Spring must be here. Or nearby. First the bears are coming out of hibernation in Yellowstone, and now Great Smoky Mountains National Park is opening many of its campgrounds.
And, beginning this year Great Smoky will be offering a variety of new concession services to visitors and new facilities will open. LeConte Lodge will provide day hikers and backpackers with an opportunity to buy a prepared bag or dining room lunch, beverages, and baked snacks at the lodge, and Cades Cove Riding Stables will begin offering wheelchair accessible carriage rides and hayrides.
In addition, new facilities nearing completion at Sugarlands Riding Stable include a modern wood and steel frame barn for housing horses, office, and hay shed.
A majority of campgrounds and secondary roads will open starting today. Here's the lineup:
Roads
The secondary roads that are set to open today include: Little Greenbrier, Rich Mountain, Straight Fork/Round Bottom, Forge Creek, and Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.
Clingmans Dome Road is set to open on April 1 and the Heintooga Ridge and Balsam Mountain Roads will open on May 8. Parson Branch Road will have a delayed opening resulting from storm damage over the winter and is expected to open late spring.
Operating Hours for Visitor Centers
The three visitor centers are open daily and the operating hours through March are as follows:
* Sugarlands Visitor Center, near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
* Cades Cove Visitor Center, near Townsend, Tennessee, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
* the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee, North Carolina, hours will be 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
The National Recreation Reservation Service (NRRS) provides visitors an opportunity to make reservations to many federally-managed recreation areas, including the National Park Service, all across the U.S. The system allows campers to reserve specific campsites and to make reservations six months in advance. In addition, group campsites and picnic pavilions can be reserved up to 12 months in advance. To make reservations at three of Great Smoky's developed campgrounds, and all group campsites, horse camps, and picnic shelters, visitors can go to this website or, alternatively, book reservations by calling 877-444-6777.
Campgrounds open on a staggered basis starting March 13. Three of the Park’s 10 campgrounds are on NRRS from May 15-October 31: Cades Cove, Elkmont, and Smokemont. Cosby Campground has a limited number of reservable sites through NRRS. Camping fees are $14 per site at the smaller, more primitive campgrounds, and $17-$23 at the larger campgrounds.
Campers have an opportunity to camp in “generator free” campsites at three campgrounds: Cades Cove, Elkmont, and Smokemont campgrounds. Campers can reserve a site in the generator-free loop sections of Cades Cove and Elkmont campgrounds. At Smokemont, while there is no separate generator-free designation, loops A, B, and C are managed as tents only and are generator-free, and RV campers who prefer a generator-free site may reserve a site in those loops.
Group Camping will be available at seven campgrounds snd reservations must be made through NRRS. Group camping is available at Big Creek, Cataloochee, Cosby, Deep Creek, Elkmont, Cades Cove, and Smokemont. The cost for group camping ranges from $26 to $65 per site/night.
Horse Camps at Anthony Creek, Big Creek, Cataloochee, Round Bottom, and Towstring will open April 1 and reservations are only available through NPRS. The horse site fees are $20 at all horse camps except for Big Creek, where it is $25.
Picnic Areas
There are 10 first-come, first-serve picnic areas. Open all year are Big Creek, Cades Cove, Chimney Tops, Cosby, Greenbrier, Deep Creek, and Metcalf Bottoms. Collins Creek Picnic Area is scheduled to open today and Heintooga and Look Rock are scheduled to open on May 8. The park’s largest picnic pavilion at Twin Creeks opens on April 1 and reservations are required through NRRS only. Twin Creeks fees range from $35-$75 depending on the number of people. In addition, picnickers can reserve five other picnic pavilions on NRRS. They are located at Collins Creek, Cosby, Deep Creek, Metcalf Bottoms, and Greenbrier picnic areas.
The cost is $20, except at Greenbrier where it is $10.
Horseback Riding
The opening dates for the three horseback concessions located on the Tennessee side of the park are:
Smoky Mountain Riding Stable is open and the Sugarlands Riding Stable and the Cades Cove Riding Stable will open on March 21. In addition to horseback rides, which cost $25 per horse per rider, Cades Cove Riding Stable will offer their customary carriage rides and hay rides, but later in the season one of the new offerings will be wheelchair accessible carriage and hay rides. The Smokemont Riding Stable in North Carolina will open April 1 and will continue a service started last year that provides visitors with a chance o experience a horse-drawn wagon ride along the route of the historic Oconaluftee Turnpike.
LeConte Lodge, accessible only by trail, will open on March 23. Reservations are required and can be made by calling 865/429-5704, fax 865/774-0045 or e:mail [email protected]. One night at the lodge costs $110 per adult and $85 for children 10 and under (tax not included). The price includes two meals--dinner and breakfast. For the first time this year, day hikers and backpackers can purchase a prepared bag or dining room lunch and snacks/beverages at the lodge. Reservations are required for the dining room lunch.
Campground Concessions
The Cades Cove Campground Store is open. The store provides groceries, camping supplies, firewood, ice, vending, limited food service, souvenirs, and bike rentals. Continuing a service that was new in 2008, the Cades Cove store has multi-speed comfort or mountain bikes available for rent, in addition to single speed cruisers.
The Elkmont Campground concession will open March 13. The concession provides firewood, ice, and vending of soft drinks, newspapers, and snacks.
CAMPGROUND SCHEDULE
North Carolina:
Smokemont............$17 per night, except $20 between May 15-Oct 31; Opens today
Balsam Mountain.....$14 per night, opens May 8
Deep Creek............$17 per night, opens April 1
Big Creek................$14 per night, opens today
Cataloochee.............$17 per night, opens today
Tennessee:
Cades Cove............$17 per night, except $20 between May 15-Oct 31; Open year-round
Elkmont..................$17 per night, except $20 between May 15-Oct 31; Opens today. Riverside sites are $23 May 15-Oct 31.
Cosby....................$14 per night, opens today.
Look Rock..............$14 per night, opens May 8
Abrams Creek........$14 per night, opens today.
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Comments
Good grief. Another Great Smoky Mountains Story? Are you their PR person or something. 15 stories on the front page and 4 on the Smokies. In fact, it seems most stories are Smokies, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, or Olympic with a few smatterings of other sites thrown in from time to time. How many of the 391 areas have never had a top story?
I know you can do better to be more inclusive. You have shown that you have an understanding of the breadth of the system. Let's have a more equitable range of stories. (For example, lots of parks have summer jobs and summer interns, not just the Smokies)
Well, I suppose you could look at it that way, Rangertoo, but I don't think it's as one- or two-sided as you make it out to be.
In the last week -- March 7-13 -- while there have been four articles on GRSM and two on Yellowstone, there also have been posts on Voyageurs, Zion (2), Grand Teton (2), Bryce Canyon, the Waco mammoth site, Glacier (2), Valley Forge, Glen Canyon, Cedar Breaks and Yosemite. We've also written about the massive lands bill that affected a handful of parks, including Pictured Rocks, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, and Zion; the NPS ban on lead, and delisting of the gray wolf.
Go back to the first of the month and you can add in stories that touched on Grand Canyon, the National Mall, the prospect of Mount St. Helens in the park system, Chiricahua National Monument, Arches, Acadia, Blue Ridge Parkway, Scotts Bluff NM, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, Jean Lafitte National Historical Park & Preserve, Fort Moultrie National Monument, Saguaro NP, Olympic, Mount Rainier, and Buffalo National River.
Seems like a pretty good mix, no?
And don't forget, these stories are 100 percent volunteer developed. There's no full-time Traveler staff checking with each of the 391 units on a regular basis (although at times it feels like that).
All that said, it's not terribly surprising that Yellowstone and Great Smoky turn up at a higher percentage than other units. They are two of the most popular parks in the system, and so there's a great deal of interest in them out there, particularly when bears are coming out of hibernation and campgrounds are opening. Both also have full-time public affairs offices to churn out press releases, something not many other parks have.
But the bottom line is that we do try to cover the entire park system, and will keep your comment in mind as we move forward.
Kurt,
Thanks for the reminder!
I camped at Cosby last year. Absolutely loved it there!
I think it is great that hikers and backpackers will be able to get food and drink at LeConte. This will be most welcome to folks that do LeConte in a day. I am sure that backpackers that are passing through will appreciate it too.
Since these are the popular parks and they will have the most interest. Since there is no staff to visit all the parks and post stories I think we are lucky to have the informative articles.
I like know about the new amenities and lunches and horseback riding and the camps. Thanks for the article.