Day 1: Smoky Mountain Vacation

A few months ago, my in-laws asked if we would consider going on vacation with them. We had already discussed doing our first "real" family vacation this year, so we quickly agreed. We decided to visit Gatlinburg and the Smokies, researched a cabin, booked everything and have been looking forward to our trip for what seems like forever now!!

Technically, Day 1 of our vacation was spent driving from Indiana to Gatlinburg. The trip down went well, because we had two vehicles - therefore splitting three boys into two cars! We arrived at the cabin about 6 p.m. local time (after being stuck in traffic for 2 hours between Sevierville & Gatlinburg) and by the time we ate dinner and went to get groceries, it was a late night! I am counting Day 1 as the first full day of activities.

On official Day 1, we decided to drive through the National Park up to Cade's Cove. The forecast for the week was rain, rain & more rain... so we thought we would see some of the sights while we had a clear day. First stop: Sugarlands Visitor Center! We had ordered books about the Smoky Mountains and the Junior Ranger books for each of the boys a few months ago to prep for the trip. We knew that we wanted to stop at a visitor center first to check things out. We watched a short film about the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was very interesting and informative. While in the visitor center, we saw a really cute kid's book where they took photos of a teddy bear all over the park. I thought it was an adorable idea, but I'm too cheap to buy the book... so we decided to make our own! We bought a small stuffed black bear and appropriately named him "Nikon" (because both my father-in-law and myself use Nikon cameras). Our goal for the week is to take pics of Nikon all over the park! Here's Truman posing for the 1st pic with our new vacation mascot.

During our two hour delay on the trip down, my mother-in-law (Linda) started noticing all of the different license plates around us. It was amazing. Just sitting in traffic, we saw about 20 different states... so she decided she would "collect" photos of license plates this week and try to get all 50. (I won't post them all, but here's the 1st one!)

On the drive up to Cade's Cove, we stopped anytime we saw a great view. Our first stop was to overlook the mountains... Gorgeous!

We stopped to watch the rushing mountain rivers/streams many times. The road winds up the mountain right next to the river for the most part. I don't think I could ever get tired of hearing the sounds of rushing water. The boys & I decided to kick off our shoes & wade a bit. The water was COLD!!

Tommie & I posing with Nikon!

We stopped to look at this cascade... We had a map of all of the waterfalls in the park, so my personal goal this week is to see as many as possible. Cascades like this don't even qualify to be on the map! It's still beautiful...

Cade's Cove is the remnants of a town, nestled high in the mountain. We stopped at a cabin or two, saw the mill and a couple of old churches. There are beautiful mountain meadows and lots of wildlife in Cade's Cove. There was a deer standing on the side of the road - about 15 feet from the cars. Cool!

I thought this would be a cute place to snap a pic of Nikon!

Everyone in the family wanted to see a bear while on this trip. All of the promo materials about the park talk about bears, bears & more bears. When we left Cade's Cove, we drove down the rustic Rich Mountain Road to Townsend. This gravel, windy back road was very long, but very fun. We only saw one other car the whole time on the road. We also saw this little guy. He was wandering around in the valley near the road we were driving on. We stopped the car and tried to get good pics. With all of the underbrush, it was difficult. This ended up being our only black bear sighting of the week!

We looped through Townsend and stopped at the Smoky Junction restaurant. Out back, there was a railroad museum that was closed... but we took some pics of vintage trains anyway!

On the way back to Gatlinburg, we went back through the park with the intent of finding two waterfalls that are right off of the road. Meigs Falls and The Sinks. We tried to find Meigs Falls first and ended up at this beautiful cascade. We weren't sure that this was it... (and later found out it wasn't). The family photo in my other post was in front of this cascade.

Nikon was looking for fish to eat!

Then, we stopped to see The Sinks... later in the week, this waterfall was WAY more full of water and overflowing all of the rocks around it... but it was pouring down rain, so we couldn't get a good photo. The entire river was rushing over these falls. Very powerful...

Tommie took a pic of me taking a pic of the waterfall - perched on a cliff. I was a little scared, because it was a long drop... but a good photo is worth a little danger, right?!? :)

Nikon is a very smart bear. He figured out how to get into the bear-proof garbage container at the cabin! :)