From a Smokemont pad the view is a picnic table, a fire ring and trees on every side. Through the summer the air under them stays warm and damp well past supper, and with no showers and no cell signal, the week settles into the campsite. Every day out starts on Newfound Gap Road, which climbs from the campground's 2,198 feet to the 5,046-foot gap on the Tennessee line, where the air turns cooler and the overlook pull-off is the stop every family makes at least once.
Over the top, the same road drops into Gatlinburg, 27 miles from Smokemont, so the Tennessee side of the park becomes a long day out with the night back on the same pad. That's the shape of a rig week in the North Carolina Smokies, one site and one setup, with every day pointed up the mountain and back down by supper.
Smokemont's paved loops and driveways take motorhomes up to 40 feet and trailers up to 35, which leaves room for the motorhomes families rent for a week. There are no hookups, so the fresh tank, the batteries and the holding tanks carry the stay, and the campground's own dump station handles the morning you pull out.
The campground runs on reservations, so the site is the first booking and the rig is the second, sized to those limits. Groups traveling in two rigs should know the park allows one RV or trailer per site, which means a second motorhome needs its own reservation, ideally next door.
Cherokee and the Raven Fork for a hookup week
Summer at Smokemont's elevation is hot and humid, and plenty of families answer it with a few nights down in Cherokee, where a riverbank pad on the Raven Fork keeps the air conditioner running through the afternoon. The kids fish the river, and the evening ends at the heated pool instead of the fire ring.
Cherokee Family Adventure RV Resort is that riverbank park, with full hookups at 50, 30 and 20 amp and pull-through and back-in sites that welcome big rigs. The Cherokee KOA has back-in full-hookup sites at 50 and 30 amp on concrete pads near its pond.
A Cherokee night works as the first stop of the week too, with the rig hooked up and cooled down before the dry nights start. Smokemont is six miles up US-441 from Cherokee, so the move to the park pad the next afternoon is a short one.
Cataloochee and Balsam Mountain for a shorter rig
Cataloochee feels like the far corner of the park, reached on a winding gravel entrance road with steep drop-offs, no guard rails and the occasional horse trailer coming the other way. The Park Service holds RVs and trailers to 31 feet there, so the site gets reserved first and the rig is sized to it.
Balsam Mountain is the high one, at 5,310 feet, where summer days rarely climb past 70°F and the restrooms have no lights, so the headlamps come out after dinner. Its paved driveways take rigs and trailers to 24 feet, and if that limit or a trip for two points to something smaller, the smaller-rig Smokies page covers Kuwohi, the Oconaluftee elk and Maggie Valley.
Neither campground has hookups or a dump station, so arrive with tanks emptied at Smokemont and count the dry nights against them. As of October 2026 both are still open, and both close for winter, Balsam Mountain from mid-October to mid-May and Cataloochee from late October through April. Deep Creek, at the park's edge by Bryson City, takes rigs to 26 feet and gets its own week, Nantahala Gorge included, on the Bryson City RV page.