If you are returning to Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge from Cades Cove, try exiting the park toward Townsend and driving the beautiful Wear Cove Road back to U.S. 441 at the north end of Pigeon Forge. Perhaps the most bucolic scenes in the Smokies are to be seen from the Foothills Parkway between Interstate 40 and Route 32 near Cosby, around the northeast tip of the park. Here you look out across beautiful farmland with the whole mass of the Smokies rising as its backdrop. Only three sections are currently open to vehicle traffic. Completed sections of the Foothills Parkway are open year-round, weather permitting.
Uncompleted sections are open to pedestrians, bicyclists, and equestrians.
At the west end of the park there is another section of the Foothills Parkway between Chilhowee and Walland. The parkway is administered by the National Park Service. It provides beautiful vistas of the northwestern Smokies, including Thunderhead Mountain, highest peak in the Park's western half. Many of its south facing overlooks peer over Happy Valley, into the Smokies, and beyond. Its north facing views oversee Maryville, Knoxville, and the Great Valley.