The Roads Ahead

The best-known road that we drove last week was the section of US 441, also known as the Newfound Gap Road, that crosses Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is a windy little road, ascending to a point near Clingman's Dome, Tennessee, and then descending into North Carolina -- or the other way around, depending on which way you drive it. Verdant beyond belief in early July, the road also has pretty much everything you'd want in a mountain road any time of year, such as winding switchbacks and access to various historic structures and hiking trails. Plus scenic overlooks. A lot of scenic overlooks; after the first few, you quit getting out of the car.

At about Mile 10 (I think), still in Tennessee, there's the Mother of All Switchbacks, a place where the road loops completely around and passes over itself -- or loops around and passes under itself, depending. The warning sign describing this particular bit of road topography is pictured here (see November 10) -- a memorable sign.

I'm astonished that the photographer got a photo of that sign at all, since stopping or pulling over on the Newfound Gap Road is risky business. While smooth (partly repaved in recent years, I read), most of the road has no shoulder, and traffic is heavy. The park is the most popular one in the entire national park system -- 9.4 million visitors in 2007, according to the National Park Service. One any given day in the summer, a large number of that total seems to be on Newfound Gap Road, which made for a number white-knuckle moments, especially at when traffic appeared three and four and five RVs deep on the other side of the road, just as you hit a switchback. Carefree highway, it's not.

Unsurprisingly, Newfound Gap Road passes through Newfound Gap, a location some distance lower than Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the park, but important enough that the dedication of the park was held there on September 2, 1940. The occasion was considered important enough that President Roosevelt himself came to speak, from a platform of stones built for the occasion by the CCC. A plaque marks the spot now; less obvious is the fact that the Tennessee-North Carolina border runs through the site. Through the plaque, I've read, which is a fitting bit of symbolism to mark the cooperation of the two states in putting the park together.

Ann took this picture of the place, with only a little help from me.

Interstate 40, which skirts the park to the east, has its own share of curves, along with enough mountainous landscapes to count as scenic. Like stretches of I-89 in Vermont or I-10 in Louisiana or the Mackinac Bridge, it makes the case that the Interstate system is not completely a bore.

In fact, a little bit more of a bore would have suited me. Along much of I-40 from the park to Asheville, trucks aren't allowed in the left lane, and are required to go slower than cars. The result was long lines of trucks in the right lane -- six or eight. Drivers of lesser vehicles, such as a dark green Sienna all the way from Illinois, either had to hang behind the trucks, or pass the trucks on the left, between them and the concrete barrier, through a couple of serious curves.

Despite their obvious dangers, I-40 and the Newfound Gap Road were good driving roads. Better, however, was a piece of the as-yet unfinished Foothills Parkway, tucked away just north of the park, connecting the town of Crosby, Tenn., with I-40. At five miles or so, it was an abbreviated Newfound Gap Road, with some similar scenery, but almost no traffic. An obscure gem of a road.