The Award for Best East Coast National Park Goes To…

The Great Smokies National Park!

Really though, it was such a beautiful place. By some miracle, we managed to catch the park at peak leaf peeping time, so our backpacking trip was accompanied by showers of gold, orange, and red leaves. The mountains themselves were more like gentle giants than anything like what we experienced in the Andes or the Rockies, but the deciduous forest was such a nice change to pine trees that we were absolutely enchanted the whole time we were hiking.

We followed this beautiful stream up the mountainside, with lots of gorgeous cascades to oooo and awww at as we went along. 

There was even a hidden waterfall off a little unmarked side trail that provided ample photo opportunities.

At the summit of the mountain ridge, the trees were thick, but we could catch glimpses of the far mountainsides aflame in fall color, and the carpet of leaves blanketing the ground was like a colorful quilt sprawled under our feet. Several creatures found shelter underneath the colorful quilt, and blended in almost to invisibility. 

The air was cool, but comfortable, and we came to our last backpacking camp after nine miles of beautiful hiking. At this point, after about 23 days in the backcountry, we’d like to think we’re pretty experienced at this whole backpacking thing, and Ryan’s found lots of ways to bring creature comforts to the backcountry as well.

It was sad though, in our little cathedral of yellow trees, knowing that this was our last time of the trip to be camping away from it all. We’re lucky to have had such incredible experiences backpacking, from our first journey together up Aconcagua to our favorite trip down to Havasu Creek, backpacking has certainly been a memorable activity for the trip.

Back to the Smokies though, after completing our last backpacking trip, we drove south through the park to Georgia, which brought even more incredible views of clear streams, stunning leaves, and mountains aglow. It was one of the prettiest drives and sights we seen in a day driving and we were certainly determined to come back to fish, camp, and hike the area more in another autumn hopefully not too distant.