It’s a spectacular drive northward along Highway 441 from the small town of Cherokee on the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Gatlinburg on the Tennessee side. In the lower elevations, the spring wildflowers of mid-March, mostly trillium, pop from the ground offering bits of color that soon disappear the higher you climb toward 5,046-foot Newfound Gap at the center of the park. At the highest elevations, patches of snow and ice among the fir and spruce trees prove that winter still hangs on.
As you approach Gatlinburg on Highway 441, you pass near a trail called Chimney Tops. It is here you see the first signs of the massive wildfires that ravaged East Tennessee and Great Smoky Mountains National Park this past autumn.
Chimney Tops, as it turns out, is ground zero, the place where the human-caused fires first began to smolder. The trunks of the trees, their tops bare in winter, are solemn and scarred black in places, but undergrowth is fast returning with the mild weather that enveloped the Southeast during January and February.
Four months after the last flames of the wind-whipped, drought-fueled monster wildfire were finally annihilated by firefighters and doused by rain, glorious rain, the phoenix that is Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville is rising from the ashes amid the shadows of the Smokies.
Because of the intense international spotlight the wildfires thrust upon this vacation haven for honeymooners and families alike, some believe that the entire area was completely obliterated and that there’s nothing left.
But that’s oh so untrue.
This entire East Tennessee region is alive and well and completely thriving, and its message is essentially this: Come on down. Or over. Or up. Fly in. Drive in. Even hike in. We’re open for business, and we welcome you with open arms.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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