Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee

It’s a pretty cool thing when your mom and mother-in-law are friends. It’s even cooler when you get to take trips together! The weekend before Thanksgiving 2018, my mom decided to rent a cabin in Sevierville, Tennessee, and invite all of us to come up and celebrate the holiday together. Matt and I both completed our undergraduate degrees at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville (go Vols!), so we are both very familiar with nearby Sevierville and Gatlinburg, both of which are situated in the Great Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee.

Gatlinburg is about a three-hour drive east from our hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. To start our trip, we set off one Friday evening, arriving to the cabin early enough to enjoy a round of air hockey (which ended abruptly when Matt hit the puck so hard that it made my finger bleed) and a dip in the outdoor hot tub. We ended the night warming our toes by the fireplace, our faces glowing with the lights of the Christmas tree.

My mother, my stepsiblings, and my stepdad arrived to the cabin in the dead of night! When we woke up the next day, all of us headed into the Smokies for some light hiking.

The Great Smoky Mountains, which is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the most visited national park in the United States. Someone once boasted to me that the Rocky Mountains are more impressive than the Smokies. My response? They’re just totally different. The Smokies are older than the Rockies, and were once probably as tall, but erosion and time have slowly whittled them down to where they are now.

But the Smokies are amazing. They’re full of old growth forest and when you’re hiking in those woods, you feel transported to an ancient time.

I even once had a Biology professor teach me that the Smokies are some of the most bio-diverse biomes in the world, next to the Amazon rainforest. Because the park boasts the densest population of black bears in the Eastern United States, it’s not uncommon to spot these little guys on a hike!

And because I know this is a question that people who aren’t from east Tennessee often wonder: the Smokies get their name from the fog that hangs across the forested mountains, creating a blue-green haze. That same Biology professor taught me that the fog is produced by VOCs–volatile organic compounds that plants “exhale.”

When I was in college, my friends and I loved hiking in the Smokies. We did all the major trails: Rainbow Falls, Alum Cave, Mount LeConte (the highest peak in the Smokies), Abrams Falls, Chimney Tops, Rocky Top, and Clingman’s Dome. It’s a beautiful, lush, verdant world, completely different from the hot red rocks of Arizona or the snowy, craggy peaks of Utah.

When I picture the Smokies in my mind’s eye, I see two colors: the brilliant green of the trees and underbrush, and the hazy, sultry blue of the mountain ranges at dusk. Other mountain ranges can’t compare in this way.

On our family trip to Gatlinburg in November 2018, we drove the winding roads into the Smokies to Newfound Gap, a lookout point just over the border into North Carolina that offers a beautiful vista and access to several hiking trails, including the Appalachian Trail.

After snapping tons of pictures, we headed into Gatlinburg. You may be familiar with the fact that in November 2016, wildfires ravaged Gatlinburg, nearby Pigeon Forge. Fourteen people died and burned more than 15 square miles. Thousands of people were forced to evacuate as their homes and businesses were destroyed.

In the years following the fires, Gatlinburg began to rebuild. When we visited in 2018, we were astonished and heartened by the strength of the surrounding community.

Although Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and nearby Dollywood offer tons of activities for tourists, we decided to stick to exploring the mountains.

Trees with fire damage

To get the best views of the beauty around us, we took a “Chondola” ride (chair lift + gondola) up to the top of Anakeesta, an enormous rock formation blanketed by thick forest, now the site of a memorial to the wildfire victims.

Anakeesta is Cherokee Indian word meaning “the place of the basalms.” The 70-acre mountaintop park boasts a tree canopy walk where people frequently spot black bears, a zipline, a children’s treehouse, the wildfire memorial site and gardens, as well as shopping, vistas, and restaurants.

Matt and I spent most of our time at Anakeesta walking through the memorial gardens, reading about the fires and trying to imagine what Gatlinburg looked like in November 2016.

After paying our respects, we ambled through the tree walk, which was lit with dainty, shimmering copper lights.

From the top of Anakeesta, the views are spectacular, so we rested by a blazing bonfire and ate slices of pie while drinking in the view.

After the sun dipped below the mountains, we took the gondola slowly down the mountain, and arrived right at the doors of Savannah Bee Company.

You might have guessed from the name, but Savannah Bee Company sells honey! We wandered in to purchase a jar and stayed for almost an hour. At the store’s Anakeesta location, customers are welcome to taste-test various flavors and varieties of honey they sell, including the very famous and very expensive Tupelo Honey Gold Reserve.

The most fun part about visiting Savannah Bee Company was the mead tasting bar! I’d never heard of people drinking mead outside the context of medieval novels or Game of Thrones, so when I found myself in Anakeesta, Tennessee sipping mead with my mom, stepdad, and husband at an adorable, modern bar, it felt a bit anachronistic!

Mead is an alcoholic drink made from fermented honey. I was expecting the drink to be thick and sickly-sweet (like honey), but the flavors we tried were surprisingly light! One of the meads even reminded me of champagne we tasted in Spain.