On Monday PanamaRob and I drove from Dahlonega, GA up through a little corner of North Carolina and then into Tennessee and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The roads going into the park remind me of home because they are very twisty and turny! The drive was a beautiful one. I think North Carolina would be the Jeopardy answer to "This state is the greenest one in the United States." Or maybe, "In this state you can find every shade of green in existence." Tennessee was also very green...
Once we got into the park we drove to the Cades Cove Campground and found a nice site, set up our tents, paid the fee, grabbed a bite to eat at the campground store, then took a drive around the Cove. The one way loop drive is a popular one but since it was a week day we didn't run into too many traffic jams. Cades Cove is usually crawling with tourists and wildlife. We saw dozens and dozens of tourists and deer, a handful of wild turkeys, a rabbit, a pileated woodpecker, more tourists, a coyote, a fox, and five bears in four drives around the Cove. If you go bring your zoom lens because there are lots of opportunities for wildlife photography! There are also beautiful wildflowers, trees (there are more species of trees in this park than all of northern Europe!), meadows, creeks, views of the mountains, and historic cabins.
On Tuesday morning we hiked the 5-mile roundtrip hike to Abrams Falls. We saw only a couple of people on the way in but there were dozens heading in as we were hiking out. I don't know why, but I was surprised how many were not at all prepared to do a 5 mile moderately-strenuous hike! They were wearing flip flops and had no water and obviously didn't see the large sign at the beginning of the trail warning them it would be a 3-4 hour hike.
The falls were beautiful and roaring fast! They were like a mini-Niagara Falls. We saw lots of pretty flowers on the way in and out including Dicentra or Bleeding Heart right at the falls. It was the first Dicentra I'd seen growing in the wild :)
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