The area · Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Into the national park
The Townsend entrance puts you inside the most visited national park in the United States within a few minutes of leaving the cabin — and on the side of it most people drive past.
Read this before you go: the parking tag
There is no entrance fee to the park — there never has been — but since 2023 you need a parking tag to leave a vehicle anywhere in it for more than fifteen minutes. It catches people out constantly.
- $5 for a day, $15 for a week, $40 for a year.
- Buy online through Recreation.gov, at the Great Smoky Mountains Welcome Center in Townsend, or from the fee machines at the Townsend Wye and in Cades Cove.
- Driving through without stopping, or stopping for under fifteen minutes, needs no tag. Any real walk does.
If you are here for a week, the weekly tag is the obvious buy. Get it before you drive in and put it in the windscreen.
Walks, by how much effort you want to spend
Barely a walk at all
Lynn Camp Prong cascades, up the Middle Prong trail past Tremont, are a few minutes from the car park along a flat former railbed beside the water. You can go as far as you like and turn round whenever the smallest member of the party has had enough. It is the best low-effort-to-reward ratio on this side of the park.
Chestnut Top trail starts right at the Townsend Wye, so you can walk from the swimming hole. It climbs, so treat it as out-and-back for as long as you fancy rather than a destination.
A proper morning
Spruce Flats Falls — about two miles round trip from the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, and a real waterfall at the end. Steep and rocky in places rather than long. Roughly an hour of walking, plus however long you sit at the bottom.
Laurel Falls is the famous one: 2.6 miles round trip on a paved path to an eighty-foot waterfall, off Little River Road towards Gatlinburg. Paved does not mean flat, and it is extremely popular — go at first light or accept the crowd.
A day out
Abrams Falls is the classic Cades Cove hike: about five miles round trip from a trailhead partway round the loop, three to four hours, rated moderate mostly for rocky footing and the climb back. The falls are short but heavy with water. Do not swim — the pool below has a genuinely dangerous current and has killed people.
Waterfalls without the walk
The Sinks and Meigs Falls are both visible from Little River Road between the Y and Gatlinburg, with pull-offs. Under fifteen minutes each, so no tag needed if you are quick — and worth the stop.
Wildlife, honestly
The park holds roughly 1,900 black bears — about two per square mile — and this one was photographed on the property. You are much more likely to see one from a car in Cades Cove at dawn than on a trail at midday.
Keep 50 yards between you and any bear, which is further than it feels. Never leave food out, including on the deck, and never feed one — a bear that learns to associate people with food usually ends up destroyed. Deer, wild turkey and salamanders are the everyday sightings — the park has around thirty salamander species and more diversity of them than anywhere else of comparable size, which is more interesting than it sounds the first time a child turns over a wet log and finds one.
Seasons
- Spring — wildflowers, and the reason the Smokies are called the wildflower national park. Late April into May is the peak.
- Summer — hot and humid in the valleys, cooler as you climb. This is river season more than trail season.
- Autumn — the best colour and the worst traffic, roughly mid-October to early November. Go early or midweek.
- Winter — bare trees mean views you cannot see the rest of the year, and the park is quiet. Higher roads close with snow; Cades Cove and Little River Road usually stay open.