I Returned to Great Smoky Mountains National Park 

Great Smokey Mountains has a special place in my heart, my family rented a log cabin there a while back and it sparked my love for travel. I'm glad your second time there was better!

I don't understand why people wouldn't like Teddy Roosevelt NP. My brother sister and I went this summer before my sister had to start teaching, and it was great! Caprock Coulee Trail was my favorite part. Definitely top 20 for the moment. And better than Badlands NP. Which pains me to see ND beat my home state of SD. My sister loved the wild horses. (BTW the Biden Administration is trying to remove them because they are a domesticated animal or something stupid like that. Guess they don't realize that buffalo can also be a domesticated animal too. I hope the removal is stopped). We ran into some wildlife that was not appreciated. Or I should say my brother did. Returning from the petrified forest trail, he walked right next to a rattlesnake in the grass. He jumped a couple of feet into the air when he heard the rattle. I was able to take a quick picture of it as it slithered across the path. We found out that my brother is petrified of snakes. Then on the end of the 2nd day, as we were returning from Sperati Point, my brother saw ANOTHER snake in the grass! From now on, if we are hiking someplace where there could be poisonous snakes, he will not be allowed to lead. Next fall, I am thinking about seeing Craters of the Moon NM, Great Basin NP, and Capital Reef NP. Would love seeing videos on those places!

Always great to see a new video from national parks wild!

I mean its not a bad national park its just way overcrowded for what it is. BTW if you ever come back to Tennessee Big South Fork is an absolute must, absolutely amazing place

Happy to hear you had a better experience this go around! I still think you need to plan a day to hike up the summit of Mount Leconte sometime. I've been up eight times and it's still a very serene and memorable experience every time I go. Charlie's Bunion and Ramsey Cascades are top contenders as well.

Try the Alum Cave Trail!

Next time try out alum caves and chimney tops.

The thing about every national park is that the more time you spend there, the more you love it (usually). For example, if I ranked all of the parks, the Washington parks would all rank top 5 (Olympic #1).

Rank lists are subjective. Everybody has their own opinion. When I watched the ranking video I got the impression that you preferred deserts, western parks and hiking. That being said, I hope you went on a hike other than Laurel Falls? It’s one of the shortest, easiest hikes around. The Smokies may not have the highest mountains, the biggest waterfalls, but it has some of the best hikes around, including one of the more difficult sections of the Appalachian Trail. I know most people just “drive through” the park but I encourage everyone to get off the beaten path and away from the tourist spots and spend a day hiking, or a few days backpacking. It truly is worth it.

Just out of curiosity, have you hiked Mount LeConte / Alum Cave yet? If not, I think you may rank GSMNP even higher.

We like GSM a great deal, but like you would not rank it above a number of western parks that we love. You did get to two of our favorites--the other being Clingman's Dome. We have been here more than any other park because we live within 6 hours drive and we always enjoy it, but if we lived within 6 hours of many other parks they would get our visits.

2:38 Or, you could say, it was a beary unique experience!

Awesome video you should make a video on your secrets to doing so much traveling like how to afford it

Thanks for sharing your experience. I grew up near this park and visited several times a year. It was much better 50yrs ago. The last time I visited, the sound of motorcycles almost everywhere I went drove me crazy. Beside that though, it is still a great place to visit. For me it is in the top 25 or so of the parks. The western parks are by far my favorites. I live in Colorado now. 😁

Glad you had a better experience! I rank Great Smoky Mountains high because it is so large and there is a good combination of different kinds of experiences that are easy to access inside the park. Scenic overlooks, scenic drives, remote hikes, crowed hikes, waterfall hikes, and definitely the best mountains outside the west coast. You also can see very different things inside the park. That said, I think the location does admittedly add to it. I like that you can be immersed in one of these nature experiences during the day and then at night/next day be in a touristy but fun urban setting enjoying a steak dinner and going to Dollywood. To me it just makes it overall more fun and unique then many other national parks that I have gone to. So I guess it just depends what you value to come up with a ranking, but for me I put it top 15 for those reasons. I do put it lower if going at real peak season as I do find it crowded to a ridiculous point in those times.

Hike Mount LeConte, or at least get to Alum's Cave. It's one of the best hikes in the entire eastern US, and I guarantee it'll make your ranking even higher. What makes this park great is the numerous amount of fun trails, hidden waterfalls, jaw-dropping views, animals, etc. It's a big park so you need plenty of visits to take it all in. I love hiking through the eastern forests, it just has a different feel and smell to it....

Great smokey mountains is a personal favorite of mine even though it's fairly crowded. Off topic here but as a national park RU-vidr I want to hear your opinion on whether sleeping bear dunes and pictured rocks national Lakeshores should deserve the national park rank as I believe so that they do

You got some nice footage. We’ll be visiting there in April on our way to Acadia NP from Texas.

I am so glad you could go back and have a better time. My family really enjoys your videos, especially regarding the wildlife you have seen in each park. We are heading to Great Smoke this summer and are excited to see what it offers. We have found it hard to rank the parks we have visited, for they have all been fantastic. Mainly because of the tips and highlights you have shared with us

I went to Great Smokey Mountains with my mom’s entire side of the family because it made for roughly equal travel time for everybody, and had a great time, although it wasn’t really because of the park. It was so incredibly crowded, so much that it actually prevented us from getting to certain trails, but we went to Laurel Falls (I think) which was an interesting hike what with all my young cousins and our 5000 new best friends on the trail, and saw a really cool snail, and that was the only hike we did, but we got to play in a creek somewhere near the park and hang out in the Airbnb, so overall I have positive associations with it anyway. It was a beautiful area to be sure

Hey Eric, nice to hear from you!!! I’m glad that you went back to the Smokies and got a better take on it. I’ve been to 9 National Parks so far and the Great Smoky Mountains is by far the best one I’ve been to so far. I went to New River Gorge for the first time this summer. That was an absolutely great experience. Thats my 2nd favorite so far, very close to the Smokies. I posted some videos from there on my channel if you want to check them out. Those videos, along with other National Park videos are in my National Parks Playlist.

Glad to hear you had a better experience this time around! I personally rank it pretty high but I do agree most the parks out west are better. And yeah Cades Cove is the best place in the park fs