Alum Cave Bluff in The Great Smoky Mountains

Hiking to Alum Cave Bluff in the Smoky Mountains was an adventure, just like many of our hikes.  The beginning of this trail is flat and goes through and old hardwood forest. Following the Alum Cave Creek for about a mile, we bragged about how easy the trail was and how fast we were going […]

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Animals of the Great Smoky Mountains

Black Bear in The Smoky Mountains

We did it! Our first bear sighting in the wild occurred and it did not happen when we were hiking. We will always remember the animals of the Great Smoky Mountains for this reason. Our sighting happened when we were safely in Alice! We had just finished our hike in the rain at Rainbow Falls […]

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Spring in the Smoky Mountains

We visited the Smoky Mountains in the spring when the forest was coming to life. During our stay, the renewed plant life in the forest introduced me to more shades of green than I had ever seen in one place. It’s interesting what one notices when visiting a new place. Who would have thought the […]

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Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Clingmans Dome

The highest elevation in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is Clingmans Dome standing at 6,643 feet above sea level.  This peak straddles two states and is the tallest peak in Tennessee and the third tallest peak in North Carolina.  Clingmans Dome is also the highest peak on the 2,174 mile Appalachian Trail that runs […]

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The Cades Cove Bike Ride

A Cove is a relative flat valley between mountains or ridges.  Interestingly, Cades Cove is in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountain Range and also part of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Cades Cove is an 11-mile, one-way loop that winds in the valley. The wild life and an old community history can […]

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The Blue Ridge Parkway Sunset

Blue Ridge Mountain Sunset_Steve and Gail

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a scenic 469-mile winding road from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee. We traveled on the top ridge of the mountains as we drove the southern end of the Parkway.  The road twisted and turned and each new vista […]

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Tunnels, Alice and the Blue Ridge Parkway

After spending several days in the Great Smoky Mountains we were looking forward to driving from the mountains to Asheville, NC on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I had been on the Blue Ridge Parkway in northern Virginia growing up so being back on this parkway was very special.  We stopped to take a picture by […]

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Plan Less, Experience More

How do you plan a trip when you want to make it up as you go? Our preferred style of traveling with Alice is to have as much flexible time as possible. We research an area pretty heavily when we decide on a destination. However, we have learned that no matter how much time we […]

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