Back from the Smokies

This is just a short post, with a few pictures, from our week long trip to the Smokies. For now, if you want to see larger sizes of the photos, click on them and they'll get you to Flickr where you can see other sizes. We'll post a more detailed web page, with lots more photos, later.

We rented a cabin between Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Unfortunately for us, it only had a sauna, jacuzzi tub, and a hot tub on the deck... Life is tough. We spent nearly every day hiking in the park (barring one complete day after, surprise surprise, Brett rolled his ankle - imagine that!). Our goal was to go to every one of the waterfalls listed in the "Waterfall Hikes" handout from the NP. We actually did every hike in there - some were "strenuous" (and they weren't kidding), others were moderate. Our longest, but most rewarding hike, was to Ramsay Cascades.

This was a long hike (about 8 miles round trip) with over 780 meters of climbing. Much of this climbing (and descending) was scrambling over lots of boulders, roots, and trees. The falls though were beautiful and the pictures just don't do it justice. We had probably 15 - 20 minutes of the whole place to ourselves. We just sat there marveling at the falls as we ate lunch.

We got lost somewhat, mostly due to very poor signage on the trails, while going to Indian Creek Falls. That was supposed to be our easy day after Brett rolled his ankle, but we ended up hiking well over 4 miles instead. By the time we found the falls, it was already nearly 6 PM and getting dark fast.

Our day to Hen Wallow Falls was gorgeous and it had the hardest 0.1 miles worth of hiking the whole trip. Very steep, lots and lots and lots of roots, and very narrow. The falls were pretty, but not nearly as nice as Ramsay (we got spoiled). The light was good for some portrait type shots though.

Our last hike for the week was to Abrams Falls in Cades Cove. It was the only hike to a fall that started out going downstream for us. It was very nice as well, but the camera really didn't like all the white in the images and the pictures there didn't turn out as well as we hoped, but there's some decent ones of the two of us.