The National Park Service said the Great Smoky Mountains National Park had nearly 886,000 visitors in May — the most ever in any May. The number was up by 10.5 percent, or more than 86,000 people, from May 2012.

Year-to-date visitation is down by 5.5 percent from the five-year average, however. For the first five months of 2013, the park recorded just more than 2,506,000 visitors. That was 273,000 fewer than in the first five months of 2012.

Newfound Gap Road, which connects Gatlinburg, Tenn., the park’s busiest entrance, with Cherokee, had been closed from Jan. 16-April 15 while construction work was done to repair a major landslide. That caused a large drop in visitation for most of this year.

Visitation for Entrances:

Gatlinburg:                 277,703

Townsend:                 136,087

Oconaluftee:              166,067

Outlying areas, including Cherokee:  306,103