Smoky Mountains National Park -- NC & TN View from Clingman's Dome
Primitive Baptist Church -- Cade's Cove
View from Clingman's Dome
October 1: I go home tomorrow, so I wanted to make the most of today and visit my favorite places in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I entered the park from Cherokee, NC. This is not one of my favorite places. Cherokee is so cheap and touristy.
I drove up to Clingman's Dome. It was so clear and very crowded. I realized that I had never been in the park on a weekend before. Especially not a beautiful fall weekend day. The leave are just starting to change a little, but I don't think this is going to be a good color year. The leaves are drying up and starting to fall already.
From Clingman's Dome, I ran into Pigeon Forge for a hamburger. I hadn't had any breakfast and it was getting late for lunch.
I drove back to the park and made a quick right to Cade's Cove. I ended up with mixed feelings about the Cove this time. The number of cars was crazy. It ended up taking me 4 hours to see the 11 miles of the cove. Long lines of cars crawled along and would stop everytime the leader saw a deer. There are a lot of deer in Cade's Cove. I made two official stops: At two of the churches. I stopped several times just to get out of the traffic jam!
I did see lots of deer. Some nice bucks, but the amount of time people were putting into see deer was ridiculous. I saw a flash of a small black bear. It was crazy. All these people stopped and grabbed their kids out of their cars so they could run along to see the bear. I caught a glimpse of it, but wasn't going to join the crowd. I felt sorry for the poor little thing. Also how stupid are some people? It may have been a little bear, but these people must have forgotten that this summer a baby was killed at the park by a bear. These kids wouldn't have stood a chance against even this small bear.
I was getting close to some serious road rage issues, when once again we were stopped at a dead stop for I imagine some more deer up ahead. I pulled over to relax a second and cool off. I looked right next to me and there is a coyote. Not 10 feet away! It was just looking at me. I grabbed my camera and got a pretty good shot as he trotted off!
As I said, I go home tomorrow. It's been a good trip, but "all good things...." Give me a day or two. I want to sum up some of my thoughts, now that it's over. So stop back.
charlene@charlenehottel.com
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