6 Best Sights in The North Carolina Mountains, North Carolina

Soaring to almost 6,000 feet, Grandfather Mountain is famous for its Mile-High Swinging Bridge, a 228-foot-long footbridge that sways over a 1,000-foot drop into the Linville Valley. There are 13 miles of hiking trails and some 100 picnic tables. Part of the area is a state park with free admission, and part is private land—including the swinging bridge, a museum, a small zoo, and picnic areas—with a $20 admission fee.

Bryson City's historic train station is the departure point for the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. Diesel or steam locomotives take you on a 32-mile journey along the Tuckasegee River or a 44-mile trip passing through the Nantahala Gorge. Open-sided cars or standard coaches are ideal for picture-taking as the mountain scenery glides by. Trips are offered year-round, but with very limited schedules January to March. There's a café on board serving basic fare like pizza and hot dogs. Your ticket gives you free admission to the nearby Smoky Mountain Trains Museum and its room-size functional model train dioramas.   During the holiday season, the town booms as pajama-clad families arrive for Polar Express–themed rides. 

Connemara Farm is where the famed poet and biographer Carl Sandburg moved with his wife, Lillian, in 1945; he lived there until his death in 1967. Guided tours of their 1830s house—beautifully reconstructed in 2017—are given by National Park Service rangers. Sandburg's papers are still scattered on his desk as if he had just stepped away for a moment, and there are 11,000 of his books on shelves. Kids enjoy cavorting around the 264-acre farm, which still maintains descendants of the Sandburg family goats. There are also miles of trails.

Many motorists swear that this 43-mile National Scenic Byway rivals the beauty of any comparable stretch on the Blue Ridge Parkway. You're unlikely to encounter traffic, and the solitude found on short hikes to peaks like Huckleberry Knob, a bald with 360-degree views, may be the highlight of your trip. 

This park—established in 1915 as North Carolina's first state park—includes the 6,684-foot Mt. Mitchell, the highest mountain peak east of the Rockies. At the 1,946-acre park you can drive nearly to the summit, where an observation tower provides panoramic views to as far as Clingmans Dome in the Smokies if clouds and haze aren't obscuring the horizon. The summit was named after Elisha Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who died from a fall while trying to prove the mountain's true height.

Covering 12,000 years of history, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian is one of the country's best Native American museums. Computer-generated images, video projections, and sound effects help bring to life events in the history of the Cherokee. For example, you'll see children stop to play a butter-bean game while adults shiver along the snowy Trail of Tears. The museum has an art gallery, a gift shop, and an outdoor living exhibit of Cherokee life in the 15th century.