Monday, October 22
The Little Pigeon River runs behind the RV park and provided a nice reflection photo this morning on our way out. We left the RV park and slowly, very slowly drove through Sevierville (pronounced severe'-vuhl), Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee on the way to our destination of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. May we mention that, that particular stretch of road is 20 miles of a tourist's dream? Good grief! Every kind of shop, restaurant or entertainment facility you may be looking for (including hemp shops!) is there. It literally took us 45 minutes to go that 20 miles! Traffic was stop and go when it moved at all, and there were people everywhere! We thought we would be safe on a Monday, but we were wrong! Yikes! Then it dawned on us that this was probably due to the fact that this is National Gospel and Harvest Celebration time at Dollywood, which we found out when we arrived at the RV park yesterday, as well as the fall leaves turning. No wonder there are so many people!
We determined right then and there to travel a different direction when leave Great Smoky Mountains park. Narrow roads with cars parked on the sides and a wide truck do not compute. However, there were a couple of Christmas shops that Geri wants to go back and visit another time and a boots and jeans shop that Bruce wants to check out, so we'll be driving into town again. Oh ya, and maybe a stop at Carino's. It's a great Italian restaurant that used to be in Casa Grande where we winter. The chain had some problems and only the franchised restaurants are still open. Yum!'
Today was our first trip into Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The Sugarlands Visitors' Center was our first stop to collect a stamp, of course. We hit the jackpot and collected two. One was the standard stamp, but the second was a "Trail of Tears" stamp, which "commemorates the survival of the Cherokee people despite their forced removal from their homelands in the Southeastern United States in the 1840s." There was Christmas music playing at the VC! Is it that time of year already?! Yikes!
The Cherokee described these mountains as shaconage, meaning "blue, like smoke." They farmed the land and built log homes. The Cherokee tried to adapt to the Europeans, but the newcomers took their land. During the 1790s white settlement began in the lowlands and climbed the hills as eastern farmland became scarce and commercial agriculture migrated to the Midwest. The Eastern Band of Cherokees now lives on its reservation next to the national park. Most tribe members are descendants of those not forcibly removed in the 1830s.
Wow is all we can say! Words and pictures cannot convey the beauty we found. The colors are glorious!. We have found the profusion we came to see! These shots were taken from the first pullout we came to. Magnificent! The temp was 75 degrees with a little humidity. Felt very much like Hawaii. Nice and toasty.
All three of the following pictures were taken at the same pullout. The sun popped in and out sometimes giving us a brief second to take a picture. The contrasting colors are simply amazing! Looks like a jigsaw puzzle, doesn't it? You can see the fog laying over the mountains in this picture. That turned into heavy fog with mist and rain further up the road. Here's a good example of the fog that got thicker and thicker as we climbed to over 5,000 feet. No idea what this vine is, but it's a leech. Well, maybe not a leech but it smothers the trees. What's so interesting about this vine is the size of the leaves. They're huge! It takes over trees and plants in the park similar to the grass-like plant we saw in Death Valley that was doing the same thing. Blue mountains. An appropriate name for these hills with fog and clouds hanging over them. We drove through mile after mile of beauty in the park, but especially on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Our drive today followed Hwy 441 right through the middle of the park. We took a left after the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on the south side and followed the Blue Ridge Parkway to the east out of the park.
The Blue Ridge Parkway begins north of Cherokee NC on US 441 near the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The scenic parkway follows the crest of the mounts for 469 miles, all the way to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
And we made a mental note of 11' clearance on the tunnels. Ha! The trailer would lose the top nearly 2' of it if we tried to go through there. No place to turn around. That would have been ugly. Further proof that we should stay on freeways when we have the trailer behind us.
Have you ever been through a tunnel filled with fog? We did! It's like one of those rides at Disneyland or someplace. Eerie. Waiting for something to pop out at you. Whatta trip! This day was an awesome introduction to the park.
Friday, October 25
"You're kidding, right? We're actually going to get up now?! It's only 6 a.m.!," she muttered. "Yep, c'mon Babe," he replied. "Oh alright," she whined. Our hard-core Yellowstone friends are all laughing their behinds off as they read this 'cause they get up earlier than that for days on end to watch wolves and bears, and we're whining about a one-day early get-up. Go for it, folks! This is too close to what we used to do when we were working. R-E-T-I-R-E-D! Early wake-ups don't compute.
Last time we were in the park, we decided to get up at this ungodly hour and beat the traffic. Ha! Little did we know! A clerk at the VC on Monday told us the busiest time of the day is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or so. Okay, we'll get ahead of that we thought. We saw what traffic was like during those hours and didn't want a repeat performance. This is the most visited national park in the country, and we've seen first-hand that it's true. We left the trailer at about 6:45 and reached the park about 7:15. Traffic wasn't too bad, but it was rush-hour and people were moving right along. Yea! Discovering the by-pass around Gatlinburg helped a lot, too. Through the darkness we twisted and turned on the winding road toward our destination, and about 45 minutes later we were at the beginning of the Cades Cove loop.
Cades Cove is a lush valley surrounded by mountains and one of the most popular destinations in the Great Smokies. Deer are almost always sighted in the fields, and observations of other wildlife, including bear, Wild Turkey, and fox are possible.
This 11-mile loop is a one-way, narrow road with very few pullouts and it was packed with vehicles! Yep! Packed! Bumper to bumper, stop and go to the Cades Cove Visitors' Center. Ridiculous! You know what the hold-up was? Deer! Freakin' DEER! Wherever there were deer, there were people on the side of the road and in the middle of the road taking pictures and there were deer everywhere! What would these people do in Yellowstone?! The sun wasn't even up sufficiently to take any decent shots, and here we are stuck in a traffic jam. At that low elevation, the color wasn't very spectacular on the trees either to form as a good backdrop. Had their been more light, there could have been some nice pictures. Yes, we're spoiled and everything is a matter of perspective but jeez!
Did we mention everyone was taking pictures of deer? :-) We took this picture while still in our truck at one of the deer jams. Onward we drove to the VC at Cades Cove and made a much-needed pit stop. Continuing on the loop, the traffic jams almost ceased to exist and that made for a much more pleasant drive. We saw more deer, a few squirrels scurrying about, a couple of flocks of wild turkeys, a few of the original cabins scattered about and the sun beginning to break over the hills. No, we didn't stick around and wait for good light to take pictures there. There was a hike we wanted to take to Laurel Falls. Having risen from the comfort of our bed at 6 freakin' o'clock in the morning, this was not going to be an all-day stay in the park. So, off we went to find the falls.
Beauty is everywhere in the Smokies, and we found this scene on our way back toward Laurel Falls. On our way to the hike we wanted to take, Geri developed stomach problems and we missed taking the hike. But our consolation prize was a wonderful drive beside a lovely river and seeing a waterfall we missed when coming through this morning in the dark.
Unnamed pretty little falls offset by the colors of fall. We could see this from the road. Outstanding! The amount of traffic and people everywhere in this area finally got to us. No kidding when we say the main thoroughfare is like Vegas' strip. It's amazing. So we'll be leaving for South Carolina on Sunday. There should be some fall colors on our trip to that state and a new national park to explore, and that will be fun! Stay tuned . . .
Congaree National Park in South Carolina
