5 Great Places to Enjoy the Fall in the Great Smoky Mountains

How do you enjoy the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains? The first thing to do is—be here! There is a reason October is the busiest month in one of the busiest tourist destinations in the nation. Fall in the Great Smoky Mountains is spectacular!

I have lived near the Great Smoky Mountains for five years, and I have tried to find the best ways to enjoy the fall. Here’s five great places to enjoy the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains.

1. Laurel Falls Trail. Even though fall is glorious in the Smoky Mountains, one thing we lack is red leaves. Most of our trees turn yellow or orange. So, when you see a lot of red leaves, it really stands out.

I remember the first year I was living in Sevierville. It was an overcast day near the end of October, and I drove into the park to hike in Elkmont in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP). I drove by the Laurel Falls Trailhead on my way, and I noticed something. There were red leaves everywhere. I changed my hike for the day. I hiked up to Laurel Falls and beyond. It is still the most beautiful hike I have done in the park (and I’ve hiked a lot!).

That day, I texted my wife: “Whatever you’re doing, stop, and come to the GSMNP.” I put the same on Facebook. This was peak color at the place of the most varied color I had yet seen. The Laurel Falls Trail is a 3 mile round trip hike on a paved trail. It is a relatively easy hike for those who want to get out and see the colors.

To get there: Go to the Sugarlands Visitor Center in the GSMNP just south of Gatlinburg. Take a right onto Fighting Creek Gap Road. The Laurel Falls Trailhead is 3.7 miles from the Visitor Center on your right.

Tip: if you don’t mind walking in a little bit of rain, an overcast day is a great way to see the colors without all the crowds. The Laurel Falls Trail gets crazy busy. On the other hand, if you’re an extrovert and love talking to people, go on a sunny day and talk to everyone on the way up and down.

2. Newfound Gap Road. If you come to the Great Smoky Mountains in early October, you may be disappointed with the lack of color. Don’t worry! The different elevations of the GSMNP provide color from late September into November. Just go up!

The Newfound Gap Road is essentially the same road as the Parkway in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. You just keep going south. As you go south, you will go up. If the leaves haven’t changed at one elevation, keep going. This road will take you all the way to the stunning views of Newfound Gap. Keep going past Newfound Gap, and you can turn right to go to Clingman’s Dome.

People ask me from time to time, what is the best hike for good views? To get good views on a hike in the GSMNP generally requires a lot of walking. However, you can experience great views of the mountains by simply driving up the Newfound Gap Road. At any time of year, it’s worth driving this road but especially in the fall.

Tip: remember that the change in elevation also means a change in temperature. If you want to walk around at the higher elevations, bring additional clothing or jackets for much cooler weather.

3. Ober Mountain (HT: my friend Art Stump). Ober Gatlinburg is known for skiing, but it has a lot more to offer. It has ice skating, a mountain coaster, shops, restaurants, and much more. One great way to see the fall colors is by taking the aerial tramway up to Ober Mountain.

Ober Mountain has a German theme to it. So, not surprisingly, these folk also celebrate Oktoberfest. You can enjoy traditional German food, drinks, and music.

4. For the ambitious: hike Mount LeConte. As you drive around Sevier County, you can see Mount LeConte from almost any spot. It is the mountain that dominates the southern horizon in our county.

Mount LeConte is a hard but rewarding hike. There are five trails that lead to the summit of Mount LeConte, and they all are at least 5 miles one way with at least a 2500 ft. elevation change. The shortest is the Alum Cave Trail, but it is very crowded throughout the year.

The trails to Mount LeConte feature a variety of panoramic views of the topography and the changing leaves of the forest. Mount LeConte is only around 6,000 feet above sea level, but the contrast with the surrounding area (which is at around 1,000 feet above sea level) is dramatic.

Some people stay in the cabins near the summit of Mount LeConte. Even if you are not staying overnight, you can call ahead and order a meal or purchase coffee, hot chocolate, or lemonade (without calling ahead) at the Lodge. There is also a place to refill water bottles and use the restroom.

Tips: this is not a hike for the faint of heart. Remember to bring appropriate clothing, first aid kits, water, food, and other essentials for a long hike in the wilderness.

5. Local events. There are many events that take place in the fall. The most popular is probably Dollywood’s Great Pumpkin Luminights. Dollywood puts out an astonishing number of pumpkins and fall decorations. The park is open at night, and you can see the pumpkins and other fall decorations lit up. I highly recommend it, but it’s very busy. Dollywood also has their Southern Gospel concerts at this time.

Tip: If you can get to the Great Smoky Mountains early in the week, go to Dollywood on a Monday or Tuesday for smaller crowds. If you like big crowds, go on Friday or Saturday night!

A couple of other events that I enjoy in the fall are First Baptist Church of Sevierville’s corn maze. On the first week of October, First Baptist Church sets up a free corn maze with free food and other activities. It is their way of loving the community. You can find the corn maze directly across from Sevierville City Park (If you miss it, try Kyker Farms’ corn mazes).

Another event that I attend every fall is the Scots Irish Festival in Dandridge. Dandridge is Northeast of Sevierville/Pigeon Forge. The drive along the northern shore of Douglas Lake is fantastic. It will lead you to the small, historic town of Dandridge, TN. This festival always takes place on the last Saturday of September. It is a free festival that features food, music, and Celtic paraphernalia for sale. The small town itself and the location below the dyke make for a great atmosphere. I highly recommend it.

And, finally, don’t forget to just walk around and see the fall beauty around you. Once the color descends from the mountains, you can see beautiful fall views just about everywhere. By late October, my favorite place to enjoy the fall is simply walking around my neighborhood (like in the picture below). Go from wherever you are in the Great Smoky Mountains, walk around, and enjoy the colors and the views of the mountains.

And what about you? Do you feel there’s something I should add to this list? Is there a favorite of yours that I’ve missed? Please add it in the comments below. If you like this post, go to the sidebar (laptop) or scroll down (cellular device) to subscribe to this blog. I will be posting travel articles regularly to encourage you to travel now and explore the world.

In the meantime, enjoy the fall, y’all!

Why Do We Lack Joy, Peace, and Hope? (Study of Romans, Part 2: Romans 1:18–3:19)

Key Thought: a lot of things can take our joy, peace, and hope, but the main problem is our alienation from God.

What is it that keeps us from joy, peace, and hope? Many things. We make many errors in our thinking that cause us to lose these things. We exaggerate threats, make outcomes too important, tie our happiness to the wrong things, don’t see the good that we have, etc.

But Paul saw all these things as rooted in one key problem: our failure to make God central to our thoughts and lives.

We do not do this because we do not know who God is. We do know. He has made Himself clearly known (Rom. 1:19–20). It is because we refuse to take this knowledge into account and give God the glory, praise, and place He deserves. We suppress the truth.

The result is that God gives us over to our own desires. One part of our error and sin is that we want things too much. Because we have given up on that which truly satisfies us (God), we have to try to find satisfaction elsewhere. We become obsessed with other things. We take whatever gives us pleasure and make life all about that.

When we make the pleasures or experiences of life the center of our lives, we will find other people blocking our way. That’s where wars, hatred, envy, jealousy, and rage come from. And that’s where we, as a human race, are stuck.

Into this failure to keep God in our hearts and thoughts as the supreme object of devotion, people offer religion as a way to get God back into our thoughts. God Himself gave a religious system to His people in the Old and New Testaments. However, oftentimes, those who possessed this religion used it to exalt and gratify themselves and clothed their injustice in the righteous claims of their religion. They knew the Words of God. They had them. But they didn’t obey them (see Romans 2).

People will use anything to exalt themselves and place themselves at the center. Ironically, religion can be a means of escaping God and exalting ourselves. We make ourselves bigger by identifying ourselves with the transcendent. This is not a problem simply of the Jewish people, though Paul addresses them. It is a human problem. There is no tool that we use to subdue pride that cannot become a tool of pride.

Why is this? Why do we take the best things and abuse them? Because humans are bent in the wrong direction. They have a sort of acquired allergy to God that keeps them from doing the right thing. Even the people who had the clearest instruction on God went the wrong way, including Paul himself! We cannot not establish righteousness and goodness on our own. We can’t get back to joy, peace, and hope without intervention.

At this point, it is important to remember that our problem is not simply that we cannot be what God has made us to be. God is opposed to what we have become. Sin is offensive to Him. The wrath of God is being revealed against all the bad things people do (Rom. 1:18).

Some people may be offended at this idea, but here is the problem. Would we really want a God who didn’t care that people did bad things? No. We would not want to worship a God like that. We would think He was unjust. The trouble is that we think all the bad things are outside us. Instead, we need to see that they are also inside us. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 and see Paul’s summary of this in Romans 3:1-20).

When we get that, we will understand our need for reconciliation with God and transformation into a new people.

So, what is needed? A righteousness from God. That is what is revealed in the Gospel, the good news. That is what we will explore in the next section.

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Outline for Making Your Own Study of Romans 1–3

  • Paul sees the basic problem as a failure to acknowledge God, think of God, and thank God.
  • This failure leads us to try and illegitimately find our satisfaction in things that can’t satisfy us.
  • This makes us mad at other people and causes all sorts of envy and evil thinking.
  • Religion seemed to be a help to this, but human pride even used this as a tool to escape God and His claims and look down on others.
  • The reason religion (even God-given religion) failed was because of human sinfulness, or our basic bent away from God.

Questions for Reflection

  • Where are you in your relationship with God?
  • What do you often seek to satisfy you? What happens when you don’t get there?
  • What can you use to make you feel good about your relationship with God that might hide your real need?
  • How do you feel about Paul’s evaluation of human beings as sinners?

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Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Joy, Peace, and Hope for Everybody – An Introduction to Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Study of Romans, Part 1: Romans 1:1–17)

Key Thought: Joy, Peace, and Hope are possible through reconnecting with God through the good news about Jesus

Joy. Peace. Hope. Aren’t these what all of us want? 1,900 years ago, a Christian missionary named Paul wrote to the new church in the city of Rome, Italy. At the end of this letter, he wrote a blessing or a benediction. In this blessing, he said, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (15:13). This blessing expresses what He wants to see happen in the people He is writing to. He wants them to experience joy, peace, and hope.

Just think about this for a moment. What if we were the type of person who was filled with joy, peace, and hope? What would it be like to have hope for good things no matter what happened? What would it be like if the disappointments in the world could not shake us from a place of joy and peace? That’s what the missionary Paul wanted for the people in his life, indeed, for people all over the world. He dared to dream that joy, hope, and peace could be realities.

How We Get Joy, Peace, and Hope
He also had a very distinct idea of the types of things that would get people there. The main thing was a focus on God. He wanted them to enjoy the blessing of praising and glorifying God. That is generally the missing ingredient that keeps us from joy and peace. We are made to glorify and enjoy God. When we have God in our sights, every other problem, even if it is real, seems a bit smaller. The people who cause us trouble seem a little bit smaller.

But that doesn’t mean that people don’t matter. His blessing or hope was that people would not only glorify God but do it together. He had a sense that humans were made for each other and meant to work together. Humans can do amazing things when they work together, and they are made to work together. That’s the goal for human beings: joy and peace flowing from a focus on God and harmonious working together.

On every point here, the Christian missionary Paul knew that this is not how things generally were. People are filled with grief rather than joy, worry rather than peace, despair rather than hope. They don’t think much about God, and they often don’t work well together.

So, what is to be done? That’s the message that Paul had to share with the world. He called His message the “Gospel.” The Gospel just means an announcement. In the ancient world it referred to an announcement of a victory, the birth of a prince, or a new king.

The Gospel was all those things. It was an announcement of a new King and a victory that would bring us back to joy, peace, and hope. That King’s name was Jesus. Jesus was a Jew who was born 2,000 years ago. He preached and taught about God and what He called God’s Kingdom. He claimed to be God’s promised Savior of the world and indeed in a mysterious way, the very equal of God and the Son of God. Then, the Roman government put Him to death.

That would just be a strange and peculiar story, if something else had not happened. His disciples said that He rose from the dead. That’s what He had told His followers. He said He would be put to death and come back to life. And He pulled it off.

Paul and the Gospel
Originally, Paul did not believe that at all. In fact, He tried to jail and even put to death those who believed what Jesus said about Himself. Then, one day He showed up in Damascus, Syria saying that Jesus was everything He said He was. From there, He went all over the world founding communities or churches that would believe the same.

What happened? Paul said that he was on the way to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus and there Jesus appeared to Him and spoke to Him from heaven. He was so convinced of this that he never looked back and even gave up his life for the sake of this truth.

Paul, the unbeliever, had become a believer that Jesus was the one that could get people back to glorifying God and living together in harmony and fill them with joy, peace, and hope forever.
That’s what Paul writes about in this letter. Remember that this letter is a letter. It’s not a book written in the abstract. It is a letter written in a particular context.

This book was written to the Roman Christians. Paul had never met them. He had been working for a long time in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. He felt that his work there was done. He wanted to go to the Western part, to Spain in particular. On his way there, he wanted to stop by Rome. He wanted their support and prayers. In a way, Romans is a sort of missionary fundraising letter.

In this letter, Paul explains what he taught all the churches. He wanted to encourage them and wanted them to know what he taught. Of all his letters, this one is the least specific and most general. In that way, it is extremely applicable to us. It does not deal with specific issues in specific churches. It deals with the general issues of humanity and how they are answered in the message about Jesus.

Conclusion
Try to put all this into the context of Paul’s blessing at the end. How do we become people filled with joy, peace, and hope who glorify God and do it in harmony with other people? That’s what this letter is all about. Second, remember that this is a missionary letter. He wants everybody to experience the joy, peace, and hope that come from the Gospel. That should be our focus, too, just as it was that of the Apostle Paul. We should want joy, peace, and hope for everybody.

Questions and Advice for Building Your Own Outline for an Introduction to Romans

  1. Use the benedictions to explain the purpose of this letter and the purpose of the Gospel. What are the five blessings Paul wants people to receive?
  2. What is the means that Paul believes will enable people to become the people His blessing says that they should be?
  3. What did Jesus claim about Himself? What makes His claim plausible?
  4. What is the story of the Apostle Paul and how does it confirm the message about Jesus?
  5. What type of literature is Romans? Who did he write it to? What was the purpose?
  6. How does the missionary focus affect how we read the letter?

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

  1. How are you doing at feeling joy, peace, and hope? What do you think is the way to get to a better place?
  2. Do you think you are glorifying God moment by moment? What does this look for you?
  3. How are your relationships with other people? Can you continue relating to other people when things get tough? Can you help people work to get to a better place?

Addiction and Grace

“To be alive is to be addicted, and to be alive and addicted is to stand in need of grace.” So says Gerald May in his book Addiction and Grace.

That’s not what May would have said in his college days. In college, he moved away from religion and, in his words, “made a god out of science” (5).

This love of science led him to study psychology and eventually to become a psychiatrist. His first job was director of a drug rehab center.

May threw himself into the work with tremendous zeal. The results . . . were disappointing. He was surprised at how often he failed, and he fell into depression.

In the midst of his depression, he met a faith healer at a conference. They had a conversation, and she told him that she believed he was meant to be a healer, too. But then she said, “I wouldn’t take my dog to you, because you think you are the one that has to do the healing” (6).

His response? “These are not the words one might expect to be helpful for a depressed person. But they struck me deep and well” (ibid.).

As he thought, he became open to new directions for helping addicts. He went to several addicts who had turned their lives around. He asked them what had helped them to do so. “All of them described some sort of spiritual experience” wrote May (ibid.).

After a long time of reflection, May was led to apply this sort of thinking to himself. It led to a very simple prayer: “Dear Jesus, help me.” This prayer began to grow within him in the months that followed and eventually he found healing through God’s grace.

He concluded that it’s not a question of whether you are an addict. The question is to what are you addicted and to what extent? He saw his depression as rooted in an addiction to success.

And how could he find healing? He found healing in the grace of God.

And the grace of God can heal us, too.

Why Gossip Tastes So Good But Is So Unhealthy

In conversation, bulldozing is a way of trying to force our viewpoint through without really engaging with people. Failure to listen is also a failure to actually engage with people. Another way we fail to engage is when we have a problem with someone, we talk about that person rather than to that person. This is just one more way that we fail to have the conversations we need to have. As Joseph Grenny, et al., noted in their book Crucial Conversations, “At the heart of almost all chronic problems in our organizations, our teams, and our relationships lie crucial conversations—ones that we’re either not holding or not holding well.” Our society is filled with talk about people, but few people are actually talking to the people with whom they have an issue.

The Bible presents to us a different alternative. It’s basic default is that we should talk to the person that we have problems with. For example, Leviticus 19:17 says, “Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.” Jesus tells His followers, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over” (Mt. 18:15). In Galatians 6:1, we read the same from the Apostle Paul, “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.” When we are concerned about someone, we should talk to that person.

Now, not every issue we have is on the level of what we read in Leviticus, Galatians, and Matthew. There are many lesser issues about which we are afraid to talk. We often struggle even confronting someone who disappointed us in some way, who talked to us in a way we did not like, or did not do something we may have wanted them to do. If the bias on major matters is to talk to the person, how much so on lesser matters?

Why Gossip Tastes So Good
In spite of the obvious benefit of talking directly to people, we often prefer to talk about people instead of to people. Why? Because gossip tastes so good. Proverbs 26:22 says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels, they go down to the inmost parts.” The Message translation and paraphrase makes it a bit stronger: “Listening to gossip is like eating cheap candy . . .”

Why does gossip taste so good?

1. It builds intimacy. When you share your problems about someone else, you feel connected to the person with whom you are sharing them. It builds a connection and a sort of friendship. As Dan Allender put it in his book Bold Love, “It is a tantalizing thrill to repeat words that simultaneously deepen our position of power in an inner ring while we exclude someone else from being part of the group–a double pleasure” (100).

2. It gives relief. One reason we want to share about our problems with other people is because they give us anxiety. Sharing with someone provides relief. That’s one reason people don’t talk to the person they have a problem with after talking about them. They have found relief by sharing it with you, so they don’t need to share it with the person they are concerned about.

3. It refocuses attention. When we talk about other people and their problems, we can avoid dealing with our own. Dealing with our own problems is difficult. Dealing with the problems of others can be a welcome diversion. It also can make us feel better about ourselves.

These and other reasons are why I call gossip the best way not to solve our problems. They do not really solve the issues about which we have anxiety, but they provide considerable relief.

So why not do it?

Why We Shouldn’t Eat It
In spite of the advantages of gossip, we should avoid it. There are many reasons.

1. It freezes the problem; it doesn’t solve it. It makes us feel better, so we are less likely to deal with the real problem. That’s why a community characterized by gossip often explodes. There are all sorts of unsolved issues there.

2. It often makes things worse. The more people talk about another person and not to a person, the more distorted it often becomes. This is like waving a fan over a fire. “Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down” (Prov. 26:20). It just gets worse and worse, and communities quickly become polarized and stuck.

3. People don’t like it. “. . . a gossip separates close friends” (Prov. 16:28). When others find out about it, it often breaks down a friendship.

4. It’s unjust. Gossip generally reduces someone’s reputation without a just hearing. “In a lawsuit the first to speak seems right, until someone comes forward and cross-examines” (Prov. 18:17). Gossip gives one side a hearing without giving the other side of the story.

5. It builds a false connection. Be sure that if someone is talking to you about others, they are talking to others about you. “The one who reveals secrets is a constant gossip” (Prov. 20:19).

6. God’s authority. The Bible forbids it: “Do not go about spreading slander among your people” (Lev. 19:16). This means that we should not go about talking about others and listening to and sharing reports about what other people have done. The idea instead is: “Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt.”

So, there are many reasons not to engage in it or to eat that cheap candy.

A Couple of Questions
The question people have is, what if I need advice on how to deal with someone? Well, gossip is often couched in a request for “advice.” The question I would ask is this. Is asking for advice merely release and relief, or is it seeking real advice?

Here’s how you know. First, does the person giving you advice challenge you as well as encourage you? If they just encourage you, you are not interested in advice. Get advice from those who will help you take a look at your own behavior. Second, does the “advice” ever manifest itself in you actually talking to the person with whom you have a problem? If not, then it’s not advice.

A second question people ask is, what if people come to me seeking “advice” about other people? What should I do? I recommend being willing to listen and encourage and challenge that person. However, I think it is also good to say up front that you will most likely encourage them to talk to the person, and, if they do not, then you may do so. This will change the tenor of the conversation.

Think about it, should I keep just one side of a story in my head and not allow another person to give their side of the story? Even with the best of motivations, this often ends up in distortion and unjust view of another person. It’s better to give all sides their hearing. This is how we move the community forward.

A third question is, what if I find out people are gossiping about me? My advice is, don’t worry about it too much. There is a great little passage in the book of Ecclesiastes. It says, “Do not pay attention to every word people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you—for you know in your heart that many times you yourself have cursed others” (7:21–22). That attitude will serve you well. Most people just don’t know how to actually deal with problems directly. We should be patient with others and ourselves.

Conclusion
Gossip is a part of life. We can’t avoid it. But we can be more deliberate about our involvement in it. If we can learn to talk less about people and more to people, we will make a great contribution to building up the communities in which we are involved in.

What are your thoughts on this? I would love to read them in the comments below. If you like what is written here and want to read more, subscribe below (mobile) or on the sidebar (laptop). Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

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Photo by Ben White on Unsplash