I went to the Smoky Mountains armed with a book called The Unofficial Guide to the Smoky Mountains -- it was a godsend. As usual in these areas, you get all the booklets and guides, and they all concentrate on the most popular places. This is fine, but sometimes you don’t want to be looking at something with hundreds of other people. This book gave details of places that were not readily advertised and thus, we never encountered huge crowds. We did, of course, visit other places that were main visitor attractions, but much preferred the less-busy places listed in this book.
On the book's suggestion, we traveled along a road called Foothills Parkway. This was an 18-mile long road that runs along the western side of the mountains. There are lots of lay-bys to pull into and admire the views. We found very little traffic and, most of the time, we were the only people at the stop-off points.
One stop not to be missed is Look Rock, about half-way down the road. You have to park your car in the large lay-bye before crossing the road and walking through a wooded pathway for one mile -- with the altitude and uneven path it feels like ten. It is worth the hike, however. When you get to the end of the pathway there is a large concrete structure with another pathway to climb. Once at the top, you'll be rewarded with a fantastic view -- you can see for miles. We spent ages watching eagles soar through the sky -– it was magic.
After this, we continued our drive to the end of the Parkway and decided to continue on to Fontana Village and a lake. The road to Fontana is very, very twisty -- hank God for automatic transmission -- we have never experienced a road like it and it seems to go on forever. There are picnic tables dotted along the route that follows the river along to Fontana Village.
We stopped at the village for a bite to eat and had just ordered our food when there was a power cut, this meant we could not have the hot food we had ordered. It was funny to think that, just down the road was an electricity-generating dam and yet, here we were without power.
A few miles from the village is the Fontana Dam. You can choose to drive to the top or bottom of the dam, depending on which road you take. We went to the top and think we did the best thing (though, of course, you can do both). The view from the top is great as you see both sides of the dam -– the huge lake on one side and the small river coming out of the other.
It is worth the trek from Gatlinburg, so if you get the chance, do take a look.