Defeated by the Smoky Mountains

On Good Friday we decided that we needed to take off and drive somewhere else, visit a new place in the big country we are living. Our first thought was to go south, since none of us had visited the southern states, and hoping that the southern we went, the better weather we would have (although, ironically, what happened was the opposite ;)). We read about a very well known scenic road called the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs for 469 miles between the states of Virginia and North Carolina. The end of the parkway enters the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, therefore we decided to start in the Smoky, and do part of the scenic drive from there.

The first day we decided to stay in the city of Knoxville, Tenessee. We drove for about 8 hours though the states of Ohio and Kentucky. The way was, despite the length, very pleasant, spring had already began, and the trees had started to blossom. Once we arrived to Knoxville, we walked around the city, happy about leaving the car behind us ;)

This university city turned out to be very lively, with a nice little center to walk around. We saw the most famous icon, the tower, that despite being a bit ugly, it served very well as orientation point for us to find our hotel, which was just some meters away.

The touch of the spring had made the city specially beautiful, given the fact that it had snowed in Michigan that week, we thought this was a miracle ;)

The next day we entered our journey into the Smokies. This park is part of the Appalachian Mountains, and the denomination "smoky" comes from the natural fog that hangs over the range. This fog results from the exhalation of the vegetation present in the area.

Just before entering the National Park we passed though a city called Pigeon Forge that looked like a small Vegas, with casinos, amusement parks, aquarium, zoo, a house upside down, thousands of restaurants, ... It was an amusement park near the mountains, and we found it partly weird and partly sad, because it seems sometimes that spending time in the nature is not enough, and it is needed to have entertaining 24h additional not to get bored (how is it possible to get bored in the nature?).

The entrance of the national park was a pleasant road with abundant vegetation. It reminded us of the forests in northern Spain. But the charm of the scenery lasted very short, because as we started to climb into the mountains, the sky started to look less blue and more gray, and our mood for vacation started to turn into concern with the weather.  The weather report had not forecasted any rain!! You can see in the picture below how threatening the sky looked (still beautiful, though).

And just as expected, the rain didn't wait too long to start. As we were driving, we found that the rain was only at one side of the mountain, kind of a microclimate, that didn't affect the whole area. And to make things worse, at a certain height, and without the protection of vegetation around the road, the smoky mountains showed us why they have this name, because we entered a thick fog where we couldn't see three meters in front of us. It was very hard to drive, it goes unsaid that the beauty of the scenery remained unseen, making us anxious for the driving and disappointed for missing it all. It was similar to the picture below, which comes from a blog entry explaining this same experience that other people have been able to capture in pictures. For us, sadly, it was more priority to drive safely and get out of there, so we didn't spend much time taking photos.

That day we learned that the Smokies are unpredictable, they can get "too smoky" at times...

After this experience we felt kind of defeated, and sadly started our journey back home. The drive was not so bad, but it seemed as Detroit was being pushed further down the road, we never seemed to arrive! Ironically, when we arrived there was around 20 degC, sunny and nice outside... Our willingness for nice weather made us drive long miles, and in the end the best temperature was at home. It happens sometimes ;)

Nevertheless, I don't intent to do bad publicity of the Smokies, which is the most visited National Park in the US. I found gorgeous pictures though the internet, and will post some here, so you can see why we were interested in visiting. And although we were not very lucky, in my opinion this argument should never stop someone to try and collect new experiences, instead we have to take our chances, for better or worse, don't you think?

Thanks for reading, 

Lita&Andres