Great Smoky Mountain National Park

First off, sorry for the delay gettin this posted, I haven't had a spare minute to update since last week.
Monday night after leaving Knoxville I drove down to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and went on the Cades Cove loop road. It is an eleven mile long one-way loop through a valley. It was beautiful, and I saw quite a few deer, and even a couple of bears. The only downfall is that people would stop in the middle of the road every time there was an animal bigger than a rabbit. I mean, deer are cool and all, but it was a little ridiculous how often there were traffic jams on that road. It was so bad that about halfway through the loop it got dark, so I didn't get to see the second half of the loop, but the fireflies were really cool to watch light up the fields. After getting out of the loop, I drove a ways into the park to a campsite called Elkridge where I set up camp and went straight to sleep.
When I woke up Tuesday morning I got dressed and headed straight out to explore. I started off by heading towards the Park Headquarters outside of Gatlinburg, and on the way I saw a sign for Laurel Falls. I thought it sounded pretty cool, so I parked and walked to the trailhead. Expecting it to be a dirt path, I was barefoot; but when I got there it was paved with asphalt the entire way, which tore up my feet. After hiking the 2.5 miles up to the waterfall, I climbed up and got up underneath it, which felt amazing after the long hike. I was surprisingly the only person who got under the falls that I saw, and there were A LOT of people there. It was a beautiful waterfall, and the hike up was gorgeous, but it was a little too crowded and I didn't like the asphalt. After the hike back I continued on my way to the visitor center where I picked up some maps and information, postcards, and a sticker. They also had a pretty cool museum with taxidermied displays of the different wildlife of the park. I asked one of the rangers where a good place to go to get away from all the crowds would be, and he reccomended going to the other side of the park to a place called Cataloochee. I took his advice and left the visitor's center around 1pm. I decided to take the scenic route that goes mostly through the park instead of going around the park on Interstate. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, and extremely diverse. At about the halfway point I took a side road to Clingmans Dome, which is the tallest point in the park, and sits right on the Appalachian Trail. The trail up to Clingmans dome was paved also, but it was only a half mile. The mountainside is covered with spruce and Fraser Firs. This is actually the only place Fraser Firs grow wild any more due to logging for use as Christmas trees. Once at the top of the trail there is an observation tower that gives 100-mile or more views on a clear day. Unfortunatly pollution greatly reduces this view on most days, and on top of that it had already begun getting cloudy in the distance, so I didn't get to see that far. The view was still incredible though, don't get me wrong. After I got down from the ovservation tower, I walked down the Appalachian Trail for a little ways and then headed back to my car. I then continued on with my journey to Cataloochee by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I finally made it to the Cataloochee park entrance around 7:30, but there was still a long gravel road down to the campsite and trails. Once I got there the first thing I saw was a rabbit in the road that I was able to pull right up next to and take lots of pictures before he scampered off. Then I got into the valley where Cataloochee is and was greeted by a bull elk. I got on the road that goes through the valley, and saw many many elk along the way. I even saw 3 elk calfs and a sharp shinned hawk. I talked with some of the rangers, who said that there are roughly 100 elk in the park since the reintroduction program began in 2001. By the time I had finished driving around the valley it was getting dark, so I made the decision to head back to my camper at Elkridge. Looking at the map I saw 3 different ways to get back: the way I came which took quite a while, go around the outskirts of the park via interstate which was the longest route, but was probably the fastest, or take a road due north to the road that leads to Gatlinburg, which was the shortest distance by far. I decided to take the short way. Biiiiggg mistake!!! It turned out to be a 15-mile gravel road up and down the mountains with switchbacks all along the way. I would have loved to drive it during the day and see all the views, but at night all I could see was the road in front of me. I saw one other car the whole time I was on it, and that was at the very beginning. By the time I got to the north end of the park it was after 11:30, more than 2 hours after I had left Cataloochee, and I still had a ways to go! by the time I got back it was 12:30 and I had put over 150 miles on my car just that day.
I crashed hard and was awoken by a park ranger telling me that I needed to pay for my spot. I had forgotten to pay for the second day, so after I went and paid I hooked up my trailer and headed back to Cade's Cove. This time I dropped off my trailer in a parking lot before I went on the road and talked to a ranger about where I could try to see a river otter. He showed me a trail that was around the halfway point of the road where I could get off the trail and follow a stream to try and see an otter. I drove down Cade's Cove and saw some more turkey and another bear off in the distance. I got to the parking lot for the trail around 12:30 and began hiking, barefoot again. The trail followed the stream for about a mile when the path goes up the mountain and the stream goes around. I went down to the stream and walked along it for a ways until I came to a deep pool where I hoped to see some river otters I sat on a rock in the river and waited and looked around for a good 2 or 3 hours, but I didn't see any otters. I did see all sorts of fish, crawfish, a snake, and lots of birds though. I walked back up to the trail and continued walking up it a ways. Once I found out that I was only halfway to the waterfall and that I couldn't get under it, I decided that I should begin heading back so I could explore other areas of the park. I got back on Cade's Cove loop road and on the way back saw two Pileated Woodpeckers right by the side of the road. I pulled over and watched them and took pictures for about 20 min before going to get the trailer and head for a new area. I headed into Gatlinburg since I was running out of gas and I wanted to get some cell phone service, and I drove up and down the main street a couple of times watching all the tourists. I also went to Ben & Jerry's and got some Ice Cream that was amazing! I then went back into the national park and parked in a parking lot to go to sleep in my car. I woke up rather early, around 9 o'clock, and headed for a new area of the park called Crosby. i got to Crosby and hiked on some of the trails around there, and got to see some old-growth forest with huge trees. I left there around 5 on Thursday afternoon and headed for Blackburg, VA. I got to Blacksburg and tried to find a campground nearby, but there weren't any so I slept in a parking lot again.