NC National Park Balsam Mountain (great Smokies Np)

One of our favorite campgrounds and the highest elevation for a campground in the Great Smokies National Park at over 5000 feet. Cooler temps in the summer but you will probably have to deal with thunderstorms and showers. Make sure you are prepared to stay covered, it sometimes does this 2 or 3 times a day. This place is remote too as it is about 18 miles from Cherokee NC and about 25 miles from Maggie Valley, NC. To get to it you drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Heintooga Ridge Road. Once you turn on this road it is 8 miles down it. This is also the oldest campground in the Smokies and it has been one of the best run ones in the Park Service. Since it is pretty remote and to make sure they don't have bear problems, the Ranger keeps good watch over the place so people who don't cooperate don't come back.

It is only open from May to October and it is first come, first served. Usually only fills on the 3 summer holiday weekends. There are 40 sites and these will be dry. There is water available near each of the 2 bathrooms. The bathrooms are flush toilets but there is no electricity so you carry a flashlight after dark of course. Lots of wildflowers and hummingbirds in the summer throughout it. Your wakeup call will probably be a wild turkey. There is a Nature Trail that connects to a nearby picnic ground. Go check out the picnic tables in the upper part of that area, they are made out of giant slabs of granite.

On the drive in you should stop at Black Camp Pass which is where you officially enter the Great Smoky National Park. There is a gigantic monument that built by the Masons which has rocks from all over the world in it. If you go early in the summer, there will be probably be some Elk cows with their calves. They come up the trails from Catalooche Valley each year to give birth there.

You do have a bit of a drive to get to the rest of the park, but you will not have the crowds you have in the rest of the park. Good place to go in early October to see fall color and be away from the crowd. The paved road ends at the nearby picnic ground but continues as a one way gravel road that will take you back to Cherokee. It is very driveable with any vehicle.

Nearby Cherokee is a the Qualla Boundary Indian Reservation. Casino there and lots of other tourist stuff. About an hour's drive to Asheville, NC which is great to visit. Exit 20 on I-40 is the closest access to the Interstate, probably 45 minutes in the winding mountain roads of the Tar Heel State.