We started our 8,000 mile milestone birthday adventures on Friday, July 22 with our first stop of many being the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We are parked at the RV “Resort”, Camp Riverslanding for a few nights which is located about 30 miles (over an hour’s drive time) to the park’s several entrances. Wifi is spotty in the entire area and non-existent in the park. Kinda nice unless you’re trying to upload pictures or work on a blog.
The campground isn’t too bad…we’re really packed in here, though and every space is filled. The downtown area of Gatlinburg is like Myrtle Beach on steroids…people and shops and entertainment EVERYWHERE. We’re actually staying in Pigeon Forge but the two towns are right at the park entrances side by side.
When we arrived on Friday we drove to Cades Coves, a farming community within the park. It’s an 11 mile one-way loop road that takes you by 18 historic spots along the road. It’s a great road for biking but we left my helmet in the coach so that will be for another day. We drove the road and went by historic churches, trails, home places, blacksmith shop, cantilever barns, mills, etc. It was an interesting and informative drive and we hope to repeat on our bikes before leaving. Here are a few things we saw on the ride…
Our first hike in the park was the Grotto Falls Hike. It was a short, moderate hike (really pretty easy, not moderate as the hiking books said) up to a cool grotto where you could actually walk behind the falls to cool down. The trail was easy to follow, no scrambling up rocks, or steep climbs; great hike for a first one! And the reward was at the end because the falls were beautiful and the hike along the way with the rushing water was cool and pretty as well.
You can see how clearly marked the hike was and how easy the trail was to follow. Plus, there were lots of people and noise along the trail. No bear sightings!
After this hike and lunch, we drove to Clingmans Dome; the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains. The elevation was over 6,000 feet and since home is about 700 feet and Florida 7 feet, we could feel the changes in the altitude and climate immediately. At the top of the dome is an observation deck where you could see a panoramic view of 360 degrees. The walk to the deck is only a half mile, but it was STRAIGHT up and took about 30 minutes to walk it. The dome is the highest peak in Tennessee and the third highest in NC. The dome straddles the boundary line between NC and TN and it’s the highest point along the Appalachian Trail (AT) a 2,174 mile footpath that runs from Georgia to Maine.The highlight for me was walking along the AT for a bit just to see what the path was like. We met a young lady who has done parts of the trail and learned lots about what life along the trail is like. It takes most people 5-7 months, with hiking daily, to conquer the trail. The pictures below show the observation deck and views from it.
The AT uses white blaze marks (see on the trees) to mark the Appalachian Trail. There is about one white blaze every 70 feet for a total of 165,000 blazes on the trail. Since the trail is so well marked, many hikers don’t carry a map they just carry a guidebook.
The video below shows a little bit of the Appalachian Trail that I walked along. It’s not as wide or beaten down as the ones we’ve walked before…making it more primitive to me.
Tomorrow we will spend day 2 at the park, then off to the next new adventure after that. More hiking tomorrow and bear hunting too!!
Camping Konneys 