Great Smoky Mountains National Park

We drove through Cade's Cove, part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The cove is a beautiful sheltered valley with a mixture of forests, meadows, and an outdoor museum of pioneer life in the 1800's. The drive is eleven miles of one way narrow loop road; around two million visitors come each year to this part of the park, so we were glad we came in the off season. You can drive without ever leaving your vehicle, but we did get out and walk to see several old homestead places. Buildings in the cove were of log construction until the 1870's because there was no nearby sawmill to saw logs into timber. The house you see was probably built just after the Civil War - it was the Elijah Oliver place. A "stranger room" was added to the front porch to accomodate overnight visitors. The kind of orange stuff between the logs is clay mud chinking; they added horse hair to the mud.
These hardy people did without a lot, but at least they had an abundance of wood for fire and construction, and nearby springs for water. They didn't have to use cow chips for fuel like the prairie pioneers.

This is the only national park that has free admittance. When Tennessee transferred state roads to the park in the 1950's, they included restrictions that prohibit charging the usual fee of $25 per vehicle found at other major national parks. We only saw a small part of the Smokies - we'd love to come back someday to see more!