In the Smokies’ bear country, an artistic retreat

The tourist strip is there for a reason. The park is the busiest in the nation with about 9 million visitors a year, and Gatlinburg, on its border, is its chief gateway. So visitors, many of them families, crowd the city’s sidewalks and partake of the attractions.

The leaders of the 200-year-old community have done their best to make the main route through town - US Route 441, which continues through the park to Cherokee, N.C., and the southwestern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway - as attractive as possible. There is a world-class aquarium and legitimate historical sites such as a settler’s cabin. And the foothills surrounding Gatlinburg boast more than 60 art and antiques galleries, craft shops, inns, and tearooms.

Atop one of the hills is Hippensteal’s Mountain View Inn, where my wife and I stayed, a place far more in touch with the park’s wooded peaks, streams, and mellow lowlands than Gatlinburg’s commercial district. Built 18 years ago as a bed-and-breakfast, Hippensteal’s offers 11 spacious rooms, art-filled walls, and memorable breakfasts.

Much of the inn has an artistic feel because it is owned by Vern Hippensteal, 60, an acclaimed painter of the area’s natural wonders and direct descendant (eight generations removed) of Gatlinburg’s founding pioneer family, and his wife, Lisa, 52, also a native, whose family owned a hotel in the center of town.

The two-story inn’s inducements include porches with rockers, a lobby with a stone fireplace and wicker furniture, a well-stocked library, a spacious, glass-enclosed dining room, a kitchen open to guests seeking sweets, and walls adorned with limited-edition prints of Hippensteal’s watercolors, which evoke the harmony and timelessness of the region in vibrant tones.

Each room is distinctive and named for one of Hippensteal’s paintings. “Into the Woods’’ was a fall scene, thus our room was decorated in fall colors. All rooms have queen beds, air conditioning, a reading chair, radio, television, and a whirlpool tub. Hippensteal’s studio on the second floor also serves as a gallery, supplementing two galleries and a frame shop he operates nearby.

Getting to the inn requires navigating a few country roads, culminating in a half-mile-long uphill driveway. The inn is only a few miles from the parklands where black bears have their dens. While we were there another guest stopped to check directions and her headlights illuminated a bear whose size she compared to grizzlies she had seen in Alaska.

“Yes, there’s a bear that’s been sighted on Buckhorn Road,’’ Hippensteal confirmed, explaining that bears will wander about an 8-mile radius around their dens. On our drives and walks in the park, Harriet and I saw only a chipmunk or two.

In their literature, the Hippensteals say they designed the inn as “an artist retreat that evokes the calmness and pleasures of a slower era. . . . We built a place to welcome strangers . . . a warm inviting hideaway.’’

The Hippensteals do not serve dinner, so each evening we drove the few miles into town, where several steak houses satisfy big appetites. But if you’re staying at Hippensteal’s, take a pass on restaurant dessert. There’s always one waiting for you, prepared by the inn’s cooks.

Breakfasts are something else again, nicely served by Hippensteal, who emerges from the kitchen to describe the day’s offering. The meal is served in an airy room with a black-and-white tile floor, marble-top tables, and wicker chairs.

Offerings include the inn’s signature egg dish: a thick slice of toasted sourdough bread with homegrown tomatoes in season, a poached egg, the best bacon, and cheese and alfalfa sprouts. Another day might be a heart-shaped inch-thick pancake with toasted pecans, bananas, strawberries, strawberry butter, and whipped cream, all sprinkled with chocolate sauce.

The meal fortified us for treks into the park with its majestic overviews from mountain heights of more than 5,000 feet, pastoral landscapes including farmlands and historic homesteads, and walking trails and picnic spots alongside gleaming brooks, especially those accessed through the park’s Greenbrier entrance on US Route 321.

Unfortunately, man-made pollutants originating outside the park and trapped by the mountains have lowered visibility in the southern Appalachians, including the Smokies. According to the National Park Service, the pollution - which typically appears as a whitish haze, different from the natural fog for which the Smokies were named - has decreased average visibility 40 percent in winter and 80 percent in summer.

We were lucky to enjoy relatively clear days. When we stepped outside our room at the inn, our park panorama stretched from Greenbrier Pinnacle to Mount Harrison, dominated by Mount LeConte in the middle. The downtown clamor seemed a million miles away.

Charles Ball can be reached at cball@globe.com.