Cover Photo: Photo courtesy of the author
I like people. Some of my favorite people are…well, people. But when a bunch of humans gather in one place, particularly a place that’s supposed to be wild, like a trail or overlook, and they form a crowd, I start to not like people. Crowds suck. I don’t go into the woods to hang out with a bunch of other humans. Sure, it’s always exciting to stumble upon a handful of nudists in a backcountry swimming hole, but in general, I do my best to avoid crowds. My rule is simple: Unless I drove you in my vehicle, or arranged to meet you in the woods, I don’t typically want to see you when I’m out there. No offense. I assume you don’t want to see me either.
But do you know what happens when you always avoid crowds? You miss out on some spectacular landscapes. I realized my mistake last weekend when an assignment sent me to drive the Cades Cove loop, an 11-mile one-way road through a bucolic valley in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cades Cove is one of the most popular destinations within the park, attracting more than two million visitors every year. That’s more than most entire national park units see in a year, and they’re all crammed into a 6,800-acre valley with a single strip of pavement. So yeah, the Cades Cove Loop is famous for its traffic, with bumper-to-bumper standstills occurring during busy weekends. Naturally, I avoid Cades Cove as best I can. I grew up in Atlanta. Traffic is triggering.
But I was wrong to stay away for so long, because Cades Cove is stunning, even if you’re moving at five miles per hour in a long line of traffic. Picture horses frolicking in an expansive meadow as lush, green mountains rise against the horizon. Picture the sun shining and the tall grass in the middle of the meadows shimmering from a light breeze. Picture fields of sunflowers in the summer and slopes of color in the fall. This is the kind of view that prompted the government to create the national park system in the first place. Pardon the hyperbole, but Cades Cove is the kind of view that makes you proud to be an American.
No wonder two million people show up to sit in traffic jams every year. Sure, I think it’s ridiculous that a lot of those vehicles in that traffic jam are open-aired safari style Land Rovers with half a dozen people crammed into the back like they’re driving through the Serengeti looking for lions, but I understand why all the people have shown up. Cades Cove is worth the hassle, and avoiding a place like this just because it’s crowded is dumb.
And I have been dumb.
I’m like that kid in high school who refuses to like a certain band just because that band is popular with the football team. It makes me wonder what other iconic landscapes I’ve missed out on just because they’re crowded.
I’m talking about the obvious places. The ones on U.S. Postal stamps. Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Valley. Have you ever been to Yosemite Valley? The traffic jams can make Cades Cove look like an empty freeway, but man, the view is outstanding. So much towering granite, so many waterfalls.
I went to Old Faithful a few years ago on a different assignment. It was a zoo full of people standing around waiting for the geyser to go off, and I stood on the edge of that crowd shaking my head at all the sheep. Didn’t they have anything better to do? But then Old Faithful went off and it was freaking amazing. Water from the center of the earth shoots out of a hole 130 feet into the air! And the frequency of these aquatechnics (is that a word?) are so reliable that scientists can predict exactly when Old Faithful is going to spew.
It’s absolutely bonkers. Something like that deserves a stamp and it deserves a crowd. So does Cades Cove. So does the view from the concrete observation tower on top of Kuwohi inside GSMNP. It’s gorgeous. You’ll share the view with kids on school trips and families from Florida, but seeing all of Lake Fontana sprawl thousands of feet below is awesome.
I spend a lot of my time and energy seeking out the less crowded alternatives to these obvious places because that’s what makes for better articles. Nobody wants to read an article with the title “Top 10 National Park Spots You Already Know About.” That article doesn’t sizzle. But I’m here to argue we should all take some time to hit the obvious highlights of our national and state parks, because these obvious destinations—the ones that attract millions of visitors every year—are popular for a reason.
I admit that by the end of my drive through the Cades Cove I was ready to move on and find a quiet place away from the madness. So I pulled out my map and picked a random trail with nothing extraordinary on it and ran for four miles into the woods to a point next to a river where there were no other hikers. I sat there for several minutes and decompressed. I wouldn’t put the view on a stamp, but the solitude and the quiet was like a vaccine for the chaos and crowds I had experienced.
It’s actually easy to find these quiet spots inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s the most visited national park in the system, luring up to 14 million people every year, but the vast majority of those 14 million people stick to the same paved roads and scenic pullouts. It is a drive-through park, which leaves roughly 450,000 acres of the place for those of us who don’t want to move from one scenic pullout to the next. I’ve been lost multiple times in the Smokies. I’ve tried to catch fish deep in the backcountry, hugged giant hemlocks miles from the nearest paved road. I’ve camped far from the crowds and sat on lonely mountaintops and contemplated the land below and life in general. Being alone in the wilderness is amazing, and the Smokies is a wonderful place for that sort of lonely adventure.
I’m not belittling the importance of finding solitude in the woods. All I’m saying is that every once in a while, instead of avoiding the crowds, you should head straight towards them.
