July 21, 2015–Day 16 Cherohala Skyway to Smoky Mountains

  • Aug 01, 2015
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We woke up at our dispersed campsite and headed to a rest stop on the Cherohala Skyway to cook up our breakfast of porridge with a twist.  The rest stop did not have picnic tables in the shade like we hoped it would, but we managed to get eat in the shade of the clouds as they rolled in.  Scott brushed his teeth on the wall overlooking the valley.

The sign overlooking this valley is titled, “They Took it All”.  Between 1900 and 1930 all the forest in the picture was cut down by logging companies.  The community was upset over the devastation and fought to get the lands protected so they could be restored to their natural beauty.

Along our tour of the Cherohala Skyway Scott found his red towel.  He had been looking for a towel to wet and put over the cooler to help keep it cool. We continued onto the Tail of the Dragon, a popular scenic motorcycle route. Crossing from North Carolina back into Tennessee at mile 1 two motorcycles were trying to pass us on the twisty and rolling hills.  At the last second the lead motorcyclist decided not to pass because a car from the other direction appeared suddenly, but his buddy didn’t have enough time to pull back safely and he slid right off the road right behind us. Thankfully the motorcyclist wasn’t seriously injured, but he most likely broke his collar bone or shoulder.  The driver of the car that appeared on the other side of the road happened to be a trained first responder. One of the first cars to approach the accident happened to be a park ranger.  There was no cell service where we were, so the park ranger coming so quickly helped cut down the emergency response time. They said the average emergency response time for that area is forty-five minutes to an hour and a half.  Scott stayed and offered his help for a bit, but then we kept going as we could not be of any more assistance.  About forty minutes later we finally saw an ambulance pass us heading to the accident.  As we were getting to the end of the Tail of the Dragon Highway we spotted multiple booths of photographers taking pictures of every vehicle as the passed.  moonshinephoto.com, 129photos.com and killboy.com were just some of the photographers.  We have never encountered photographers along a highway before.

About 1:20pm the kids were hungry, but we weren’t quite to our destination of Look Rock Tower yet, so we offered them some crackers.  Brooke responded, “No, I want an actual lunch. I want a Slurpee!” From 2:10 – 2:42 we  hiked the one mile to up to Look Rock Tower and back.

We were so excited to finally get to the Smokys, except that it was rush hour on the Cades Cove Loop.  It took the better part of an hour just to get to the visitor center.  When we finally got to the visitor center we were a wee bit disappointed.  No park movie. No educational displays. However, we did get to view a bustling gift shop. Thankfully there was a ranger hiding amongst the madness.  He pointed us in the direction we wanted to go and gave us some maps.

We toured around the mill a bit and then headed back to the rush hour traffic to get to the campground.  Cars kept stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures of deer.  Scott kept thinking they had to be taking pictures of something really incredible that we had to be missing.  They could have been taking pictures of a T-Rex for all we knew.  We just wanted to get off the road and out of the congestion to our campground.

We finally arrived at the campground at 5:33.  Brooke was adamant about setting up the tent all on her own. She did it!  Fist bump!

We had to put the cooler in the car due to the National Park rules and the bears.  The kids served me up some mud and rock pie for dessert. Mmm.

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