Team Smokies

Yesterday we spent about 10 hours in the car. Ten. Hours.

No we didn’t drive home (that would have been less than 10 hours), we spent all that time in the car exploring the area in and around Smoky Mountain National Park. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, however, since we were planning on spending the day in the car anyway.

Our first destination was the Cades Cove Loop which we’d visited in our last visit to the Smokies. It’s an 11 mile loop on the edge of a mountain valley and its views of wildlife and the mountains are simply amazing. Last time we drove the loop, we saw a black bear and her cubs! So we were both eager to see how different Cades Cove looks in the fall and what sort of wildlife we’d see this time around.

Since we’d spent a lot of time driving the road we’d normally take to Cades Cove, we took an alternate route this time. Little did we know our new route was on the craziest road in the Smokies…. It wasn’t until we stopped at a rest area and noticed tee shirts advertising the Hellbender and Dragon’s Tail that we were in the middle of an epic stretch of mountain road full of hairpin turns. Back on the road, we tried to keep up with four mini coopers as they wound around the bends but we were totally lost in their dust.

After that badass drive, we stopped at a few gorgeous overlooks and a huge dam on Lake Fontana and then finally arrived in Cade’s Cove (over 3 hours after we’d left our cabin). The drive inside the loop was really beautiful but we weren’t lucky enough to spot any other wildlife than turkeys and deer (which other tourists were PSYCHED about). It was fun though, driving with the windows down and listening to Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and the Tallest Man on Earth while taking pictures of the mountains. Who needs bears when you’ve got good music and mountains?

The long drive home came next but we made plenty of quick stops along the way at scenic overlooks and in Cherokee for a moccasin shopping spree. Then it was straight into downtown Bryson City where we walked around exploring a few shops (including the most terrifying hoarders-esque outdoor shop EVER). We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Station restaurant downtown and then headed home to carve a pumpkin, roast pumpkin seeds, watch There Will Be Blood and drink your milkshake.

Today, we’ve avoiding driving as much as possible and taking it easy at the cabin before white water rafting and heading home to RVA tomorrow.