The visitor center located at the Cherokee, NC, entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to the Oconaluftee Mountain Farm Museum. Additionally, its fields are home to dozens of elk, the largest animal found in the Smokies. Guests have time to explore the exhibits and gift shop.

The most scenic road in the southeast, this 33-mile route snakes through the mountains as it crosses the Newfound Gap at higher than 5,000 feet elevation. We'll make several stops for scenic vistas.

Built in 1886, this historic grist mill demonstrates how mountaineers ground corn and wheat.

Adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor's Center, the Mountain Farm Museum is a unique collection of farm buildings assembled from locations throughout the national park. Visitors can explore a log farmhouse, barn, apple house, springhouse, and a working blacksmith shop to get a sense of how families may have lived 100 years ago. Most of the structures were built in the late 19th century and were moved here in the 1950s. The Davis House offers a rare chance to view a log house built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s.

We'll be on the look out for elk at several locations around Oconaluftee and the Cherokee, NC, entrance to the park including the Oconaluftee River Trail and other fields and meadows.