❎#9-GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NP - STOP #2

through



TRAVEL DAY - 43 miles

ELKMONT CAMPGROUND
to
CADES COVE CAMPGROUND

The long way around I know, but the road between the two campgrounds
was not favorable to towing a 28 foot trailer down it



Looking at the route we took to get between the two campgrounds you might wonder why the big detour. Well we scouted out the roadway the day before leaving and decided we were not going to tow our home where there were no shoulders, huge dropoffs and rock cliff faces just inches off the side of the road. It was OK to drive the truck down, but not tow the trailer. On the map it looks like all the other roads we have been traveling on lately, but I assure you it's not!

WARNING - Avoid towing larger trailers on the Little River Gorge Road if you can!

We did stop to take pictures of two roadside waterfalls along this stretch of the road, Meigs Falls and The Sinks. They alone were worth the stress of driving down this road. There is a third roadside waterfall in Smoky Mountains National Park which I will include here, Place of a Thousand Drips, located on the nearby Roaring Fork Motor Trail (more on that later).

As you will come to find out our stay here at Elkmont Campground had nothing to do with elk and everything to do with waterfalls. Enjoy the photos from these first three easy to see roadside waterfalls, but to see the really magnificent ones we will have to put of our hiking boots and hit the trails!





MEIGS FALLS, THE SINKS

and

PLACE OF A THOUSAND DRIPS



Can you spot the rock cairns in this photo?
Maybe zooming in will help!

HOW TO TAKE CONTROL OF THIS SLIDESHOW

Option 1 - Do nothing and cycle through the photos at the predetermined speed.

Option 2 - Hover over any photo with the cursor and use the forward and reverse arrows that appear on the left and right centers to speed through the photos. Photos will still change at the predetermined speed if you wait too long. Keep your eye on the clock in the upper right hand corner.

Option 3 - Hover over any photo with the cursor and click on the pause button. You now have full control to go forward or reverse at your own speed. You can also select any of the little round buttons under the photo to navigate through the photos.

WANT TO SEE THE PHOTOS AT A LARGER SIZE?

1st - Click near the center of any photo and it will open to a larger size than what appears in the slideshow.
2nd - Click on it again and it will open to it's original full resolution size.
3rd - You will have to use your browsers back button to return to the slideshow after viewing the photo.



Nearly forget, we did have the first bear sighting our journey, well sort of! The were two bears actually, a mother and her cub, but they were at least forty feet up in two separate oak trees gorging on acorns. They were just on the outskirts of Gatlinburg, TN on the main road leading into the south end of town. They were creating quite a traffic jam with all the onlookers standing directly beneath the bears which put them on the edge of the road. We spoke to a Ranger that was there trying to control the crowd and he told us the bears had been foraging acorns in these trees for nearly a week now. Anyway here are the best two photos we could get!

Can you make out the shape of her ears and body behind the leaves?

I believe that is a furry bear butt between the branches!



Until next time
TWO PEAS


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