Scenic pullout · Great Smoky Mountains National Park
An easy four-space stop for a photo beside the parkway sign.
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The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Great Smoky Mountains Tour Guide
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Great Smoky Mountains National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
See the Great Smoky Mountains audio tourRecorded for this area
Flowers Before the Leaves“Spring flowers can have a deadline: the trees leafing out overhead. In the Smokies, plants called spring ephemerals take advantage of sunlight reaching the forest floor before the leaves shade them.”
Plays on the road 0.2 mi from Foothills Parkway West Welcome Sign in the Parkwolf Great Smoky Mountains Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
The Foothills Parkway West Welcome Sign is a small roadside photo stop near the parkway’s Walland end. Four parking spaces sit at milepost 17, with a curb cut and sidewalk to the sign. Stop for a picture beside the entrance sign; if the mountain views matter more, continue to one of the parkway’s overlooks.
The pullout sits on the 14.75-mile, one-way Walland-to-Wears Valley section. A parking tag is required if you park in the Smokies for more than 15 minutes. The sidewalk and curb cut are the useful access details at this stop.
The older Chilhowee-to-Walland section opened in 1968 and reaches US-321 near Walland after 16.6 miles. The newer Walland-to-Wears Valley section was completed in 2018; it climbs to nearly 2,500 feet near Caylor Gap, with winding viaducts crossing valleys and expansive views of the Smokies and Wears Valley. This sign is a small stop along a drive built for those views, so keep going if you have time.
Wildlife
1,569 sightingsBlack BearMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
900 sightingsElkMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
13 sightingsBald EagleMost seen around 9 AMSighting map
142 sightingsTimber RattlesnakeMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
26 sightingsBobcatMost seen around 8 PMSighting map
42 sightingsRiver OtterMost seen around 7 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Great Smoky Mountains. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
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The audio tour guide for the drive, plus offline maps, trails, and wildlife heatmaps for when the signal drops.
