Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the Appalachians

25 June 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks, Environment, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

Clingman's Dome Observation Tower, the highest point both in Tennessee and along the Appalachian Trail, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park © Scott Basford

Clingman’s Dome Observation Tower, the highest point both in Tennessee and along the Appalachian Trail, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park © Scott Basford

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 14.1 million visitors in 2021, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.   read more…

Knoxville in Tennessee

18 May 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  10 minutes

South Gay Street © Brian Stansberry/cc-by-3.0

South Gay Street © Brian Stansberry/cc-by-3.0

Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville’s population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state’s third largest city after Nashville and Memphis. Knoxville is the principal city of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 869,046 in 2019. Knoxville is the home of the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee, whose sports teams, the Tennessee Volunteers, are popular in the surrounding area. Knoxville is also home to the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Supreme Court‘s courthouse for East Tennessee, and the corporate headquarters of several national and regional companies. As one of the largest cities in the Appalachian region, Knoxville has positioned itself in recent years as a repository of Appalachian culture and is one of the gateways to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.   read more…

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