The "Car-Repair-Trip" to Congaree and Great Smoky Mountains

Summit of Chimney Tops, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

So the story of this trip actually starts the day before we left.  I knew that I needed to get an oil change done on the Sorento before we left.  I meant to do so on Saturday, June 6, which was a full week before we were scheduled to leave for our trip.  But I completely forgot to do it that day.  I ended up taking the Sorento to the shop on Friday, June 12, which was the day before we left.  I have all my car maintenance done at AAA Car Care Centers (which I highly recommend, by the way), and they also do a routine maintenance inspection when you bring in the car for an oil change.  The front brakes on the Sorento needed replacing, and they recommended replacing the lower control arms as well.  I told them to do the brakes right away, but I said to hold off on the control arms.  I hadn't heard or felt any problems with the steering, so I figured to get that done when we got back from the trip.  [And yes, from the title you should already know where this story is going!]

And now, the story of the trip itself...

I let W&C sleep in on Saturday morning, June 13, while I packed the Sorento and get things ready to go.  Back in 2024, when we went to Mammoth Cave NP over Memorial Day weekend, we had to cut that trip in half because of massive rainstorms.  We had planned to tour Hidden River Cave on that trip, but that tour was cancelled because of flooding inside the cave.  We ended up going home a full day early, and we vowed to come back at some point to see Hidden River Cave.  Since we were going southeast this year, we decided to swing thru Kentucky and pick up that cave tour that we had missed.  That was merely a one-night stop on our way to Congaree in South Carolina, so I decided to splurge and rent a KOA cabin instead of getting out all of our camping gear for a single night and then packing it all back in the Sorento.  Great decision.  But during the day I had opened the link for the vehicle service inspection that AAA had done.  I had been too preoccupied at work the day before to read it through.  And on that inspection report the mechanic noted there there was play in the lower ball joints and recommended replacing the lower control arms as soon as possible.  [For the mechanically uninformed, the word "play" in this context means "loose," which is NOT good when traveling at high speeds, for reasons that I'm certain you can deduce on your own!].  So I began to think about how I might be able to have that work done while on the trip rather than after the trip.

At any rate, we woke up pretty early on Sunday morning for our 9am tour at Hidden River Cave.  That cave is big enough, although not enormously large, but it boasts the second-largest underground chamber in the United States.  Only Carlsbad Caverns has a larger room than the Sunset Dome inside Hidden River Cave.  That underground room is roughly circular in shape and looks very much like a dome on the inside, hence the name "Sunset Dome."  The tour guide told us that, from our vantage point, the chamber was approximately 200 feet wide and 100 feet tall at it highest point.  Now don't get me wrong, the chamber looked big from where were standing, but not that big.  If you had asked me how tall the dome was as I was standing there, I would have said 60 feet or so, maybe 70.  The appearances were just really deceiving.  And after she told us how large that chamber was in reality, it really changed my perception.  I was just kind of in awe after that.  It was really kind of mind-bending how that worked for me.  In the few minutes that we were standing there looking at that big underground cavern, I went from feeling kinda ho-hum about it to being absolutely mesmerized.  

That cave also boasts the world's longest underground swinging bridge, which wasn't really all that long (only 100 feet), but let me tell you, crossing that swinging bridge was also a really cool experience.  The bridge itself was framed in steel (or maybe aluminum? couldn't tell in the dark), so the bridge itself was rigid.  But the whole bridge hung on cables suspended from steel girders driven into the rock, so the entire bridge swung as a single unit, which created an interesting effect as you walked on it.  It felt more secure than a rope swinging bridge, for sure.  But it felt like what I would imagine it would be like trying to walk around during an earthquake, like stepping on something firmly solid but moving at the same time.  As I'm typing this, it occurs to me that the experience is probably very similar to what it's like walking on board a ship that is tossing on the waves.  Although I'm sure it's much more drastic on a ship.  Anyway, it was an awesome tour.  Not the same experience as Mammoth Cave, but if you're ever in that part of Kentucky, it's definitely worth seeing.

Selfie outside the entrance to Hidden River Cave

View from inside the cave

After the tour, we had quite a long drive to Congaree in South Carolina, and the drive was slowed due to a massive construction delay on I-40 up in the Smokies of eastern Tennessee.  The traffic jam was miles in length.  We were able to circumvent some but not all of it, and we still ended up completely stationary for about 20 minutes at one point.  But I have to say, driving I-40 through the Smokies was pretty incredible.  It's obviously not the same scale as driving I-70 through Colorado, but it gave the same kind of majestic feeling.  The Smokies look velvety green because of all the trees, which is not the same as the Rockies.  And everything is just so much closer to you as you drive along.  The traffic jam was totally worth it to be able to drive that stretch of road.

We eventually arrived at Congaree almost exactly at sunset, which meant that we had to hoof it pitching the tent and setting up camp.  It was hot and muggy, as you would expect of South Carolina in June, and it had clearly rained that day.  [If you don't know, Congaree National Park is basically one giant swamp.  In fact, before it was officially classified as a national park it was called the "Congaree Swamp National Monument."]. I had mentally prepared myself that camping for two nights at Congaree was just going to be pretty miserable.  But actually, it wasn't so bad.  It was definitely warm but tolerable, and the mosquitos were not excessive!

I had done enough homework to know that one full day in Congaree NP would be sufficient for us, and we had two items on the agenda.  The centerpiece of the park is the Congaree River, but as I said before, the whole area is a big marshland.  I had read online that one of the best ways to see the park is by taking a canoe or kayak tour, so that's what we did.  And it was incredible.  Not because of anything particularly flashy…there is no real spectacle in a big swampy forest.  It was just the entire experience of being in a small boat on the river amidst trees 100+ feet tall, in a place that still looks relatively untouched by humanity.  All three of us rated the canoe tour as one of our favorite national park experiences to date.

Congaree National Park is touted as the largest old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in North America.  In simple terms, that means that this particular patch of the southeastern American floodplain escaped being clear-cut for timber during the logging era, so the trees are big because they're old.  The park service has constructed a 2.5 mile boardwalk loop that starts from the visitor center and hovers about few feet above the forest floor.  That experience wasn't as cool as seeing the forest from the river, but it was still so, so cool.  In fact, the three of us laughed on the trip because we kept saying to each other "That's so cool!" over and over again.  That was the beauty and charm of Congaree.  There's nothing there where you would say, "That's AMAZING!" or "Stupendous!" or anything like that.  But there's all kinds of things where you would look and say, "That's so cool!"  And it's not just words, because you really genuinely mean it.  Ordinary things, but a little extra.  Extra-ordinary.

Largest old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in North America

Well, after the canoe tour and boardwalk hike, we went back to the campsite to rest.  And I started working on how I might solve my car problem.  Since I get all my vehicle maintenance done at AAA, I started searching for AAA Car Care Centers around Great Smoky Mountains NP, since that was where we were going next.  Nothing...swing and a miss.  But I did find a full-service AAA Car Care Center in Columbia, about 30 minutes drive away from Congaree.  That settled it for me.  Tuesday was going to be a driving day anyway.  I decided that I would call the shop in the morning, and if they had time to change the lower control arms on the Sorento that day, then I would have it done and we would just wait and drive to Tennessee afterward.  So that's what we did.

We got to the AAA shop at about 9:30, which was fantastic for us.  I had wakened W&C at 7:30, and we had broken camp in almost exactly 90 minutes.  And I have to say that W&C were great about the whole thing.  I hadn't said anything to them about the car beforehand so as not to worry them.  But when I woke them up, I said that we needed to take the Sorento to a shop to get some work done because I'd heard the car making a noise that I didn't like.  It took the shop 5 hours to complete the work, and we mostly waited in the waiting room.  But we did step out for a lunch consisting of of burritos and pizza (because C didn't want a burrito), which was fun and something that we hadn't planned to do.  And since Tuesday was a travel day anyway, the whole thing just felt like a really long pit stop.  We got the car work done, and we didn't have to sacrifice any "tourist" time in order to do it.  It did mean that we got to our campsite at Great Smoky Mountains later than we hoped, but all in all, it felt like an extremely small sacrifice.

We had scheduled four glorious days in Great Smoky Mountains NP, and those days were indeed glorious.  We had a rough plan for three of those days: traverse the Newfound Gap road and associated hiking trails on the first day; drive the Roaring Fork Motor Trail on the second day; explore Cades Cove on the third day; and then do whatever we felt like doing on the fourth day.  So on Wednesday morning, off we went.  First, we got our week-long parking pass from the heavily-crowded visitor center, then we headed up into the hills on the Newfound Gap road.  We first drove all the way to the top, to the very crown of the Smokies, a summit called Kuwohi.  At 6643 feet, it's one of the tallest peaks in the eastern US.  We hiked up to the concrete observation tower, looked around, took some selfies, and ate some snack food.  LOTS of people around.  More on that later.

After that, we knew that we wanted to climb the 2-mile trail to a place called Alum Cave.  Which is not really a cave but rather a large stony bluff on the side of Mt Le Conte, one of the mountain massifs inside the park.  It was a really cool hike, and it was super fun climbing around on the rocks below the bluff.  No grand vistas, but a great climb along a rushing creek, and not too strenuous.  It was late afternoon by the time we were done, so we headed back to our campsite at Elkmont Campground.  A highly successful first day.

The view from Kuwohi

Arch Rock

Alum Cave

The forecast called for clouds and rain on the second day, so we got up relatively early in order to finish the motor trail as early as possible to give us time to do other stuff before the rain hit.  We were planning to make three stops on the motor trail: Ogle Homestead, Grotto Falls, and The Place of a Thousand Drips.  We found the Ogle farm with no trouble, and hiked the very short loop that encircled the old homestead.  Then we kept driving on the motor tail, and eventually came to Grotto Falls.  But by that time the parking lot for the Grotto Falls trailhead was already jam packed, so we kept going on the motor trail and hoped to try again later.  We were expecting a sign for The Place of a Thousand Drips, but there wasn't one.  We got to the end of the motor loop and all said to each other, "Did you see a sign?  I guess we missed it!"  Alas, we had indeed missed it.

Ogle Homestead

We needed to fuel up the Sorento and get a few things from the store, so we went into Gatlinburg, which was, to say the least, a little overwhelming.  The town is not very big but chock full of touristy stuff, more touristy than just about any other place I can think of.  We wanted to get back to the park as soon as we could.  It took a while, unfortunately, but we found everything that we needed (including more reading material for C, who had blown through the book that she had brought along).  By early afternoon we were back in the park without a firm plan for the rest of the day.  We decided to drive the Newfound Gap road once more and catch the attractions we had missed the day before: the Newfound Gap Overlook, Mingus Mill, and the Mountain Farm Museum.  Like Congaree before, none of these three stops offered anything that would absolutely blow your socks off, but again, pretty much everything we saw made us mutter "That's so cool."  

Mingus Mill

Mountain Farm Museum

We returned to the campsite and cooked dinner extremely early, before the rain hit.  And just in time.  Quite literally, I had gotten the very last thing put away when the drops started falling from the sky.  We retreated into the tent at about 5pm, and didn't come out again until the next morning.  It pretty much rained all evening and all night.  Not hard, but steady rain.  We entertained ourselves with backgammon, euchre, and by watching spiders and other wildlife crawling on our tent.  There was even a teeny tiny lizard that we named "Timothy Sebastian."  [Why?  I don't know.]

By Friday morning the rain had passed, and the next two days were sun-shiny with bright, billowy clouds.  We made the drive to Cades Cove and both purchased the paper brochure from the visitor center and downloaded the self-guided road tour on the NPS app.  We spent nearly the entire day exploring Cades Cove, which was brilliant.  In my mind, Cades Cove was the highlight of the park.  We learned that Great Smoky Mountains NP has over 80 preserved historical buildings inside the park, and many of them are in Cades Cove.  Somewhere along the line I had told W&C that there were lots of bears in the Smoky Mountains, and W had made a comment about wanting to see a bear.  While we were driving along on Friday morning, I had whispered a prayer under my breath, "Lord, we'd really like to see a bear!"  Well, that prayer was answered in Cades Cove.  We were on the backstretch of the cove loop when the car in front of us slowed way down and the driver ahead pointed his hand into the woods on our right.  We slowed down also, and we saw it.  A small black bear, obviously a female, waddling along with 4 cubs in tow.  They couldn't have been more than 20 feet away from the road, but up on an embankment and nearly out of sight.  We probably would have missed them if the driver hadn't pointed them out.  And let me tell you, those 4 bear cubs toddling along behind their mother looked exactly like living, breathing, roly-poly teddy bears.  It's in the running for the most adorable thing I've ever seen.  Seriously.

Cantilever barn in Cades Cove

Carter Shields' cabin

Cades Cove

We decided to go back to camp and cool off in the creek, then try to view the sunset from the observation tower on top of Kuwohi.  It was a beautiful evening, although it was actually kinda cold at the top.  It was brisk because a cold front was moving through, which brought a cloud over the summit.  So at the parking lot we had a crystal clear view just under the cloud layer, but then when we hiked the half mile up to the observation tower, we were completely shrouded by fog.  We waited for a good half hour to see if the wind would clear the clouds, and it kinda did, but not really.  We got some really good photos of the sunset through the fog, which was cool, but it felt like a little bit of a let-down.  We stayed up there for as long as we could stand the cold, and then went back down.

Sunset through fog on Kuwohi

We were up on Kuwohi for nearly an hour, and we made an interesting observation while we were there.  Nearly everyone up on the tower at that time of evening was either Muslim or Indian (i.e. from India).  The contrast was stark from when we were up on Kuwohi two days earlier.  It seemed quite obvious that Muslims and Indians were waiting until the end of the day to visit Kuwohi, when the crowds had died down.  I never asked anyone about it, of course, but I gathered that the reason why they waited like that was not because of the crowds per se but because of bad treatment that would go along with the crowd.  I presume that they didn't want to be harrassed.  It made me sad.  We drove back to camp and went to bed.

Saturday was our "free day," and we decided to try to accomplish a few things that day.  First, we went back and found The Place of a Thousand Drips on the motor trail, and clambered around the waterfall for a while.  Then we set out for Chimney Tops, which is a 1400 foot pinnacle of rock that protrudes out the side of Sugarland Mountain above the Newfound Gap road.  It's about a 2-mile hike to the top, with the first mile rising about 500 feet in altitude, and the second mile rising over 900 feet.  And the final quarter mile is a 100+ foot scramble over large (and quite sharp) striated rocks.  It was a fabulous hike, although I could tell that the final scramble was pretty scary for W&C.  They did great.  W even mentioned to me that he felt ready to do a harder hike next time.  I thought to myself, "Hmmm...maybe Katahdin is next?" [That's a famous mountain in Maine, my personal favorite so far.]  We'll see...

Anyway, the ascent up Chimney Tops was definitely the high point of the trip for all three of us.  It was both fun and challenging in all the best ways.  The trail was pretty crowded, but not to the point where it hampered the enjoyment of the mountain.  We went back to our campsite at Elkmont and, in the afternoon, did the self-guided tour of the old mining/resort town on which the Elkmont Campground was later built.  And, of course, that was "so cool."

Many times I thought to myself that Great Smoky Mountains NP was just like Shenandoah NP, but on steroids.  Everything was bigger and grander and better.  And as a building engineer, it was really fascinating to me to see all the preserved buildings.  It was intriguing to see how building techniques developed through the pioneer era as new technologies brought new and improved methods of living the homestead life.  All three of us rated Great Smoky Mountains NP as the highest on our list so far.  

Sunday was our last day.  We took our time waking up and breaking camp, and we were on the road by about 10:30.  We drove through Knoxville on the way back in order to see the SunSphere, and the rest of the travel day was pretty typical.  We made our traditional stop at Cracker Barrel for dinner and got home kinda late, actually...well after dark.  

It was, by all accounts, a fantastic trip.  Really, it was "so cool."  No cap.