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Places to go in Tennessee.

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6 places

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Mountains

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Gatlinburg, TN · Great Smoky Mountains

The most visited national park in the country, Great Smoky Mountains drapes the Tennessee, North Carolina border in blue, misty ridgelines, old growth forest, and some of the richest biodiversity in North America. Drive the Newfound Gap Road over the spine of the Appalachians, chase waterfalls on easy trails, and roll through Cades Cove at dawn for black bears, deer, and weathered pioneer cabins. Entry is free, and the park stays open year round, with spring wildflowers and fiery autumn color drawing the biggest crowds.

Cades Cove Mountains

Cades Cove

Townsend, TN · Great Smoky Mountains

A wide green valley ringed by the hazed blue ridges of the Smokies, reached by an 11-mile one-way loop that the herds of deer and the occasional black bear treat as their own. John Oliver's 1820s log cabin and three plain white pioneer churches still stand in the meadows where families farmed for more than a century. Come at first light, before the cars stack up, when fog is still lifting off the grass and the mountains are doing exactly what the name promises.

Clingmans Dome Mountains

Clingmans Dome

Bryson City, TN · Great Smoky Mountains

At 6,643 feet, this is the highest point in Tennessee and in all of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the half-mile paved climb from the parking lot earns you a 360-degree sweep from a spiral observation tower that looks like it spun up out of the spruce-fir forest. On a clear day the blue-hazed ridges stack to the horizon for a hundred miles; on a hazy one the fog rolls through the silvery Fraser firs and you understand where the Smokies got their name. Bring a layer, since it runs ten to twenty degrees cooler up here than down in Bryson City, and time it for sunset if you can.

Ruby Falls Caves

Ruby Falls

Chattanooga, TN · Lookout Mountain

Ride a glass-front elevator 26 stories down inside Lookout Mountain, then follow a winding passage past stalactites, columns, and rippled flowstone to the payoff: a 145-foot ribbon of water dropping through a dark limestone shaft, the tallest underground waterfall open to the public in the country. Leo Lambert found it by accident in 1928 while digging toward another cave, and named it for his wife Ruby. The falls get lit in shifting blues and greens at the end of the trail, which sounds gimmicky until you are standing 1,120 feet under the surface watching it come down.

Cumberland Caverns Caves

Cumberland Caverns

McMinnville, TN · Cumberland Plateau

Tennessee's third longest cave runs more than 27 miles under the Cumberland Plateau, but the moment everyone remembers is the Volcano Room, a vaulted chamber where a crystal chandelier rescued from a 1920s Brooklyn theater hangs 60 feet over the floor and live bluegrass fills the dark. Walking tours pass the Hall of the Mountain King, a passage nearly two football fields long, while the Lanterns and Legends tour cuts the lights and hands you a flame to read the formations the way the first explorers did. It earned National Natural Landmark status in 1973, and between the wild rooms, the underground concerts, and the lantern-lit history, it lands on the short list of caves worth the drive.

Fall Creek Falls Lakes & rivers

Fall Creek Falls

Spencer, TN · Cumberland Plateau, Middle Tennessee

Fall Creek Falls drops 256 feet in one clean plunge, which makes it the tallest freefall waterfall east of the Mississippi. Fall Creek pours off the Cumberland Plateau and free-falls the whole way into a shaded gorge pool, so there is no cascade or stair-step here, just one continuous ribbon of water. From the paved overlook you get the full head-on view about a minute's walk from the lot. To stand at the base, take the steep 0.35 mile trail into the gorge (0.7 miles round trip) and save energy for the climb back, which regains the plateau rim in a hurry over rock and root. Flow runs strongest from late winter through spring. By dry late summer the falls can thin to a narrow thread, so time a visit after rain. The park charges no admission, and the overlook road stays open year-round.