Great Smoky Mountains
— — blue ridges, one behind the next.
Not only on a wall.
“The North Carolina side of the park climbs from Cherokee to Newfound Gap and on to Clingmans Dome, the highest point in the range at 6,643 feet. The light comes through the haze in soft layers, ridge behind ridge. The Oconaluftee River runs the valley below. Elk graze the meadows at Oconaluftee in the early hours, and the balsam forests hold the cooler air well into summer.
Great Smoky Mountains, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park covers 522,427 acres straddling the Tennessee and North Carolina border. The North Carolina side is reached through Cherokee, gateway to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center and the Mountain Farm Museum. Newfound Gap Road climbs from there to the 5,046-foot pass on the state line. Clingmans Dome, at 6,643 feet, is the highest point in the park. The park was established in 1934 and is the most visited national park in the United States, with over twelve million recreation visits a year.
The Cherokee word for the range, Shaconage, means place of the blue smoke. The haze that gives the mountains their name is largely volatile organic compounds released by the dense forest, mixed with ambient water vapour. Cool, moist air settles in the coves overnight and lifts in slow layers after sunrise. The park holds one of the most diverse temperate forests in North America, with more than 100 native tree species and a notable belt of Fraser fir and red spruce above 5,000 feet.
Spring runs warblers through the lower coves in April and pushes the wildflower bloom up the ridges into May. Summer is humid in the valleys and cool on the high crest, where balsam forests stay in the sixties at midday. The October leaf change moves down from Clingmans Dome through the second and third weeks of the month, with peak in the lower elevations of Oconaluftee usually in the final week. Snow on the highest ridges from December through March is common but rarely heavy.