Day Trip One

• Drive Cades Cove
• Stroll, Walk, Hike the Middle Prong
• Dinner at Foothills Milling, Maryville
  

  Primitive Baptist Church Cades Cove

I wrote a blog on Cades Cove a while back, and have lifted the three paragraphs in italics from it.  For the complete article click the link, but don’t miss the rest of the article here on hiking the Middle Prong!  Mammals of any variety have had a love affair with Cades Cove for the last 150 years, since the first settlers came to this region.  There are prettier areas in the United States, possibly even in the Smokies, but the Cove has become for millions of people the epitome of the Smokies.  You wouldn’t go to Grandma’s house without hunting down Grandpa in the barn, so if you only have one full day to spend in the Smokies while staying at Gracehill Bed and Breakfast, I’d put this at the top of the see and do list…

The Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited National Park in the U.S. and Cades Cove the most visited “attraction” in it.   It is a pioneer settlement from the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, in a bowl depression surrounded by lofty mountains.  (Think spacious skies and purple mountain majesties…) It’s filled with log cabins, churches, cemeteries, a gristmill and my favorite, the barns.

It helps to know some things about the Cove.  It features a newly paved 11-mile, single lane, one-way loop road.  It opens at sunrise, closes at dark, and those are the two times you will see the most wildlife.  If you are the type to take home a picture of every deer, pull over so the car behind you can pass.  The loop road  is closed to vehicular traffic on Saturday and Wednesday mornings till 10am, May through September, for bicycle and foot traffic.  You can rent bikes at the entrance or bring your own.  In the winter or early spring, with no stops, the drive can take an hour and 15 minutes. On weekends in the summer, plan on a couple of hours.  In October, arrive very early and preferably during the week.  I’ll pack you a picnic breakfast to go.  Bring your camera and tripod for the mist rising off the water shots.  On a Saturday afternoon in October, the drive could take four hours.  Make sure you have enough gas.  The last gas station at the Townsend entrance is the Marathon at the KOA Campground.  If you make it out of the Cove on fumes, you can just about coast the nine miles back into Townsend.  The only tricky spot is the stop sign at the “Wye.”  I tried coasting once.  Was probably a little irritating to the driver behind me, but what the heck, I was in pursuit of empirical knowledge!

There are two gravel roads that bisect the Cove going in both directions.  If you start going through sugar withdrawal, hang a left on Sparks or Hyatt Lane and it will shorten the trip.  A little more than half way around, by the Cable Mill, is a visitor center and restroom facilities.  The last 1/3 of the drive is more heavily wooded, but my favorite.  Everything is closer to the road and most of the barns are there.

Middle Prong River at Tremont

Of the 900 miles of trails the Park, the Middle Prong Trail is one of my favorites.  It’s an incredibly beautiful drive to get to it, and once there you can stroll, walk, hike or run the trail.  It goes 2.3 miles with a gentle change in elevation, 700 feet, before the trail splits.  At the split you can actually keep going and do a big loop, including doing the 2.3 miles twice and the loop total would be 14.7 miles.  I’ve never made the entire loop, but a few of my guests have.  If that is something you are interested in, let me know the day before so I can prepare an early breakfast for you and pack a lunch.  It will take a minimum of eight hours and fifteen minutes with no stops and a very steady pace.  It really needs to be done in the summer so you have daylight the whole way.

But I digress.  I recommend this trail because it is instant gratification the minute you step on it.  With the big boulders, mossy rocks, rushing river and surrounded by trees, you feel you are in an open-air cathedral.   It is close to the Cove and our Smoky Mountain Inn, and you can literally just take a 15-minute stroll and immerse yourself in nature.  The trail follows the river a good portion of the way.  If you make it just a ½  mile, there is a bench in front of a huge slide waterfall.  You can park your bod and read a book if you like.  The area is full of history as the Little River Railroad once logged in the area.  Some of the waterfalls you will see are areas where the RR dammed up the river to float logs downstream.

Of all the “advertised” waterfalls in the Park, for some reason this one gets little press.  A weekend in the summer and Abrams Falls will have a thousand people on the trail.  At Laurel Falls there will be a thousand cars! (Okay that was an exaggeration, but you catch my drift.)  On the Middle Prong you pass just enough people to feel comfortable that you are not the last person left on earth.

Foothills Milling Company restaurant in Maryville is, in my humble opinion, the finest restaurant in East Tennessee.  You need a reservation, so let me know and I’ll make it for you.

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