2. Great Smoky Mountains

Welcome back to my National Park blog series where I walk you through stories of why I picked locations and fun park facts. Today is all about Great Smoky Mountains national park. These first 8 parks I’m sharing are all a part of my original 50 states project back in 2019. Great Smoky Mountains is shared between the states of Tennessee and North Carolina. It’s pretty rare for states to share the parks but we see it with Yellowstone National Park and Death Valley. Though both have one state with at least a 90% majority. Where Great Smoky Mountains is 55% in NC and 45% in TN. Almost half and half. I always thought the park was majority Tennessee, Sorry North Carolina! Now that I’m working on the national park series paintings I have to decide if I do both parks in the national park space. Thankfully they're both long and skinny enough to fit in the same box in my park tracker.

I’ll probably be painting a new scene for both, something that’s iconic to both states so let me know if you have a favorite sight in the park since I’ll have to pick one for both Tennessee and NC! 

We are still gonna talk about the park because I painted it for TN in my state series, The morning fog laying between the peaks creates a beautiful layered effect. Which is why the Cherokee calls it the Land of Blue Smoke.

The Park was officially established on June 15, 1934. But it had been in the works since 1926, it just took several years for funds to be raised to purchase the land for the park. Now that’s a lesson in patiences paying off As Great Smoky Mountains gets to boast of being the most visited park in all the US. With 800 miles of hiking trails, and a large diversity of animals and plants, you can find beauty around every corner and easily see what makes this park so treasured. You can even spot a bear from the safety of a zip line. Now that’s on my bucket list. I also learned that Great Smoky Mountains is considered the Salamander Capital of the world, being home to 30 different species. There are so many it’s said that on any given day there are more Salamanders than people in the park. Safe to say they're a lot less rare than seeing a bear. I missed the family trip to the Smokies while I attended a music camp in Nashville when I was 16. No.. not that camp... While it’s a bummer to have missed the park I made a dear friend at camp whom I’ve since visited 3 National parks with! So I’ll get into those stories in the future and wait for my turn to visit this park.

Let me know in the comments your favorite views or memories at Great Smoky Mountains if you’ve been there and if you saw salamanders or bears! I’ll be back next time with Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Link to my Great Smoky Mountains Painting!