Summer of 19 - #22 - Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, Waterfall, Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Fall Colors are starting

Tuesday September 17th, 2019
The peanut butter has disappeared from the traps again.  So it looks as though there are more mice.  Hmmm, this is getting tiring!!  We will get some different traps and see what happens.

Wednesday September 18th, 2019
Time for another road trip.  We headed toward Gatlinburg, which is on the other side of the National Park. It would be a long drive, but not the longest we've done since getting here.
We passed through Cherokee again, and I took a picture of one of the Gem Mine attractions here.  We haven't done one of these, as we did the gold panning on our trip to Alaska a few years ago, and consider that the place to go for these attractions, but if we hadn't done that we would probably have tried one here.

Roadside view in Cherokee

 We saw a lone elk walking alongside the road.  I didn't get a picture but we were surprised she was on her own and hoped she wasn't lost.
A little further along there was a small group of elk. Maybe the doe we saw earlier, was trying to catch up with these.  These were in the same meadow where we saw elk for the first time two weeks ago.  Bryan asked me if I wanted to stop, but I said no, as we already have a few pictures of elk.
We were on the hunt for bear, which have been seen on the car loop that we are going to do, although  usually earlier in the day or after 4pm. We wouldn't be there at those times, so it will be a long shot if we get to see any.

Elk in meadow

We crossed the state border into Tennessee.  After quite a long drive we arrived at Gatlinburg, it is more commercialized than Bryson City where we are staying.

We entered the National Park at the Cherokee Orchard Road entrance.

and headed to the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.

Bryan paid $1 for a pamphlet that explained stops on the self guided motor tour.

The first place we stopped was an overview of Sugarland & Cove Mountains.  Someone there was saying, that in a couple of weeks this place would be packed with people wanting to see the fall colors.  The small car park here was already full today, so I'm not sure where they all park at that time.  Although I can imagine how beautiful it is once the leaves change.

 There are already subtle differences in some leaves.

There was a walkway up to a bench overview.  We passed on that, as another group had already headed that way and we weren't that bothered.

Tuliptrees

 We stopped and had a look at the stream that was meandering alongside the road.

There's Bryan balancing on a rock

and there's Sue in the distance

There was a cabin that we wanted to stop at, but there wasn't any available parking and so we carried on.

This meant that we got ahead of quite a few people and when we reached the next stop there were parking spaces available.  We parked and looked at the Ephraim Bales Homestead and river here.

Small doors conserved heat, you can see by Bryan stooping to get through the door.

Even I was surprised I had to duck to go through the door!!!

Barn

We walked down to the creek to take pictures.

I could see faces in this rock, my imagination gets carried away sometimes.

Corn Crib

Maybe this was Bear scat (poop), we'd better watch out.  We hadn't seen any bears so far, but we had been looking.

Further along the motor trail was this tub mill that was used to grind corn into meal.

Our last stop was The Place of a Thousand Drips, a small flow waterfall.

We decided to drive a different way home, and go through more of Gatlinburg.

The Gatlinburg Trolley is $2 a day, and if we decide to stay on this side of the park in the future, we will probably do the trolley ride.

We drove on to Pigeon Forge where the Dollywood Theme Park is located.  This is definitely a tourist destination, and has all the usual tourist attractions as well as all the national chain restaurants.  This is probably a good place for families with children but for us old folk, I prefer where we are staying as it's less crowded and has more natural surroundings.

Dolly Parton is from near here.

King Kong climbing

Beyond the Lens Family attraction

We decided to stop at Olive Garden for dinner as this was the nearest one to our campground, which was still a couple of hours away!!

After dinner we started the drive home.

The clouds started to darken and it looked very stormy.  Thunderstorms were predicted but we didn't see any, just some rain.  I took this picture with a reflection of the thunder clouds in the side mirror.

The fall colors are starting to appear.

We are back in North Carolina.

Rain Clouds

Well, no bears today.  Probably just as well!!!

We stopped at a Walmart on the way back and got a couple things that we needed, including different mouse traps!!!  Wish us luck!!!