As evening descends over a hidden valley on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I am buried up to my neck in warm bubbles in an antique claw-footed tub, the window above my head overlooking a freshly mowed expanse of lawn and dormant flowerbeds. There is no sound save the chirp of crickets and thumping hum of bullfrogs. I am at the Folkestone Inn, just outside Bryson City, N.C. a Nestled in a rolling pasture beneath the peaks of the Smokies, this farmhouse has offered visitors a quiet escape for more than two decades. Peggy

Myles and Kay Creighton assumed ownership of the Folkestone Inn two years ago after leaving corporate careers in Atlanta.

“I like the inn’s proximity to the national park,” says Creighton. “It’s just a quarter mile down the road.”
There are 12 rooms at the inn, each with a different theme. My room, the Wrens and Warblers room, is decorated with bird prints, antique decoys, and flowered bedclothes and pillows; perfect for avid birdwatchers, it overlooks feeders on the north lawn.

After my bath, I dress, wrap a sweater around my shoulders, and tiptoe downstairs to the Folkestone’s front porch, settling in on the porch swing. A nearby brook provides background music, the air smells like hemlock, and somehow the simple act of breathing becomes a new experience.

This isn’t the Smokies of Pigeon Forge or Cherokee casino fame. This is a side of the Smokies most of the national park’s 10 million annual visitors never see. Great Smoky Mountain National Park encompasses more than 521,000 acres of wilderness. And though you wouldn’t know it by the autumn traffic jams along Newfound Gap Road—the park’s main thoroughfare—much of the park remains wild and inaccessible by automobile.

Park Ranger Nancy Gray explains, “If you leave your vehicle, that’s the ideal way to avoid the autumn crowds. We have 800 miles of hiking trails.”

To find a little peace and color in October, try a walk along the Oconaluftee River Trail with trail access at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. A stroll along the Chasteen Creek Falls Trail, accessible from the Smokemont Campground, also offers delightful glimpses of autumn leaves, as do any of the trails veering off from the Deep Creek Campground. Some of the most spectacular foliage for fall viewing is found in middle to lower elevations.

Deep Creek entrance: quiet walks to waterfalls

The next morning I decide to take Gray’s advice. After a scrumptious breakfast, I’m off to explore the nearby waterfalls at the park’s lesser-known Deep Creek entrance. The park receives anywhere from 50 to 80 inches of rain a year, creating a forest environment rich with moisture and greenery and full of waterfalls.

Bryson City locals know this entrance well. In summer, children gather inner tubes and float lazily down the sometimes gentle, sometimes rocky rapids of Deep Creek. Juneywhank Falls offers the shortest hike at this entrance—half a mile round-trip on a moderate trail. Visitors follow a log bridge to a skinny waterfall surrounded by lichen-covered rocks.

Just below Juneywhank Falls, I take an even gentler, if longer, hike past wispy Tom Branch Falls to Indian Creek Falls. Two miles round-trip, the hike offers a view of one the park’s loveliest falls. Cascading over rock layers for 60 feet, Indian Creek Falls is so perfectly rendered its stony terraces appear man-made.

Cataloochee Valley: The Smokies’ quiet cove

After my “leg stretchers” along Deep Creek, I’m ready to explore some of the Smokies’ backcountry. Just inside the northeastern border of the park, accessible from Interstate 40 at Exit 20 via Cove Creek Road, the Cataloochee Valley is a must-see for Appalachian history buffs.

Cataloochee has become increasingly popular in recent years as home to several new herds of Canadian elk, which visitors are most likely to see here at dawn and dusk. Autumn, according to Gray, is the best time for viewing the elk. “They’re much more active now during their rutting period,” she says, “and you can hear the males’ bugling calls.”

Accessing the valley and its elk, however, requires patience. Although visitors avoid the bumper-to-bumper traffic afflicting the popular Cades Cove (south of Gatlinburg), Cove Creek Road is winding and narrow, alternately paved and graveled, with no national park signs to direct an unknowing visitor. But after zigzagging up and around a mountainous stretch known as the Cataloochee Divide, I am transported suddenly into an open valley of miles of rolling grass cradled by blue-green mountains and watered by pristine streams.

Like Cades Cove, the Cataloochee Valley preserves remnants of a once-thriving Appalachian community.

“It’s like being in a different world,” a frequent Smokies visitor tells me as I step out of my car for a little exploring. “It’s like walking into a community just after the people have abandoned it.”

My first stop is Palmer Chapel, standing empty now along Cataloochee Creek, its doors opening to the forest rather than the road. Up a hill behind the church lies a cemetery whose graves, sunken and new, bear the names of the valley’s early settlers—Caldwell, Palmer, Noland, Bennett, and Barnes. Also here is the Beech Grove School, a leftover desk or two turned askew, and blackboards curling in the humidity.

Beyond the school is Caldwell House, a two-story white frame structure that reflects the prosperity of former owner Hiram Caldwell and dispels the notion that Appalachian homesteaders all lived in log cabins. Nearby Palmer House was once a log home; in the early 1900s, as its owners grew more prosperous, they covered the exterior with weatherboarding. Both houses now seem too refined for this wilderness—quiet testimony to the self-sufficient and isolated community that once thrived in Cataloochee.

Balsam Mountain Road: an isolated drive to nowhere

As late afternoon approaches, I head southwest to the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Soco Gap, and back into the national park via the Heintooga Ridge Road for a solitary drive along the top of Balsam Mountain—a stretch of road that is something of a hiking trail for cars. This gravel byway penetrates the eastern interior of the park, north of the Cherokee Indian Reservation, covering about 14 miles of forested mountain ridge.

Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail: by foot or automobile

On my second full day in the Smokies, I head to the Tennessee side of the park. Bypassing the main western entrance at Sugarlands, I opt for a “stroll” in my car along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, accessible from downtown Gatlinburg. The Roaring Fork trail is paved and one-way and provides a quiet retreat by foot or automobile. It meanders through a deep forest of hemlocks, tulip trees, chestnut oaks, maples, and magnolias. The understory is thick with giant rhododendrons that cradle white-rippling, sometimes roaring, streams.

Sugar maple can range in color from rich scarlet to orange and yellow. Tulip poplars also dominate the Smokies, often blanketing whole mountainsides with dazzling yellow leaves. If you stroll along streams or in other moist areas, you might see sweet gums, late bloomers in the fall season that display star-shaped leaves in luscious purple, red, and yellow. (For a complete guide to fall color and tree species, stop by one of the park’s visitor centers.)

Visitors can spend as little as an hour or as much as a day exploring the many hiking trails here. A fairly strenuous 6-mile round-trip trek takes hikers to the cascading water terraces of Rainbow Falls. My favorite hike, a moderate one, is Grotto Falls, with a trailhead located about halfway around the Roaring Fork loop. This 11/2-mile trail climbs 500 feet through a shaded forest of virgin hemlock. A treat for kids of all ages, the trail passes directly under 25-foot-high Grotto Falls.

Past the Grotto Falls trailhead, Roaring Fork Trail descends. This stretch of the motor trail actually lies in the original roadbed of the 19th-century Roaring Fork community. Many Appalachian homes are visible along this route and accessible via a short walk from the road.

Tennessee’s Greenbrier Cove: rivers, waterfalls, isolation

Although the Tennessee side of the Smokies is more tourist-oriented than the North Carolina side, many park trails are accessible without even entering Gatlinburg. Try the park’s Greenbrier Cove entrance, several miles east of Gatlinburg off Route 321. The bumpy, mostly gravel Greenbrier Cove Road follows the course of the Little Pigeon River. Lined with old-growth red oak, hemlock, maples, and thick stands of rhododendron, it leads to many peaceful hiking trails.

The Ramsay Cascades trail is a strenuous 8-mile round-trip trek. A short, 1-mile hike along the Porter’s Creek trail passes old Appalachian homesites and cemeteries. Continuing two more miles on the Porter’s Creek trail leads to the veil-like Fern Branch Falls. Or veer right up the Brushy Mountain Trail to the top of Mount Le Conte, 6,593 feet, for no-frills lodging and dinner at the national park’s only lodge. Although it lacks electricity and showers, Le Conte Lodge offers views and quiet galore, a perfect end to a Smoky Mountain getaway.