Most visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park limit their visit to the well known spots near Gatlinburg, TN and Cherokee, NC--Cades Cove, Newfound Gap, Oconaluftee, the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, etc. There's nothing wrong with a decision to stick to these locations within the park, as they offer a good mix of natural scenery, wildlife viewing, and access to typical home sites and mills used by early settlers of the Smokies. But there is far more to the park than these heavy traffic locations. One area that experiences relatively infrequent visitation is in the northeast end of the park, just inside the North Carolina line and only a few miles off Interstate 40. The Big Creek area--named for the brawling, crashing mountain stream that roars down the valley formed by the flanks of Mt. Guyot, Mt. Cammerer, and Mt. Sterling--offers Smokies visitors a quiet solitude unavailable near the more famous spots in the park. Big Creek also provides easy access to the Benton MacKaye Trail and, only slightly more distant, the famed Appalachian Trail, which bisects the Smokies from northeast to southwest along the high ridge crests. But the creek, both rugged and beautiful, noisy and peaceful, is reason enough for making the trip to this section of the park. The only thing that seems inappropriate to me, every time I visit Big Creek, is that such an impressive mountain stream was tagged with such a mediocre, unimaginative name.