Beating the Crowds…Sort Of!


Our plan to beat the crowds worked today…sort of!  We left the campground early this morning, but it took us a long time to find the part of the Great Smokey National Park that we wanted to hike in.  The signage was less than impressive and at one point we were following a stream on a single lane gravel track.  Eventually we found the trail head parking and grabbed the last parking spot.  It appeared that lots of other people had the same plan as us to beat the crowds.

Our efforts were rewarded, however.  A reasonably strenuous hike led us past 3 separate waterfalls.  The trail had taken us over 2 miles to the third falls and then decided to drop us down the side of the mountain back to the parking lot in about half a mile.  Hopefully the pictures will do justice to the beauty of the waterfalls.

At the main entrance to the park on Highway 441 we visited a farming museum.  It had original log buildings that would have made up many of the mountain farms in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  Pieces of their equipment were also on display.  What we realized was that life for these people was probably not a lot different than that of the earliest settlers in Grey and Bruce Counties.  They relied upon making use of whatever was available and growing most of their food.  If any surplus was left over it was traded for something that they did not have.  The exception probably was that the land was probably more productive in our area of Ontario.  The old Kepple Township pales in comparison to the stones these people faced.  The downside of this museum is that demonstrations of the way things used to be no longer take place.  Too bad as this always adds to the experience.  Imagine government cutbacks!!!

Tomorrow we are moving onward.   Our route is remaining fluid.  Originally, we were going to go around the bottom of the park but now are going to head off across Highway 441 and eventually towards Nashville.

Distance Traveled = 91 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Grey Squirrel, Red Squirrel, Brown Thrasher, Phoebe, Wild Turkeys, Canada Geese. (You would think we were at home!)

P.S.  Today we figured out that one of the biggest attractions for people to the Cherokee area is not necessarily the Park.  It is river tubing.  While driving back from our hike today virtually every car had multiple tubes strapped precariously to their roofs.  Every other business rented tubes.  As we followed the river, we saw hundreds of them floating slowly along.  Most of the parking areas were not taken up by ‘hikers’ but by ‘tubers’.



Thomas Branch Falls


Indian Creek Falls


Top 1/4 of Juney Whank Falls


Essential Building on every farm

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Final Thoughts

Image
I have always found it difficult to write the final blog.   This one is no different.   As we pulled into our yard last evening, reality hit…this adventure had come to an end.   But we have so many memories. Being on the road for 3 ½ months, we traveled 22,742 km through 23 States and 1 Province.   We know that we will be asked, “What was your favourite place that you visited?”   That is impossible to answer.   We saw and experienced so many things.   The variety of landscapes in the United States is simply ‘mind boggling’!   It has so many beautiful National Parks and we had the pleasure of visiting quite a few of them. It is time to wrap this up.   We would like to thank all the people who have taken the time to follow our travels.   It has been fun to share our experiences with you once again. We would also like to thank all of our friends and family who shared in and made our adventure possible.   Without your help and support Sue and I would not have been able to lea
Read more

Up One Side and Down the Other

Image
We drove north today to South Dakota’s capital City, Pierre.   It is pronounced ‘Peer’…only the Americans can pronounce a clearly French word in such a manner.   Pierre has a population of only 14,000.   It is the 2 nd smallest US State Capital.   There is also nothing there.   If you wanted to tour their capital buildings, you had to give them 48 hours notice…not sure what that was about.   Didn’t matter, we probably would not have anyway! What we did get to do today though, was drive up one side of the ‘Mighty Mo’ (The Missouri River) and down the other.   The river is a big one.   In places it is 2 miles wide.   It has a large water shed and this is the river that caused a lot of the flooding problems in the late Spring and early Summer.   It is still running far higher than usual for this time of year.   It dumps into the Mississippi.   We can only imagine how bad things must have gotten down in Louisiana after we left there…the river was already pushing the limits of its
Read more

A Family Connection to Plantation/Slave Ownership???

Image
Wednesday June 5, 2019 We were off to visit a sugar cane plantation today and made an interesting discovery…more later. We visited the Destrehan Plantation, a large plantation along the Mississippi River.   We joined a guided tour of the original plantation house built between 1787 and 1790 by only 8 men.   Our tour was with a bus tour…no we were not on the bus tour…we just had to endure the presence of a large group of people…and you know how much I like crowds…not!!!   The plantation has a long and storied history.   It began as an indigo plantation and by 1800 switched to the more profitable sugar cane.   It was large…one mile wide and stretching 8 miles from the banks of the Mississippi River.   By the beginning of the Civil War, it had 200 slaves. It continued growing sugar cane until the early 1920’s when it was sold to a Mexican Oil Refinery.   It then became their headquarters and was abandoned in the late 1950’s and sat vacant for over 20 years.   It was a mess when
Read more