West of Asheville, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK is the most visited national park in the US. It straddles the border with Tennessee. In summer and fall, the North Carolina approaches to the park are every bit as clogged with traffic as those in Tennessee, and all accommodation can be booked up weeks in advance.

The largest of the possible bases for touring the park is CHEROKEE , where a few Cherokee managed to hang on when the tribe was "removed" along the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma in 1838. Now known as the "Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation," they have a small reservation on the edge of the park, which derives its main income from tourism. As a result, Cherokee itself is a mass of fast-food restaurants, cornily named motels, moccasin retailers and tacky giftshops - and the requisite casino. It's an odd place, where the presentation of Native Americans as noble savages all but equates them with the "cuddly" bears of the park as just another novelty for tourists.

Away from the kitsch and cliché, however, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian at the north end of town (mid-June to Aug Mon-Sat 9am-8pm, Sun 9am-5pm; Sept to mid-June daily 9am-5pm; $8; tel 828/497-3481) has good archeological displays and sections on Cherokee arts and history - including Sequoyah's invention of a syllabary in 1821, to preserve the oral Cherokee culture in writing. Qualla Arts and Crafts, across the street, is a Cherokee-run co-operative selling traditional crafts, principally basketwork. Nearby, the Oconaluftee Indian Village (mid-May to late Oct daily 9am-5.30pm; $12) is a reconstruction of a mid-eighteenth-century Cherokee village. Amid the log cabins, you can see demonstrations of weaving and basketmaking, as well as crafts and skills that have long since died out, such as dugout canoe construction and blowpipe hunting. During summer months an outdoor drama, Unto these Hills , re-enacts the Cherokee plight from Hernando De Soto's arrival to the Trail of Tears ($14; tel 336/725-5325). All three attractions can be seen by purchasing a value-ticket for $22 at any of the locations and can be spread over a series of days.

Cherokee is not much of a place to stay ; though the motels are fine, there's not a single passable place to eat, and it's unbelievably dead between about October and March - and as a reservation town, it's also entirely dry. If you need to stay nearby, you're better driving on to Maggie Valley, but if you're stuck, the visitor center (daily: June to Oct 8am-9pm; Aug-Oct 8am-6pm; Nov to mid-June 8am-5pm; tel 828/497-9195 or 1-800/438-1601), in the center of town, lists more than fifty motels; the central Cherokee Plaza (tel 828/497-2301 or 1-800/535-4798, fax 828/497-7834; $35-50/$75-100) overlooks the river. Incidentally, nearby, look out for the great sign at the Pink Motel , 34 Highway at 441 North Ave (tel 828/497-3530; $75-100), a 1950s Tinkerbell, swathed, of course, in fairytale pink.

The Oconaluftee visitor center , the headquarters of the North Carolina side of the park, is a short way out of Cherokee along US-441 (daily: summer 9am-7pm; fall & spring 9am-6pm; winter 9am-5pm; tel 828/926-1686, ). It has good displays on Appalachian farming life, and a re-created pioneer village. Fifteen miles east, the small community of MAGGIE VALLEY boasts a string of motels with peaceful views over the valleys - one of the cheapest, the Riverlet (tel 828/926-1900; $50-75), on US-19, overlooks two streams and has a pool. It's all rather tranquil here, with trout farms, wooden shacks and clear, fresh air. Tourism focuses on hillbilly culture, with lots of hoedowns and the like, but if you're really desperate for kicks you could head for the nearby Ghost Town in the Sky , where a chairlift sweeps you up to a hokey Wild West re-creation complete with a saloon. During the last weekend in July, Maggie Valley hosts an International Folk Festival .

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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