The Great Smokey Mountains are just breathtaking. Newfound Gap is absolutely majestic! You can just see forever up there. And Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. I love the mountains. I could never leave them.
I agree wholeheartedly. I once hiked 13 miles on the Appalachian Trail going north from Newfound Gap. As I remember, after a feature called Charlie's Bunion the trail had a lot of ups and downs. Anyway, by the time I returned to the parking lot at Newfound Gap that same day, I could barely walk.
You are probably familiar with another beautiful area, Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest just south of the Smokies near Lake Santeetah. I used to camp there at Horse Cove. Beautiful place, and it has some of the biggest trees on the East Coast.
I once hiked on the Appalachian Trail in New York and came across glacial scours on the bedrock. Pretty neat, but the area wasn't as pretty though as the main ridge of the Smokies north of Newfound Gap. Hard to beat that.
Typo. Santeetah = Santeetlah. And the big trees are on a two-mile loop trail in Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, not in nearby Horse Cove campground.
I agree with your later comment about deserts. One nice place in the desert to visit is Sabino Canyon in Tucson. Visit in the spring when the cactus are blooming and in the morning before it gets hot. The nature trail next to the visitors center is flat and short, and contains more species of cactus than you ever imagined. Sabino Canyon has a tram that goes up canyon for a couple of miles. You can get off at various stops along the route and later reboard the tram.