On a frosty morning in early October, two bulls strut their stuff in the Cataloochee Valley. Most of the elk have been contented to remain in the valley proper, and can usually be seen in large numbers both early in the morning and late in the evening in the meadows along the road through the valley. The popularity of the newcomers to the Park is creating some problems for Park management, especially in the area of traffic management. The road into Cataloochee is very steep and narrow, with a number of unguarded dropoffs where a mistake could result in a car tumbling for hundreds of feet down a mountainside. Most of the road is dirt, with only a few miles of pavement that leads to a deadend in the valley. Hopefully, as the numbers increase and the elk move into other regions of the Park (and hopefully someday, into the National Forests around the Park,) traffic into the once secluded Cataloochee Valley will subside. More than anything, I hope that the traffic isn't used by tourism promoters in nearby Maggie Valley to push for a paved Interstate connection. That would spell doom for Cataloochee, turning it into nothing more than an east-end version of the overrun Cades Cove.