Townsend is a small town located in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. It’s often overlooked as visitors turn south at the Wye to head toward Cades Cove, but it has its own attractions worth exploring, from the scenic roads leading into the nearby entrance to the national park, to its own cycling and walking greenways, along with its sense of history.
This is the Peaceful Side of the Smokies, often a welcome break from the crowded areas of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.
Photo by Brian Stansberry
The Gatlinburg area of the Smoky Mountains gets a lot of visitors, and this can mean that things get crowded – so if you want to get out into some of the more quiet places, here’s our guide to the less traveled destinations and routes in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the surrounding area.
Most of your forays into Great Smoky Mountains National Park will happen by car, driving certain roads purely for their stunning scenic beauty, and also to get to various places to park and immediately immerse into nature, whether taking a trail or hitting a picnic site or other attraction. This guide will help you navigate those roads.
We have cabins in several resorts convenient to the Pigeon Forge area of the Smoky Mountains, some close in and some farther out. Here are the Pigeon Forge and Wears valley cabin resorts for you to choose.
In the Smoky Mountains there are so many things to do and to see, spread across a sizable mountain area, that where you choose your cabin to stay in as a base for your adventures can be important. Do you want to be close to the towns with their countless attractions, or farther away from the bustle and closer to nature? Here are some cabin resort descriptions to help you choose your best location.
View from a cabin in Sherwood Forest resort.
Here is a brief guide to several distinct areas in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, useful for the new visitor to get oriented to some of the special places and scenic natural features. Visitors to the Smoky Mountains return year after year, and discover their favorite places, gradually learning many of the countless things to do and to see in the Gatlinburg area. Here are some of the more notable.
The magic of Elkmont
The Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the towns of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are bustling. This gateway area to the most visited national park in the country can often be crowded, so it helps to know the best roads to use to get around, and to be able to pick out the specific areas that you and the crew want to target as you venture out from the cabin.
To help you figure out the best places and things to put into your plans, we’ve written up many guides to the things to do and the places to go – in fact, we have so many that we now need a guide to the guides, so read on for our first super-guide to getting around during your visit.
Here are some of the best ways to get out among the fall colors of the Smoky Mountains, with scenic drives and places to observe the colors working their way down the mountain to the lower elevations, here in October, 2020.
Image – and view – courtesy of Gatlinburg Sky Lift
Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge get a lot of traffic, and it can be useful to know some of the alternative roads to take if the main routes are jammed. This is especially true of you’re trying to get out into the countless nature attractions – including Great Smoky Mountains National Park of course, and don’t want to drive through the congestion on Parkway in either town. Here are some of the shortcuts.
The closest airport to Gatlinburg, TN, is McGhee Tyson, located 12 miles south of Knoxville, just over a 40-mile drive from Gatlinburg, with a few different ways to get there, depending on if you want to hit Pigeon Forge first, and any scenic options you may chose to take on the way in. McGhee Tyson is a friendly little airport, and usually a nice introduction to the friendly people of Tennessee and the Appalachian warmth and culture of the Smoky Mountains.
Any vacation in the Smoky Mountains is made better by staying in a vacation cabin rental. Many cabins are located within resorts, which differ greatly in their location, setting and the amenities they offer. Knowing more about where the resorts are and what they’re like opens up the options considerably for choosing where to stay.
We are the one of largest cabin rental agencies in the Smoky Mountains and have been recognized by Southern Living as the Best Family Resort in the Smokies. We manage over 340 cabins in the Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville Tennessee areas. Visit us today and get over $700 of free attraction tickets with your cabin rental.
