The Real Reason To Go To Gatlinburg

Posted on March 14, 2014March 14, 2014 by Dusty Roads

I touched on this yesterday in my post about Cade’s Cove. When all the moonshine and whiskey, train rides and Dollywood are said and done, the real reason I want to go to Gatlinburg is the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

The Park Services page turned out to be an awesome resource for planning my visit. Since I’ve been struggling with arthritis and recovering from my spill in San Diego, I don’t know how much stamina I’ll have for hikes. I hope to be able to do some but it’s too soon to tell. My right hip still acts up quite a lot. Just in case hiking is not an option the website lists the auto tours.

An auto tour of the park offers a chance to see panoramic vistas, cascading mountain rivers, weathered historic buildings, and majestic forests stretching to the horizon.

We know there’s one though Cades Cove but there’s a whole list of others:

Cataloochee Valley
Newfound Gap Road
Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail
Upper Tremont Road

In addition, the book Smokies Road Guide covers main thoroughfares and scenic backroads in the park. This book and the self-guiding auto tour booklets listed above are available at park visitor centers and online. Self-guiding tour booklets are also available from dispensers at the start of the roads they cover.

I have my National Parks Pass and my “Passport books” to get stamps but there’s no entrance fee to the park anyway! Yup one of the most visited parks in the US is free.

I’m heading to the park in the spring. Anytime is beautiful in this park but the Great Smokey National Park is knick named the Wildflower National Park. Spring and summer are renown for spectacular displays of wildflowers along roads and trails.

And along with the wildflowers are wildlife. The Site offers tips for wildlife viewing. Some are standard like view early or late in the day but I especially liked this advice: Viewing wildlife in the Smokies can be challenging because most of the park is covered by dense forest. Open areas like Cataloochee and Cades Cove offer some of the best opportunities to see white-tailed deer, black bear, raccoon, turkeys, woodchucks, and other animals. The narrow, winding road of Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail encourages motorists to travel at a leisurely pace and sometimes yields sightings of bear and other wildlife.

I’m so ready to go check this out! I’m polishing and cleaning the camera, lenses and filter. I hope I can get some photos that come close to the beautiful ones I get to see when I search online.

Cades Cove Is #1 on my list

Posted on March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a United States National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains , part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain.

There are loads of hiking trails from short and easy to long and difficult but they also have loop roads that allow automotive sight seeing. One of the most popular and certainly on my list is Cades Cove, a broad, verdant valley surrounded by mountains and is one of the most popular destinations in the Great Smokies. It offers some of the best opportunities for wildlife viewing in the park. Large numbers of white-tailed deer are frequently seen, and sightings of black bear, coyote, ground hog, turkey, raccoon, skunk, and other animals are also possible.

For hundreds of years Cherokee Indians hunted in Cades Cove but archeologists have found no evidence of major settlements. The first Europeans settled in the cove sometime between 1818 and 1821. By 1830 the population of the area had already swelled to 271. Cades Cove offers the widest variety of historic buildings of any area in the national park. Scattered along the loop road are three churches, a working grist mill, barns, log houses, and many other faithfully restored eighteenth and nineteenth century structures.

An 11-mile, one-way loop road circles the cove, offering motorists the opportunity to sightsee at a leisurely pace. Allow at least two to four hours to tour Cades Cove, longer if you walk some of the area’s trails.

A visitor center (open daily), restrooms, and the Cable Mill historic area are located half-way around the loop road.

Numerous trails originate in the cove, including the five-mile roundtrip trail to Abrams Falls and the short Cades Cove Nature Trail. Longer hikes to Thunderhead Mountain and Rocky Top (made famous by the popular song) also begin in the cove.

I think it’s obvious why this is number one on my list when it comes to the sights to see in the Great Smokey Mountains! ( warning earworm alert)

Rocky Top you’ll always be

Home sweet home to me

Good Ole Rocky Top

Rocky Top Tennessee

(Excerpted from Trip Advisor)

Animal Antics

Posted on October 27, 2013October 27, 2013 by Dusty Roads

Have you all heard of or seen the “People of Walmart” emails and posts that float around the internet? Well, a Walmart in Florida had a switch on the typical tacky dressed customer. This customer needed some serious dry skin treatment. This guy really had a bad case of alligator skin!

APOPKA, Fla. (AP) — A 6-foot alligator made an unwelcome appearance at the front door of a central Florida Wal-Mart. The incident happened Sunday morning in Apopka, outside Orlando. The gator stopped in the entryway, causing the automatic doors to open and close until employees locked them. Orlando television station WKMG (http://hrld.us/1b5psYE) reports Apopka police officers tried to lure the gator away as customers gathered to watch and take pictures.

The gator took off toward the nearby woods. Officers searched the area but couldn’t find it.

No one was injured.

Didn’t anyone think to call the Gator Boys?

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Oh No! Cat Lover Alert! Does Petting Your Kitty Stress It Out?

Could petting your cat really stress the animal out? Headlines started appearing last week about a study that supposedly showed just that. Luckily one of the study’s authors stepped in with a calming update. Stating that the study had been misinterpreted, Rupert Palme of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria, assured cat owners that they “can carry on stroking their four-legged friends without worry.”

As an example of how petting can stress out a cat, here are some pictures of my cats after a “petting” session.

Buddy:

Smokey:

Rocky:

I can tell they are very stressed out…can’t you?

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Ladies, we are not alone!

A new headline:

Hot Flashes in Cold Waters? Killer Whales Undergo Menopause

This rare evolutionary trait may enable older females to help offspring survive.

According to the article, Killer whales have been revealed to be one of only three species whose females are known to undergo menopause—living on long after their reproductive years in order to help their offspring, particularly their sons, survive the rigors of young adulthood and later to help raise their grandchildren. It is a rare evolutionary trait, shared with humans and pilot whales.

The article goes on to say that they haven’t really been able to determine if the whales actually suffer from hot flashes.

And that’s the latest from the world of Animal News! 🙂

North Dakota

Posted on October 4, 2013October 4, 2013 by Dusty Roads

I’ve been to the southern cousin, South Dakota, but not North Dakota. Lets see what I’ve been missing here.

The big thing that comes to mind is prairies.

North and South Dakota have always made me think of those rolling plains and herds of buffalo. After the Homestead Act opened the prairie lands to farming and the prairie grasses were uprooted for agriculture, the dry winds began to blow leading to the Dust Bowl years of the 1930’s. By then the sea of grass and the great buffalo herds that sustained the Plains Indians were almost completely gone.

In 1933 the federal government stepped in and began buying and restoring the damaged prairie lands. But it wasn’t until 1960 that a system of national grasslands was implemented.

As bad as the damage to the grasslands was, what was done to the buffalo was even worse. Those great herds were gone not just because of the destruction of the prairie but because the white men went on a planned campaign of extermination. Sorry folks, I just get very upset over the way humans handle themselves sometimes. (Between you and me, not much has changed in my opinion) But I’m getting off track here. My point is that The Little Missouri National Grassland is a part of that network of national Grasslands. One million acres of ecologically diverse mixed-grass, prairie, canyon and forest surround Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Antelope, deer, coyotes, bighorn sheep and buffalo make their home here and I want to see it!

And Speaking of Native Americans, the largest Native American Powwow takes place in September in Bismarck, North Dakota. The United Tribes International Powwow attracts thousands of dancers and drummers from many tribes. The Native Americans compete in 22 dance categories for upwards of 15,000 visitors. We missed a Powwow in South Dakota when we got lost on the Pine Ridge Reservation but that would have been small compared to this. I’ll have to plan my visit to see this!

Another historic site that would be good to see is Fort Mandan and the Lewis and Clark Trail. Near by to the restored fort is the Knife River Indian Villages Historic Site. Ruins of several villages including Sacajawea’s are preserved here.

And the last thing on my North Dakota list is the International Peace Garden. The brain child of Canadian horticulturist Henry J Moore, became reality in 1932. Moore had envisioned a grand garden the would straddle the U.S. – Canadian border, dedicated to our two nations friendship and peaceful coexistence. Many of the roads , bridges and shelters were built in the 1930s by the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corp. Today the Peace garden has 2,339 acres of gardens, forests, manicured landscapes, fountain and walking paths. Its only 200 miles north of Bismarck. I should be able to squeeze that in don’t you think?