After finishing up in the Great Smoky Mountains, we drove to Chapel Hill! Some of our friends were spending their spring there so we decided to meet up with them.
We went to a softball game the first night:
The next morning, we went to the Carolina Basketball Museum:
We went and got pizza at a place on Franklin Street:
Then we walked around campus afterward:
We ended up playing some volleyball for a bit:
And then we went to Chapel Chill, a new ice cream place, for some ice cream.
And then went back to the house. The boys grilled smash burgers, the girls learned a line dance, and the kids spent lots of time playing in the game room. Another of our friend's husband was here in town for a track meet, so he came over, too!
Then it was time to head back home! We had a great break, but it was tiring!
The next morning we drove to Tennessee to get to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This may have been my favorite park of the trip. I would come back here for a longer period of time for sure. Unfortunately we had some car issues on the way there that made the first couple hours in the park a bit stressful. Miles hiked in this park: 10.5.
Because of the car situation, we started out with an unplanned hike close to the visitor center. One of the hikes we wanted to do was closed for repair until Fall 2026 and another group of popular hikes was on a road that doesn't open until late April. If we've learned one thing from touring several national parks over the last 3 years, it's that you can never plan for weather. Things almost always go in an unexpected way when you're dealing with nature, and we've experienced unprecedented flooding, snowfall, rain/fog, cold, heat, etc. We stayed flexible!
We started with Sugarlands Valley Nature Trail where we saw the John Ownby cabin/homesite. The kids found a tree stump with a smiley face in it.
Then we took the Fighting Creek Nature Trail to Cataract Falls.
Rosie picked flowers at the visitor's center while we planned our next hike. We checked in with one of the trail helpers when we got there asking for recommendations and the woman took one look at us with the kids and tried to discourage us from doing anything we were asking about. We were also a bit stressed about the car so it didn't make for a super pleasant moment. Thankfully I went back to another trail helper who was much more helpful and we were on our way.
The next hike we did was Alum Creek Trail up to Arch Rock. This may have been my favorite hike of the entire trip. I'm so glad we did it! The first person I talked to told us we would never find parking and that it was far too strenuous. It honestly wasn't so I'm glad we didn't listen!
The creek was flowing beside the trail the entire time with lots of little footbridges and climbing opportunities.
It was beautiful!
Arch Rock was so cool!
The hike back down was just as nice!
We stopped at lots of the mini waterfalls.
After this longer hike, we headed out to dinner and then to our hotel room for the evening.
We ate at Bennet's Pit Bar-B-Que.
Ben had lost another tooth and woke up to find $1!
We said goodbye to our AirBnB - great location in Gatlinburg - and headed out to our first hike of the morning.
The first place we went was Clingman's Dome/Kuwohi - the highest point along the Appalachian Trail, and the highest point in Tennessee.
It was quite chilly on the climb if you can't tell!
We found the Appalachian Trail near the top!
The views from the top of Clingman's Dome were beautiful! You can see Mount LeConte in this picture:
The Great Smoky Mountains were beautiful from this angle!
It was fun to see the Blue Ridge Mountains on the southern end, obviously being a little more familiar with them in Virginia.
Heading back down:
We saw some elk on the way to our next destination:
The last hike we did was the Indian Creek Falls Trail in the Deep Creek area at the southern end of the park. This loop had views of 3 different waterfalls along the trail.
First we hit Juney Whank Falls:
Then continued on where we had to climb past some barriers on the trail.
We crossed more footbridges...
Did some climbing:
Went by Indian Creek Falls...
Enjoyed a slow spot by the river...
Rosie spent some time catching butterflies with Owley.
