Knoxville, TN
Opened 1937. Named for Lt. Charles McGhee Tyson, a Knoxville naval aviator killed during WWI. Tennessee Air National Guard 134th Air Refueling Wing based here. Gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park — the most-visited US national park.
The most-visited national park in the United States — by a wide margin, drawing more than twice the visitors of the Grand Canyon — straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina line along the crest of the southern Appalachians. The "smoke" is real: the dense forest exhales so much water vapor and organic compounds that a blue-grey haze hangs permanently over the ridges. It's one of the most biodiverse temperate places on Earth — over 19,000 documented species, with estimates of many times more, and the salamander capital of the world. The park has no entrance fee (a condition of the land transfer from Tennessee and North Carolina). Cades Cove, a broad valley ringed by peaks with preserved pioneer cabins, and Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee, are the signatures; the Appalachian Trail runs the crest for 71 miles.
Deep in the Daniel Boone forest southwest of London-Corbin, the Cumberland River drops 68 feet over a ledge 125 feet wide — the "Niagara of the South." What makes it singular is what happens at night: on clear evenings around a full moon, the mist throws a moonbow, a lunar rainbow. It's the only predictable moonbow in the Western Hemisphere — the only rival on Earth is Victoria Falls in Africa. The falls face and flow north, which is exactly why the geometry works. From the air it's a white horseshoe of whitewater set in unbroken green ridges.
The largest private residence in America — 178,926 square feet, 250 rooms — built by George Vanderbilt between 1889 and 1895. The French Renaissance château and its formal gardens are clearly visible from the air south of Asheville. The 8,000-acre estate includes farms, forests, and the Biltmore Winery. The sheer scale is difficult to comprehend until you see it from above and realize the building itself covers 4 acres.
The field is literally named Lake Cumberland Regional, and the lake is the reason to come. Backed up behind the 258-foot Wolf Creek Dam since 1951, Lake Cumberland sprawls 101 miles end to end with more than 1,250 miles of shoreline folded into a hundred coves. It's the self-styled Houseboat Capital of the World — the planet's densest cluster of houseboat builders — and on a summer afternoon you'll see whole marinas of them fanned out below. From pattern altitude the water is a sprawling blue oak-leaf shape pressed into the green Cumberland Plateau.