Day 8: Epic last day in Smoky Mountain NP! Bears, picnic, Alum Cave Trail and more

Saturday, March 30

Okay, finally getting around to recapping our LAST day from our Smoky Mountains spring break trip… I was almost done with these and then life got in the way.

I know my dear readers may be “over” this trip by now (sorry!), BUT I urge you to please at least skim through this one! It was such a wonderful day and honestly maybe my favorite day of the trip!

Relaxing morning

I usually try to keep our last day on vacation a little more low-key and relaxing. As in, ideally no early timed tickets or reservations or major plans.

Our last two days had been busy (Blue Ridge Parkway and Biltmore Estate), so I had planned for Saturday to be a final Smoky Mountain National Park day (but just pretty open to do whatever we wanted).

Started with a slow morning- and it was a beautiful one! Weather looked fantastic for our last day, warm and sunny.

We all hit the hot tub with coffee/ tea. I couldn’t believe that NO ONE else in the resort seemed to use the hot tub in the mornings! In fairness, there are 3 big pool/hot tub complexes across the resort, so perhaps we just got lucky and people were using the other ones?

Also, apparently this was opening weekend for the pool! It had been sealed up for winter the whole week, but looked like Friday while we were gone the pool guys opened it up!

I imagined it had to be freezing?! But the boys said it actually wasn’t bad at all and they both swam!

My parents even joined us and the sunshine felt great and I thoroughly enjoyed this whole morning.

BEARS!!

I took a shower and we got ready for the rest of the day. At one point I sent Asher down to get something from the van, and suddenly he came bursting back through the door yelling “Bears! Bears!! Come, quick!!!”

There are definitely lots of black bears in the Smoky Mountains but we had to yet to see any. However, Asher is the one in the family with, let’s say, the tendency to be…. full of it more often than not.

So at first I was like, Uh-huh, yeah sure.

But he seemed more in earnest than usual, so we raced out after him and onto the parking ramp staircase. Sure enough, RIGHT THERE in front of the parking lot were two young black bears romping around!!

They were so close! Yet we were up on the second level staircase, so I felt perfectly safe. This was probably my ideal bear sighting, lol. I have no desire to “bump into one” out on the hiking trail, but this was awesome!

I got some great videos and close up photos. Perfect timing for these guys to stop by on our last day. 🙂

Greenbrier Picnic Area

After that excitement, we headed out for a while. We wanted to do a picnic lunch somewhere. On these types of trips, we always try to do at least 1-2 picnics in fun, scenic spots.

We already had our Dairy Queen “picnic” (lol) the other day, but wanted a more traditional picnic lunch. First up we stopped by the local grocery store and bought food. Important step. Haha.

Next we drove out a ways to Greenbrier Picnic Area, a place I had found on the park map and thought looked good in the photos. It said it was right near a stream and looked scenic.

When we arrived I thought it was perfect! A large picnic area with maybe 8-10 “picnic spots” but only 1-2 were in use- and one big section was totally empty. We scooped up the farthest one in the back and it was just a beautiful setting.

The boys ran down through the woods to the river while we got the food unloaded and set up.

I liked this spot very much and would highly recommend it!

We had cold cut sandwiches on rolls and chips and fruit etc. After some ups and downs with the temperatures all week, this was a really warm day and felt wonderful.

Eventually we packed up the food and all headed down to hang out by the water for a while. That was the beauty of this day- no real plans, no rush. Just enjoy!

The river area was also very quiet- just a handful of people around. I am sure this would be even better with fully bloomed trees.

We all sort of parked ourselves on some big rocks while the boys played around by the water.

There was this one section between a boulder and the shore that they decided to try to build a little “dam”. They worked on this for over an hour! I was personally thrilled to see them just enjoying some good old-fashioned nature like they used to when they were younger.

This was a wonderfully relaxing spot. Honestly could have stayed all day. I was torn, as I still did have a couple other areas of the park I wanted to see, but the boys kept asking for “a few more minutes”.

I did this for quite a while:

Eventually it was getting close to 3 p.m.!, so we dragged ourselves away.

Roaring Fork Motor Trail

One of the major driving “routes” in the park is the Roaring Fork Motor Trail. It’s a 6 mile loop, but is rather steep and is closed during the winter. Well, in my research I had learned that it opened for the season on Friday, March 29 (the day before).

So, I wanted to drive the loop Saturday!

This shot is a bit deceiving- we were definitely not the only ones trying to take advantage of Roaring Fork’s opening weekend.

It’s a beautiful drive, but it’s a one way route on a narrow, winding road. There were quite a lot of cars driving on it, so we sort of ended up in a chain of cars weaving through.

It was very lovely, but maybe a little underwhelming in this early spring season. It’s a heavily wooded area, but without leaves on the trees, it was probably not in its prime yet.

There are several great sounding hiking trails in this area, but many were longer so we didn’t stop. Also some original historic homes/cabins around here, too.

It was good to check this off the list since it’s a well-known park sight but didn’t take too long.

Alum Cave Trail!!! A definite favorite!!

By this point it was already late afternoon. I had really wanted to hike the Alum Cave Trail (one of my personal “must dos” on my list), but it sounded like more of a moderate-challenging hike. Also, to the main point of interest (the bluff) it was at least 5 miles round trip.

Given the time of day, I was trying to estimate if we really had time to do it before sunset. Finally we decided we’d hike at least part of it and see how it was going time-wise.

We dropped my parents off back at the resort since this hike seemed to not be the best fit for them (lots of elevation, more technical difficulties, etc.). (I think they both could have done it if we did it slowly, but given the daylight situation, we were going to have to hurry/ hike pretty fast! So they decided to just relax at the condo and sit this one out.)

Setting off on the hike!

This was just a wonderful hike. Almost the whole trail wound along the stream. So pretty.

There were lots of fun little obstacles like bridges, “ladders”, rocks to climb over, etc.

The first main stop was the Alum Cave, shown below. It’s not really a full cave but the trail goes right through it and it’s really neat looking. Great photo op!

Continuing on… this was about the halfway point. We originally thought maybe we’d only come this far and head back. But I really wanted to ideally make it to the big bluff! We did some mental calculations and looked at how high the sun still was and decided that if we hiked fast we could make it.

At this point the trail really started to go UP.

It was fairly challenging at our fast pace and I think Asher was not particularly thrilled to be racing up the mountain. HAHA.

There were some beautiful breaks in the trees!! Stunning views.

Finally we made it to the final ascent to the bluff:

Whew! Just gorgeous views and some rocks to take a little rest on:

There was this cool angled rock/ overhang type thing that made for great photos, too.

Could have lingered here forever enjoying these views- and we did for quite a while- but eventually we had to head back down.

One perk of the late afternoon timing was that the sun was starting to come down over the mountains and the lighting was fantastic. I love all of these next pics:

Heading back down through the cave, from the other side:

We made really great time on this hike! Definitely beat the posted time at the entrance, in part probably motivated by the idea of NOT ending up in the woods with the bears after dark. LOL!

I LOVED this hike. If you go to the Smokies, DO THIS HIKE! It’s such a great one. 10/10.

Final dinner! Last night of vacation….

We made the drive back toward Gatlinburg and through town.

Stopped back at the condo and cleaned up briefly, got my parents and then headed out for one last dinner.

We decided to keep things simple and just go out for more Mexican food. Why mess with known success? 😉

We had a really nice dinner with some good conversation and reflections on our great week in the Smokies.

Then we finally headed back to get packed up! We needed to hit the road early on Sunday as we were planning to do the whole 11 hour drive home in one day. (NOT ideal, but the trade-off would have been to leave a day early to split the drive up. We debated, but I’m so glad we stayed and enjoyed this final day! It was perfect. It was 100% worth the mild inconvenience of a long travel day.)

Here we are walking back to the van…. only showing this as a little “memory moment” because we parked in this same lot all week. It was only $10 to park vs $20 at all the other lots, because it was a slightly farther walk. We always joked how we must be the party animals in town because usually the lot was quite full when we’d arrive, but by the time we left, it was always mostly empty!! Must be a lot of families with younger kids around already back in bed. 😉 )

The drive home was uneventful, though long… nothing much to write home about!

This was a GREAT trip!! So happy with how it all turned out. I was so apprehensive about the whole crowds thing + peak spring break week, but it was all totally fine. Yes, there were a few minor impacts here and there, but nothing that even remotely ruined our trip.

I loved the combo of lots of nature time and amazing scenery (hiking, national park, Blueridge Parkway), plenty of relaxing (lots of hot tub soaks, chill dinners and drinks out, picnic), some unique bluegrass mountain vibes and views (Anakeesta), some thrilling excitement (Dollywood) and some history/sightseeing (Asheville + Biltmore).

I feel like we fit in all the major highlights of the Smokies and then some! Really, really thrilled with the memories we took away from this trip. 🙂