9/1/25 

Hello everybody! My name is Nell! I am 11 years old, and it is my family's goal to visit all the national parks before my brother, and I graduate. We live in Houston, Texas and it is hot as balls here! we love leaving Texas for the summer to get away from the heat, visit family, and of course go to national parks. School just started and that means summers over. We had quite the summer. this summer we visited 7 national parks. Zion (Utah), Arches (Utah), Canyonlands (Utah), Bryce Canyon (Utah), Capital Reef (Utah), Glacier (Montana), and The Grand Canyon (Arizona). They were all so beautiful. Each day I will tell you about each one. Those are also not the only ones we went to. 2 years ago, we went to Dry Tortugas (Florida), Biscayne (Florida), Everglades (Florida), and Great Smokey Mountains (Tennessee/North Carolina). and finally, 3 years ago, the first national park I ever went to was Gateway Arch (Missouri). Today I am going back and talking about Great smokey Mountains. First off, when we went, we stayed in a duplex house with some of our friends who own it. The house was in a small rural town, called Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was beautiful town with lots of wildlife but what was even more spectacular was Great smoky Mountains. before you panic, it is called that because it is so foggy it looked like smoke. We did lots of hiking. My favorite was a hike up a mountain that was almost hollowed out by landslides (my guess). We also did lots of experiences. We went on a very steep, paved walk that took us to a lookout point very high in the sky. it was so foggy we could barely see. We also went to an amusement park in the sky (kind of an amusement park). we had to take a gondola ride to get to it. It had food from different places, sky walk, and mountain coasters. For those not familiar with mountain coasters, they are roller coasters that instead of going up and down, it goes down very fast with sharp turns. All of the trip was incredible but the thing that put it over the top was, when we were at the house a baby black bear came up to the house! it was something I will never forget. Thanks for reading!