Were up fairly late last night watching "Sons Of Anarchy". Wow, is that show getting even more violent. I slept in till 8am while Jami made it till 9:30am. We had plans before we got here of doing a number of great hikes and seeing a number of waterfalls, but that isn't going to happen I'm afraid. We did however find some interesting "Driving" trails while we were searching the internet this morning looking for things we could do in our pathetic state. Well, we can sit in a car right, so "Driving" trails it was. We needed to stop by a post office to mail a few things so went into Pigeon Forge first and low and behold there was a car show like none other. The cars lined both side of the main road for MILES!!!!! I knew there was going to be a car show in town when talking to the campground a couple of weeks ago making our reservations, But never could I imagined this. Click on the link if your interested. http://www.pigeonforgetnguide.com/car-shows/pigeon-forge-car-show-schedule/
We made our stop at the post office and then hit a drive thru at Taco Bell before heading towards the "The Great Smokey Mountains National Park". We both had the new Quesarito, mine was beef and Jami got chicken, they were gooooood! We stopped by the Gatlinburg welcome center to pick up a map then headed to the park. As soon as we turned out onto the main road we got to see a Wood Chuck on the side of the road near the stream, neat. On the way we decided to take the scenic route by passing Gatlinburg, what a great choice that was when 2 coyotes ran out in the road in front of us. We quickly stopped and got the camera out as quickly as possible. 1 coyote continued across the road while the other went back to the side it came from just behind our truck. Cool. We tried to get a picture but in the rush the picture was blurred. Shoot. There were scenic pull off every so often showing off the mountain views.
When we got into the park we also stopped at the Sugarlands Visitor center to see if they had any better maps, Nope. We decided on the Roaring Fork Motot Nature Trail so we headed back towards Gatlinburg were the trail started.
There were pamphlet's at the trail entrance explaining what you were seeing on numbered sections of the trail so we pulled over and grabbed one. There was a money box to put a dollar in for the map so we put in the dollar and were off. The road is a very windy, narrow, steep one way road up and down the mountain side. The sign stated a 10MPH speed limit and it take an average of 1.5 hours to complete which was pretty accurate. The first half of the trail was mostly up hill and parts were pretty steep, but there were lots of pull offs that would fit 1 or 2 cars so if someone behind you wanted to go faster it was easy to let them by which we did a lot. We were in no hurry :)
The trail was really nice and there are a lot of hiking trails off this road, we really wanted to hike a few of them, maybe soon after our poison ivy heals some more. Below is a number of pictures, of course they never do it justice.
We really need to look into purchasing a better camera. Once we finished our "driving trail" we headed back home. Jami made us some delicious chicken salad for dinner and with the rainy days forecasted the next few days we debated having a campfire tonight. Eventually we decided against it so we took showers and assumed our TV watching positions for the evening.
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