Bicycling
The best place to bike in the Smokies is Cades Cove. If you don’t arrive on your own bike or carry it on your car, you can rent one from the concessioner there, except in winter. The 18-kilometer (11-mile) loop road is a paved, generally level-to-rolling one-way country road around the cove. It takes you by restored pioneer and settlers’ structures, both log and frame.
Fishing Smokies streams and rivers and the nearby TVA lakes is a popular pastime. Most sought after in the park are rainbow and brown trout.
Pictured here is the brook trout. Please take a good look because possession of any brook trout is prohibited in the park.
Along the way are many pleasant streams, hiking trail access points, wooded stretches, and the Cable Mill area with a small visitor center. The scenery is nothing if not glorious. You look out across the rolling, open meadow to the mountains. And you may see herds of deer grazing. In summer bikers have the loop road to themselves—no cars allowed—on Saturday mornings until 10 a.m.
Biking conditions elsewhere in the park are not generally good. The Newfound Gap Road is steep, winding, crushingly long, and can be full of traffic. Other park roads tend to be winding and narrow as well.
The Cades Cove bicycle concession is located at the campground.