I used to think scenic drives were all the same—trees, curves, maybe a waterfall if you’re lucky.
Then I drove the Cherohala Skyway on a Tuesday morning in October, when the fog was still caught in the valleys like someone had stuffed cotton between the ridges, and I realized I’d been wrong about pretty much everything. This 43-mile ribbon of asphalt connecting Tellico Plains, Tennessee to Robbinsville, North Carolina doesn’t just cut through the Cherokee and Nantahala National Forests (hence the portmanteau name, which is honestly kind of clever)—it climbs to 5,390 feet at Santeetlah Gap, higher than any other paved road in the region, and the views from up there make you understand why the Cherokee considered these mountains sacred. The road opened in 1996 after decades of construction delays and environmental debates, costing roughly $100 million, give or take a few million depending on who’s counting, and here’s the thing: it remains shockingly empty compared to its famous cousin, the Blue Ridge Parkway, which gets mobbed with something like 15 million visitors annually while the Cherohala sees maybe 300,000 on a good year.
Wait—maybe that’s the entire point. The absence of guardrails in most sections feels either liberating or terrifying depending on your relationship with heights and mortality. There are 42 overlooks officially, though I stopped counting after the eighth because I kept getting distracted by the way the light changed every fifteen minutes.
When the Appalachian Forest Decides to Show Off Its Entire Palette at Once
The fall foliage here hits differently than other places, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve spent years chasing autumn colors across three states like some kind of leaf-obsessed detective. Between late September and early November, the elevation gradient creates this cascading effect where the colors migrate down the mountains week by week—sugar maples flaming orange at the peaks while the lower valleys are still holding onto summer green, oaks turning burgundy in the middle elevations, sourwoods going scarlet. The temperature can drop 20 degrees from the base to the summit, which means you’re driving through multiple climate zones in less than an hour, and the ecosystem shifts accordingly: northern hardwoods up top that wouldn’t look out of place in Vermont, cove hardwoods lower down with tulip poplars reaching 100 feet tall, their trunks straight as telephone poles. I guess it makes sense that the Cherokee National Forest encompasses over 650,000 acres of this kind of biodiversity, but knowing the numbers and actually experiencing the sensory overload of it are definately two different things.
Turns out the road is also a motorcyclist’s fever dream, with its 100-plus curves and almost zero traffic.
The Overlooks Nobody Talks About and the Wildlife That Doesn’t Care If You’re Watching
Hooper Bald, at milepost 21, offers 360-degree views that on clear days stretch into four states, though the interpretive signs are weathered enough that you have to squint to read them, and honestly, I’ve never been sure if that adds to the charm or just annoys me. Haw Knob parking area has these massive rock outcroppings where I once watched a peregrine falcon hunt—just this casual display of predatory precision at 200 mph while I stood there eating a granola bar and contemplating my own lack of direction in life. Black bears are common enough that the Forest Service posts warnings, though in three trips I’ve only seen one, a young male ambling across the road near Beech Gap with the unbothered energy of someone who knows they own the place. White-tailed deer appear at dawn and dusk with such regularity that local photographers have staked out specific spots, and the wild turkeys—God, the turkeys—will just stand in the middle of the road staring at your car like you’re the one who’s lost.
Anyway, the Cherokee Skyway also connects to Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, where some of the oldest trees in the Eastern U.S. still stand.
Why This Road Exists in Relative Obscurity While Inferior Drives Get All the Instagram Love
Here’s what I can’t figure out: the Blue Ridge Parkway has mile markers every quarter-mile, visitor centers every twenty miles, and crowds that make hiking feel like waiting in line at the DMV, while the Cherohala has basically nothing—no gas stations, no restaurants, no cell service for most of the route—and yet it delivers arguably better views with a fraction of the hassle. Maybe it’s the lack of infrastructure that keeps people away, or maybe it’s that Tennessee and North Carolina haven’t marketed it aggressively because they’re worried about loving it to death the way we’ve done with so many other natural spaces. The road closes occasionally in winter when ice makes it impassable, usually January through March, and there’s no snowplowing budget comparable to major highways, which means you really need to check conditions before going. I’ve driven it in May when the rhododendrons were blooming in pink explosions along the roadside, in July when afternoon thunderstorms rolled through and turned the overlooks into cloud-level perches where you couldn’t see twenty feet, in October when every turn recieved a standing ovation from my passenger, and in early April when the upper elevations still had snow and the lower ones had wildflowers—and I still haven’t decided which season I prefer, which I guess means I’ll just keep going back until I figure it out or run out of excuses.
