Too Many People!


Staying at KOA’s can be a challenge for me.  There are too many campers (using the term loosely) in too small a space and we will not even mention the number of kids running around or the idiot with the large 5th wheel across the street.   It makes me feel claustrophobic.  However, we will leave the KAO rant for another day.

It is unfortunate that we are in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park on the long weekend.  We suspect that it would not have mattered where we were this weekend, it was going to be a zoo.  We know that this is only the beginning of dealing with ‘Too Many People’.  We drove about 20 miles up Highway 441 to another park road which we took 7 miles up, up, and further up only to be met by wall to wall cars and people.  Cars were double parked and triple parked, and cars were circling.  We will not mention the idiot drivers that wanted to drive on their side of the road and ours too.

We were able to find some hikes and places to see that were ‘less traveled’ by the masses.  We visited a restored grist mill that operated from the 1890’s until the early 1930’s.  It ground corn into corn meal and wheat into flour.  It operated on a water driven turbine system and still grinds corn meal for demonstration purposes today.

We hiked a high elevation trail (5000 feet…high for this area) through a spruce/fir forest.  Most of it was on a boardwalk but this boardwalk had a unique twist.  We walked a ten-inch plank the entire way.  It took some getting used to, to not step off it.

We then hiked up an old logging/railroad bed.  In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Great Smokey Mountain National Park was owned by logging companies.  They completely stripped the area leaving it looking like an atomic bomb had gone off.  Some of the old photographs we saw attest to this.  They built small rail lines up into the mountains to bring the logs out.  It has taken 80 to 100 years for it to recover thanks probably to the establishment of the National Park.

Distance Traveled = 106 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Chipmunk, Robin, Red Squirrel, Junco. (Not a banner day!!!)



Mingus Mill


Spruce/Fir Boardwalk - 'Walking the Plank'


Oconoluftee River


'The Foot Log' (Bridge on the Kephart Prong Trail)

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