Every time I make the 500-mile trek north to my childhood home, I feel the tug of forgotten familiarity—the grassy backyard extending to a forest that’s roughly the same age as me, my grandfather’s nature photography hanging on the wall behind the kitchen table, the smell of home cooking, wooden floors, and years of intermingled lives I encounter nowhere else. Springtime in the Smokies elicits
It’s wildflower season in the Great Smoky Mountains, and beneath the long morning shadows at Chestnut Tops Trail near Townsend, Tennessee, Tom Harrington is in his element. We’ve barely reached the trailhead sign before Harrington, a hiking and “wildflowering” aficionado and park volunteer of 25 years, pauses to point out the colonies of purple flowers painting the path—purple phacelia (Phacelia bipinnatifida), a native wildflower whose
The Great Smokies Welcome Center is located on U.S. 321 in Townsend, TN, 2 miles from the west entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Visitors can get information about things to see and do in and around the national park and shop from a wide selection of books, gifts, and other Smokies merchandise. Daily, weekly, and annual parking tags for the national park are also available.
