Snowin In the Smokies

Mary and I stopped in Pigeon Forge, TN (yes, Dollywood) to visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We arrived with a cold wave, so in order to get a chance to hike in the mountains we had to stay a few extra days. That provided time for us to explore the tourist venues of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee. These towns are very touristy, and from the large off-season crowds it was hard to tell that the economy is not doing well. By the way… in a 12 mile stretch of highway there must be 20 pancake houses and 10 “As Seen on TV” stores (this is not an exaggeration)

Our first day was rain and some snow even in the lower elevations of the park. We stayed in the truck, but took a very nice five-mile “nature drive” outside of Gatlinburg and saw a very large Black Bear right along the side of the road. We also saw a wild turkey fly across the road and up very high in a tree. Neither of us thought they could fly that high.

We went to see Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede dinner show. This is usually Dolly’s version of the medieval knights arena show were it’s North versus South in an array of horsemanship events, while the audience dines (with their hands only) on a whole chicken, a slab of pork, potatoes, corn on the cob, soup and an apple turnover for desert. Mary and I saved up all day for this caloric and carb binge. We actually caught the Christmas version of the show, and it was really very nice. We still had the North Pole competing against the South Pole, but the festivities included a flying fairy Nutcracker scene and a Nativity scene with real donkeys, sheep, goats and camels. The horsemanship was excellent and included a woman doing “Roman” horse tricks, which involves standing on top of two horses and moving back and forth from horse to horse. She also straddled a line of torches and jumped through a ring of fire while standing on the horses. This was quite impressive.

The weather did clear up and warm up, and we went over the top of the Smokies into Cherokee, North Carolina. They had gotten about 6-8 inches of snow at the top, and the skies were absolutely clear which is rare here. Most of the fall colors were gone, but it was still absolutely gorgeous. After most of the snow melted off we were able to get onto the Appalachian Trail. The AT here runs along the ridge line of the Smokies, and is also the separation between Tennessee and North Carolina. We hiked along the AT both north and south from Newfound Gap until we ran into too much lingering snow. We also drove and then hiked the ½ mile to Clingmans Dome (6,643 feet), the highest point along the entire Appalachian Trail and the highest point in the Smokies. Another day we hiked to Grotto Falls and encountered a line of 8 pack llamas coming down from the mountain. That was a real treat and a big surprise

We did succumb to pancakes one morning, and we had some killer beer-cheese fries at a pub while watching the Breeders Cup Race on TV (very fun since we had just seen the movie Secretariat and had been at Churchill Downs last week). There have also been some dinners and lunches out at this stop. Our diets are like our hikes….we keep looking for a beautiful level path, but we keep choosing trails with lots of ups and downs.

Next stop is Asheville, North Carolina, then on to Charleston, South Carolina.