Mountains and Fields

17 Jan 2025

The roads were clear and the sun was out, so we had a very pleasant trip down to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Unfortunately, most of the campgrounds were sold out or closed for winter, so our choices were between the Cades Cove campground an hour and a half into the park, or the campground next to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. So we went to Dollywood!

We got the tent all set up, went for a quick dinner since the sun was running away on us, and hunkered down for the night. It was chilly! We had to break out our extra blankets for the low of 22° in windy weather!

We woke up bright and early (at 9:00am), and headed up the mountain to see some sights! Halfway to the visitor center they had a great view of the mountains over Gatlinburg.

We had two possible destinations because they had just opened up one of the trails on the mountain that we were looking at, and then an auto-tour that was farther away. So we headed up and found some incredible views of the mountain!

We made it to the top and were in North Carolina for a minute!

We were all dressed and ready to take on the trail from Newfound Gap to Indian Gap and back for a total of 3.4 miles. But then we saw the trail...

It was super frozen, barely visible from the 6 inches of snow and we did not have spikes for our shoes to prevent our inevitable slip off the side of the mountain. So instead, we took a photo of the vista and headed toward greener pastures.

Those greener pastures even had deer! We took the drive out to Cades Cove, a pastoral community from the 1800s before the National Park was created. There's a driving tour to take you around the 11 mile rim road of the community with stops along the way to give you a glimpse of the country life that they lived.

Our first stop was The John Oliver Place, a timber-framed construction built almost like Lincoln Logs, set close to the entrance to the Cove. It was built in the early 1820s and has stood the test of time.

From there, it was time to go to church. Two miles down the winding, rolling hills stood the Primitive Baptist Church, rebuilt in 1887. The original was built in 1827. I especially enjoyed seeing the spot for a wood-burning stove to keep the parishioners warm during sermons. It's the metal plate on the floor. There's a spot for a stove-pipe on the roof just out of frame.

But you can't just have one church in a community of 100, you need at least 2. Cades Cove wound up with 3! Which of them would you choose? The first is the Primitive Baptist, the second the Methodist, and the third the Missionary Baptist. The two Baptist Churches split based on the issue of doing missionary work, which the Primitive Baptists were against.

From there we found the back of the Cove up on a hill with the best view of the day by far:

Next on the tour, we stopped at the milling areas where we got to see how they processed the corn and grains they farmed in the area. The mill here was water-powered and milled everything for the whole community.

The final house we visited was a little short...

And it had a really cool cantilevered barn!

After a long day of peeking into the past, we thought a pastoral dish made a lot of sense, so Sara cooked up an excellent shepherds' pie on the fire.