Tuesday mornings, and took us to a cute college town, Berea, that is ninety minutes from Louisville. We had lunch at a swanky old tavern, and walked the college campus, and then looked around the art district, all in glorious sixty-five-degree sunshine. We hadn’t seen Beverly in seven years or so, so we had a very good time getting caught up.
On to Gatlinburg today. We got here and checked in to our downtown hotel, and drove over to the visitors’ center to pick up a new-this-year parking pass for the park (fifteen dollars a week). As we drove away from the crush of humanity at the center, it started to rain, so I modified my plan of hiking Laurel Falls Trail and changed over to driving an hour to Cades Cove, which is an old settlement area that still has eighteen buildings from the 1820s to 1930s. Both Beverly and my friend Jordan (a teacher at CVCA) recommended it, so that’s where we headed. The drive gave time for the rain to pass, so we were able to tour the site in good weather.
Cades Cove is an eleven-mile one-way circle, and we did the whole thing, although we missed a couple of buildings. Once you pass a building, your choice is to walk back, drive the whole circuit again (stuck behind people going eight miles per hour), or skip it. So we skipped a few. Our main take-away was that isolation is more important in the style of building than time frame. The houses in Colonial Williamsburg were built one hundred years earlier than Cades Cove, but looked more or less like modern homes. Cades was all log cabins until the 1860s, and even after that, some were still built. The Cove had had more people than I’d have thought, with about seven hundred residents in 1900. The national park bought up the area in the 1930s and 40s, and kept the buildings that are around today.
That put us back in town around 7:30. Trying to decide how to dress for the weather, Mer asked me if we’d be going up any mountains on the edge of town, and I assured her we would not. After a quick supper, we went up the Skylift chairlift to the top of a mountain on the edge of town. It was too good a deal to pass up – for two dollars above a normal ticket, we could get an additional day (tomorrow). That way, Mer could see the town at night tonight, and go up during the day tomorrow. Mer may have hinted that going up tomorrow night would be okay too. She had a blast walking a suspension bridge at the top. I got about a third of the way across before turning around from fear. I’m looking forward to the trail at the top tomorrow instead.
The plan for the rest of the week is to enjoy hiking in “the nature” and doing tourist tack stuff in town. I do love this place.