Me at the top.
Mr and a view on our way from the tippy top of our hike.
Mr at the tippy top of our hike.
Me at the top with our view. It was gorgeous.
I love churches. Old, white clapboard churches are my most loved structures in the world. We found this church in a part of the park we'd never been before--Cataloochee. It was a long, scary drive (I wish I'd gotten pictures of the road we drove on to get to this valley. My words can't describe how windy and scary it was.) This is my new favorite church in the world. Going back to see it again would almost make the drive worth it...but not quite.
Another white clapboard structure. It looks just like the church without the steeple. Still, very cool.
Next up was the Caldwell place. Here is Mr in their barn.
Here is a shot of their house from the barn, which is across a little creek. This is probably the biggest, nicest house we've seen.
Here is their back porch and picnic table where we ate lunch. So cool.
The inside hallway from the back door.
One of the fireplaces in the house.
One of the rooms with peeling newspaper on it. Our guess is they put it on there to try to insulate it. It was interesting, though, that this was the only room in the whole house that had it.
This was another church we found right outside of the Smokemont campground. Love it!
We like to hang around the Tennessee/North Carolina border for dusk to come because that's where we always see the elk. This time didn't disappoint. The sun was barely over the mountains and we spotted them. Some were right next to the road.
Others "had" to be hunted down by the Great White Hunter--Mr. He went up into the woods to get this awesome shot of a buck. They don't typically have a rack this big this early in the year so this was quite a catch.
Mr said the buck was pretty unconcerned with what he was doing. The buck just laid in the grass, checking Mr out every so often to be sure of where he was, and continued to eat. I think I'm getting this one and the bear shot blown up so we can hang it as Mr's "trophies"!
I spotted this little feller in the grass. There were actually 3 in this area. They were so cute. They'd just stand up, look around and then go back down into the grass. They're certainly nosey little critters.
It was pretty unnerving and sad to see this fire up on the hillside. We never did hear how much of the forest got destroyed or when it actually got under control.
Here's a picture of the buck's rack once he decided to come out of the woods and join the others. In total, we saw 8 elk. An awesome day of wildlife "hunting"--the only kind I like!
After all of our day's adventures, we went back to the hotel and changed clothes to get ready for our anniversary dinner at the Park Grill. All in all, it was a perfect day!
Deer were everywhere. This guy was right next to the road.
For the first time we saw wild pigs. There were 2 parents and 3 little babies. Unfortunately we couldn't get any closer because they were way down over a hill, but they stayed in basically this same place all afternoon just munching away.
This is where it got scary for me. We were driving on this cut-through road to circle around Cades Cove again when, lo and behold, there was a bear right next to the road. Of course, I was terrified and took some pictures out the window. They weren't so great because there was foliage in the way so Mr says he will take the camera and get out of the car to get better shots. The bear then proceeded to walk onto the roadway and Mr stayed put--way too far from the car in my opinion. The good thing is he lived to tell about it and got some great shots.
I have lots more pictures to share with you, but it's taken me about an hour just to upload these so the others will have to wait until tomorrow.
