Round trip, Nashville-SmokyMountainsNP-Charleston-Savannah-Nashville. Advice needed.

[splatino]

Hi!
I’m a Spaniard living in NYC and planning a 10-day road trip for this early June (TN, NC, SC, GA). I’m traveling with my wife (we are 32 y/o), and we are used to busy trips. I’ve travelled around the USA other times and people in these forums always help me with nice advice.
Here is my tentative schedule, any comment or suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

The main attractions of our travel will be Nashville, Smoky Mountains, Charleston and Savannah. We’ll spend most of the time there, or driving in between… most of my doubts are in… “what’s in between?”, “are we missing something?”

Day1 - NYC - Nashville, TN (2h flight): spend rest of day in Nashville
Day2 - All day in Nashville.
Day3 - Drive to Knoxville (3h drive). Spend some time in Knoxville downtown. Resume driving, road to Pigeon Forge and Gattlingburg (1h) - sleep near or inside smoky mountains NP.
Day4 - All day Smoky Mountains NP. Sleep in a motel south of the NP, perhaps between Chrerokee, NC and Asheville, NC.
Day5- From Cherokee, NC to Charleston, SC. 5h drive. Anything interesting in between to spend some hours? (besides Biltmore Estate, not really interested). Is it worth to visit Asheville? Sleep in Charleston, SC
Day6- All day in Charleston
Day7- We were planning to spend half a day on the beach. Between Charleston and Savannah. Tybee island (next to Savannah) or any other alternative?. Sleep in Savannah, GA (2h drive from Charleston).
Day8- All day in Savannah
Day9- From Savannah we have aprox 36 hours to return to Nashville, TN (8h drive, trough Atlanta… terrible traffic from what I’ve read in these forums). We can spend a day through Georgia. I’m lost and not sure what could we visit? Atlanta? Skip Atlanta and visit Athens, GA? Chattanooga, TN? Other recommended spots?
Day10- Back to Nashville, flight back to NYC

[AZBuck]

Bienvenido al bordo RoadTrip América foros! Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America Forums!

Your plans look like you should have a nice, relaxed, but experience-filled trip. Finest kind. I can offer the odd bit of advice to help make it a bit more interesting perhaps.

On the drive from the Great Smoky Mountains to the South Carolina beaches, take a look at visiting a little-known national park in the heart of South Carolina - Congaree Swamp National Park.

In Charleston, if you're at all interested in military history, I would recommend a visit to Patriot's Point and then take the ferry ride from there out to Fort Sumter. My wife also really enjoyed the narrated carriage ride she took through the historic neighborhoods. There are a few such and I'm sorry I can't remember exactly which one she took. There are also morning walking tours of the city.

Hitting a beach between Charleston and Savannah is, unfortunately, going to require some extra driving since the main road between those cities, US-17, doesn't really follow the shoreline. I would probably opt for taking SC-174 down past ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge to Edisto Beach State Park to make the most of such a 'detour'.

If you're looking for a more relaxing and interesting drive back to Nashville from Savannah than just taking the Interstates through Atlanta, consider the following. Take I-16 to Exit 90 and pick up US-1 north to Wrens GA, then switch over to GA-17 north. Although it's not the straightest road, GA-17 should be easy to follow all the way up into North Carolina where, after a short stint as NC-69, it connects with US-64 west to I-75/I-24 to Nashville. Besides missing Atlanta, such a route will take you by a number of smaller venues such as Washington-Wilkes Historical Museum, Robert Toombs House State Historic Site, Victoria Bryant State Park and Unicoi State Park, as well as through the Chattahoochee National Forest.

AZBuck

[splatino]

Thanks AZBuck!

We'll definitely include Congaree NP. We cannot miss a NP so close to our route.
Finally, we'll be including Atlanta in our route... just because is so much cheap to flight there from NYC.
This is the 2nd time I get your advice for my traveling plans, thanks a lot!