smoky mountains
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg
National park system offers everything desired within an hour's drive
Let's cut to the chase: Chattanooga and Asheville, N.C., might have been recognized more as outdoor towns, but Knoxville is just as cool.
Just look at a map. Knoxville lies in the Tennessee Valley, a physiographic region sandwiched between the Cumberland Plateau to the west and the Appalachian Mountains to the east.
Number of visitors at record high
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park marked a record 9.4 million visitors in 2006, up 2 percent from 2005.
The increase was the largest recorded in the past five years.
A total of 9,416,734 visitors entered the park through its three main entrances and outlying areas.
Straddling the Tennessee-North Carolina state line and encompassing 800 square miles of almost entirely forested land, the Smokies is the most-visited national park in the country - attracting more visitors per year than the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and Yosemite National Park in California combined.
