Gaitlinburg, Tennessee - 2023

Our last adventure before heading back to Alabama was in Gatlinburg. We spent 7 days checking out The Great Smoky Mountain area, downtown Gatlinburg, as well as driving around looking for bear.

Our first day we decided to drive into The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We were going to try to go to Clingmans Dome but, we ran into snow at 5,046 feet and they had closed the road that would take us up there.

The Chimney Tops were fogged over due to the changing weather.

We took a drive through Cades Cove. We got to see some fall colors but the only wildlife we saw was some deer. We chose to go during the day to see the colors rather than later in the day to see more wildlife.

We utilized the trolley and spent a whole day walking around downtown Gatlinburg. Here's Ernie chatting with Mr. Worker Pumpkin. 😂😂

We were sitting in our RV one afternoon and we saw some people walking up the road pointing. We went outside because we knew there was a possibility of seeing bear in the RV Park. We saw a couple of bear moving in the woods. Talking to our neighbors later, apparently a mom and her cubs were walking through the park, the mother grabbed their bag of charcoal and took off into the woods. They got some really good pictures.

We decided to take a drive to see if we could see any bear since there was a public road that went through the park where bear have been seen. We did see some bear cubs, mom was just inside the woods.

Our last day in the Gatlinburg area we headed up to Clingmans Dome. It is the highest point in Tennessee and in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On a clear day at the 6,643 foot peak you can see over 100 miles. Once you get to the parking lot, you have a half mile hike that is pretty steep. Since it took us 2 hours to get to the parking lot (there was a lot of traffic) we started out walking fast, we quickly learned we needed to slow down.

This shows how steep it was the entire half mile.

The Appalachian Trail crosses the trail to Clingmans Dome so we decided to check it out. We traveled approximately a mile and then walked back.

This is what was left of the snow from the first time we tried to go to Clingmans Dome.

Some of the scenery on the drive up and back shows the fall colors in full effect.

We loved Gatlinburg and would love to go back and do some hiking to Grotto Falls, Abrahms Falls and Rainbow Falls. The traffic in the area was horrible which makes it difficult to get where we wanted to go and made the trip twice as long if not more.