Possumblog

Vacation Photos!

HEY! Quit yer groaning!

I'm going to put them down below in the extended entry so you don't have to be thrilled by them unless you absolutely want to be.

SO, here's the route along lovely I-59 going toward Gadsden--

--and here is my lovely co-pilot. She sure is cute.

There are kids in the back, I guess.

As I mentioned, the cabin was right off the commercial strip in Pigeon Forge, but the view out the back was of nothing but trees. It was very pleasant, and I spent a good many hours out there just sitting and reading.

The picture above was taken on Monday, which was the rainy day. The rainy day that "we" decided would be perfect for shopping.

This is all of us, having fun shopping. Whee.

Tuesday was great--as sunny as the day before had been cloudy.

This is as we entered the park for our daytrip--

--and here's a view overlooking Gatlinburg.

On to Clingmans Dome, and a view of the tree kill on the way up and further on up the summit:

And here are the children after we got up to the top, before making the final dash up the spiralling ramp to the observation deck. They seem to have made it fine, although we did stop at every bench on the way up.

It's only a half-mile trail, with a 330 foot vertical rise, but, boy, I tell you what, it seemed a LOT longer. But at least I wasn't pushing a guy up it in a wheelchair like one family I saw. A couple of young strong sons managed to push their dad all the way to the top. That takes some doing.

For any of you who've ever been through the Smokies, this scene is nearly ubiquitous. Nothing quite like driving with the windows down and listening to the water rushing by, except possibly having to listen to children complain about being cold or hot or both.

On to our picnic, then back up over the divide and back down to Cades Cove. Still a beautiful day, and as I mentioned, the place was pretty well eat up with whitetails. Here was one browsing right beside the van--

--and here are a couple of more on down the trail a bit.

Hard to beat a view like this:

Anyway, that's about it for the slide show, although I did manage to capture one more shot of my bride before we left out on Wednesday morning. I'm not sure she was in much of a mood for it, seeing as how the children were being themselves, but I took it anyway because I think she's cute.

So, there you go.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at July 7, 2006 11:33 AM