Great Smokey Mountains

The Great Smokey Mountains at the southern end of The Appalachian Trail is the most popular National Park in North America and as such is visited by the most people, the peak season is Fall when the trees are in full colour. Seeing as most folk around this parts work for a living the most popular times to visit are holidays and weekends. Over nine million people visit The Great Smokey Mountains each year so we realised that Saturday morning mid Fall might be a bit hectic. What we didn’t realise was that, apparently, most of the nine million annual visitors all turn up on Saturday the twenty-fifth of October each year.

Fortunately our high-priced hotel was serving breakfast for weight watchers, that is to say it was low in calorific value due to its scarcity. So we had a fairly early start and missed some of the automotive Russian roulette that seems to prevail when queues are long and tempers short.

The Smokey Mountains are probably the jewel in the crown of the Appellations and the view from 6643 feet is fully awesome.

What the Cherokee believe:

This mountaintop is a sacred place for the Cherokee. They call it “Kuwahi”, which means mulberry place. They believe the bear meet here and dance together before going to their dens for winter.

They also believe that the lake Attaghi is found near here. Attaghi has special powers. The lake is invisible to hunters. Wounded bear submerge themselves in the lake and come out healed.

We exited the park through Cherokee and the Cherokee Reserve. After reading the significance of the mountains to the “first citizens” we were a little surprised to find it similar to Pigeon Falls. In hind sight we shouldn’t have been.