Eclipse Trip -- Great Smokey Mountains National Park

One of the last things on this epic adventure, but among the first we had put on our to do list when first making plans, was the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  We stayed overnight in Cherokee, North Carolina, then drove to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center, arriving just as they opened.

Mountain Farm Museum

The Visitor Center was fine, but even better was the adjacent Mountain Farm Museum, a working farm made of various turn of the century farm buildings that had been moved to the sight.  Unfortunately most of them were closed, but we had the whole place to ourselves so had plenty of time to walk around and check things out.  Well, we were almost alone.  Being there early did give us the opportunity to see some local wildlife, a ground hog.

Some of the farm buildings with the ground hog in the foreground

I could not tell for sure what it was in the middle of the open area, but as I tried to get closer for a shot with my cell phone it looked like a very chubby rodent.

The ground hog starts retreating as I try to get closer for a pic with my iPhone, but he doesn't seem too concerned

   I am not sure what ground hogs eat, but he looked very well fed.

Ground hog munching on something

I presume farms in this area, i.e. out in the middle of nowhere, at the beginning of the 1900s had to be largely self-sufficient.  This farm had pigs, chickens, apple trees, a vegetable garden, and a corn field. It was interesting to see how they even stored ashes for making soap.

I don't know if the other members of our family who are currently making soap use the floating egg test for strength of the lye, but it would be interesting to see how that aligns with using pH paper.  :)
 

Ash hopper

Mingus Mill

Our next stop was only a half mile up the road, Mingus Mill.  Mingus Mill is an operating gristmill.  The mill was completed in 1886 and is still in its original location.  In place of a wooden water wheel this mill uses a small steel turbine, making it one of the most advanced mills in the Smokey Mountains when it was built.

We enjoyed talking to the person on site who was grinding corn while we watched.  We bought a bag of cornmeal, but found out later it was actually ground in a similar mill in Pigeon Forge.  Apparently it is impossible to maintain the cleanliness standards required by the Health Department at this mill and also be able to demonstrate how the mill works to visitors.

I was also surprised to see the "Keep Refrigerated" listed on the bottom of the package when I went to use it several weeks later.  I guess that is because there are no preservatives.  Despite it not being refrigerated, I used it to make cornbread per their suggested recipe.  The cornmeal is a bit coarser and more irregular,especially in color, than what I usually see from the store, but I would not define it as "coarse".  I don't know if their recipe is typical of what would have been done at the turn of the century.  At the very least I would have expected them to use an iron skillet rather than a pan.  In any case, I had never cooked anything with real buttermilk before.  Whether realistic or not, the final product was very good. 

Elk

We enjoyed learning about the mill, but still had miles to go so we set off up the Newfound Gap Road.  We had only gone a very short distance when we encountered cars parked haphazardly and people running everywhere.  There was a sizeable herd of elk in the open meadow beside the road.

By the time we got stopped, the large male had moved back into the woods.

Huge male elk

However, the females were still munching on grass out in the open.

I thought these were cows, but is the one on the left with horns a young male??

The cows did not look abnormally large, probably like large deer.  However, the male was enormous.  I am not sure whether it was him or another male close by, but we heard one of the males bugling.  That was cool!

All of them eventually wandered out of sight into the trees, so we climbed back into the car and headed onward.

Clingmans Dome

One of the iconic images associated with Great Smokey Mountains National Park is the observation tower on Clingmans Dome.  Clingmans Dome is the highest mountain in the park and the third highest peak east of the Mississippi at 6643 feet.  The guidebook indicated that the observation tower at the peak allows access above the trees for a panoramic view out to 100 miles on a clear day.  Note that the operative phrase is "on a clear day". More on that in a moment.

Is it something we were capable of doing?  Clingmans Dome is at the end of the seven mile long Clingmans Dome Road followed by a 0.5 mile hike up to the summit.  I couldn't find out much ahead of time about the hike other than it is very steep.  We weren't sure what to expect, but the trail itself.  was listed as paved so we thought we would drive out to the parking area and check it out.

The weather below had been fine.  However, at the parking lot and above we were in a cloud.  The weather was not bad, but it was very damp and there was not much of a view.  We had come this far so it seemed silly not to at least try to make the trek to the top.  Upward we went.

Looking down the trail.  It doesn't look nearly as steep here as it felt on the climb up

As we made our way up the paved trail (actually more like a road than a trail) our legs were not tired, but we still had to stop multiple times.  We are not used to being at this altitude.   Even at the start of the hike we were at 6325 feet according to my gps. 


We just kept going and finally made it to the top of the mountain and then to the top of the observation deck.  At 6699 feet it was an elevation gain of 364 feet in half a mile.

The view was not great, but it was still worth the effort to get there.

View from the observation deck

Looking down on the trees and the ramp leading up to the observation deck

The forest at the top with its cooler temperatures and high rainfall is a spruce-fir forest, similar to what is found in central Canada.  It was obvious there were many dead trees.  A European inset pest was accidentally introduced into the U.S. about 1900 and first discovered in Smokey Mountains National Park about 50 years ago.  It has already killed more than 70% of the mature Fraser firs in the park.  

But I don't want to dwell on the bad things about this hike because overall it was very good.  One of the highlights was the opportunity to hike on the Appalachian Trail...at least for about 6 feet or so. :) 

Yes, the sign does say Appalachian Trail.  I guess it would be a more convincing pic if I were wearing hiking boots rather than tennis shoes.

On our way back down we really enjoyed all of the flowers along the side of the trail. 

 Some of them were attracting huge numbers of bees.

I don't know what this plant is, but the bees sure loved it.

I should add that we were very lucky to make it to the top of Clingmans Dome when we did.  I only found out after we returned home that the trail and the observation tower were supposed to close on Wednesday, August 23, and remain closed for the remainder of 2017 for repairs.  We were there on Friday, August 25, in blissful ignorance.  Fortunately the closure was delayed at least for a couple of days and we made it to the top!


 Lunch at Chimneys Picnic Area

We had had a full morning of adventures and we were beginning to get hungry.  Fortunately I discovered early on there would be no place to buy lunch once we got into the park.  Therefore we scrounged around the night before in Cherokee for the makings of a picnic lunch.  I had also discovered early on that Chimneys Picnic Area was considered by many to be the best picnic area in the park.  It was right along our route, so it looked to be perfect. 

Again we lucked out.  The name comes from Chimney Tops, a mountain nearby and the location of one of the most popular hiking trails in the park, although steeper and more difficult than what we would want to tackle with our bad knees.  As it turns out, the summit of Chimney Tops was where the huge fire started in November, 2016, that eventually devastated parts of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.  A newly renovated trail has only very recently (October, 2017) been reopened.  I have since read that part of the Chimneys Picnic Area was burned in the fire, but we did not see evidence of that when we were there.  In fact, the only areas of fire damage we saw were some of the hillsides while while driving along Newfound Gap Road after leaving the picnic area.

Map from the Visitors Center showing the area of the 2016 fire

I really enjoyed our stop for lunch.  It is obvious from the layout that the Chimneys Picnic Area used to be a campground.  There are 68 picnic sites, with parking immediately adjacent to each site.  The West Prong of the Little Pigeon River runs through the picnic area, with some sites immediately on the river.  (I did not know there was a Pigeon River!  Guess that is where the name "Pigeon Forge" comes from.  Duh!)

Sorry...caught you with your mouth full.

Although the sign on the middle of the picnic table warned about feeding the bears, we did not see any.

Sign on the picnic table at Chimneys Picnic Area.  Fed bears become nuisance bears which must often be euthanized.

However we did see a very aggressive crow and a cute little chipmunk, both of which came right up to the picnic site hoping for a handout.

One of  our lunch companions

The chipmunk was a bit more cautious than the crow, but was still moving in close for a possible handout.

It was so peaceful here it was easy to forget that Great Smokey Mountains is the most visited national park in the U.S., 11,312,786 people in 2016.  That is nearly twice the second place park, Grand Canyon, at 5,969,811.   I guess it helped that it was on a Friday and after many public schools had already started their fall term.  Yea!  One of the major perks of being retired!

Cades Cove Loop

It was only a little after noon and we had still not seen any bears, so we decided to do the loop through Cades Cove, an area known for plentiful wildlife.  Cades Cove is one of the most visited locations in Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  It is also very different from most of the other places we had seen in the park.  While previously we had been on the top of the mountains or in dense woods, Cades Cove is a 6800 acre wide open valley surrounded by high mountains.   

Before becoming a national park, essentially all of the land that is now the Great Smokey Mountains National Park was privately owned.  It was also the first national park with large areas that had previously been farm land.  Although the Park Service originally followed its policy of letting nature take its course, it soon became obvious that approach was not the best for agricultural areas such as Cades Cove.  The new approach was to manage the Cove as an "historic district".  There are now lots of historic houses, churches, and Cable Mill.  In fact, it has more historic buildings than any other area in the park.


The other major difference between Cades Cove and other portions of the park, at least during our visit, was the size of the crowds.  We were the only people present while visiting the farm museum and Mingus Mill earlier in the morning.  We shared the trip to the top of Clingman's Dome with only a moderate number of people and there were plenty of empty sites at the picnic area for lunch.  However, the one way eleven mile loop through the Cove was nearly bumper to bumper traffic. 

We stopped at the Orientation Shelter (small makeshift Visitors Center along the side of the road) at the entrance to Cades Cove and bought a tour booklet. 

I am very glad we did.  It gave us a description of each of the many sites as we made our way around the loop.  There actually were many potentially interesting stops along the way, but we must have been getting tired and beginning to think about making miles toward home.  Our only major stop was at the Visitors Center for a bathroom break. 

Heading for Home

We found out at the Visitors Center that we did not have to go all the way back to Newfound Gap Road to exit the park.  We took route 73, which took us to Townsend.  The roads kept changing numbers, but we continued through Walland and Maryville on our way to I-40.  That was definitely the right move, since we were then able to make it to just east of Nashville before stopping for the night.  We did not figure fighting rush hour traffic through Nashville on a Friday afternoon made sense.

Other than a new (to us) route around the south side of Nashville on Saturday morning, the remainder of the trip was the one we had made so many times before through Memphis, Tiny Pebble, and Texarkana.  We made it home without incident before dark Saturday night and were even able to avoid any significant rain from the outer bands of Hurricane Harvey that was beginning to pummel the Texas coast.

What a wonderful adventure this trip had been.  It was also so much fun to go back and relive many of the highlights while doing this online "scrapbook" of the trip.