Great Smoky Mountains National Park (NC side) Guide

Everyone funnels into the Smokies from the Tennessee side, which means the North Carolina flank — entered at Cherokee, past the Oconaluftee Visitor Center — is the quieter half of the most-visited national park in America. This is where the elk graze in the Cataloochee Valley at dawn, where Deep Creek stacks three waterfalls along a tubing run, and where the road climbs to Kuwohi (formerly Clingmans Dome), the highest point in the park at 6,643 feet. The blue haze the Cherokee named still rises off the ridges every morning.