{"id":315,"date":"2023-12-30T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/30\/cataloochee-valley-elk\/"},"modified":"2023-12-30T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T07:30:00","slug":"cataloochee-valley-elk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/30\/cataloochee-valley-elk\/","title":{"rendered":"Cataloochee Valley. Elk and Almost Nobody Else."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone floods Gatlinburg. We entered Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the Cataloochee Valley side on a ranger&#8217;s whispered recommendation\u2014narrow road, no RV for the last twisty bit, so we unhooked the toad and day-tripped in the car like sensible people pretending they planned it that way.<\/p>\n<p>Elk grazed in the mist like a documentary budget could not improve. Historic buildings sat quiet. I saw more turkeys than tourists, which is my preferred ratio for a Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Amsterdam by bicycle this is not\u2014though I did almost hit a turkey with the mirror, which felt equally European in chaos. The lesson holds: rent the bike abroad if you must; at home, find the entrance without the billboard.<\/p>\n<p>Ask rangers where they would send their own mother. Go there. Bring binoculars and patience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Smokies side entrance most visitors skip\u2014and the elk know it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road-parks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}