2 Days in the Smoky Mountains

Here we are in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for 2 days of hiking with the Fairfield Glade Hiking Club.

The weather was perfect! It was in the 70's both days and that is about as good as it gets this time of year in the mountains. 34 of us traveled the 90 miles to GSMNP on Thursday morning. The first day, we hiked 5.1 miles on a 3 trail loop.

As you can see in this photo, the streams were running higher than normal due to some recent rain. We had to build log bridges or wade at a couple of spots that we had just stepped over a couple of weeks earlier.



This picture is along the trail the 2nd day. This hike was 6.1 miles long. It was also the combination of 3 different trails. Near the end of the trail at a graveyard near the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, Bob Callis gave us a little history lesson about the early part of the century (the last century, not this one).

You might have to click on this last photo to get a better view. This was taken in Cades Cove after the hike. Cades Cove is a flat valley in the heart of the Smokys that at one time was where most to the settlers and farmers lived in these mountains. Today, Cades Cove has an 11 mile driving loop where we have often seen bears and deer. However. the animals in this picture are horses.