October 9, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.
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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May 1, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.
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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April 18, 2019.Reading time 2 minutes.
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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April 22, 2019.Reading time 3 minutes.
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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May 7, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.
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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June 25, 2019.Reading time 4 minutes.
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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April 26, 2019.Reading time 5 minutes.
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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January 29, 2019.Reading time 6 minutes.
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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