Finally it was time to depart on our long awaited trip to the Great Smokey Mountains Nation Park. The 10+ hour drive culminated in a last 20-mile stretch of relentless hairpin turns. According to the sign we saw later there were 10-20 turns per mile! I will admit that I was less than gracious about finding myself to be in the drivers seat on that last stretch of the drive. And it didn’t help to see that the long awaited fall foliage wasn’t quite what we had hoped. Upon arriving at the cabin we found that the TV didn’t work, and that there wasn’t any wifi either, but we were too tired to worry about it, at the start at least.
The next morning we set out a little later than we had planned, but rested and fortified with coffee, and then stopped along the river not far from the cabin to take the picture of the row of teepees across the way. It felt like fall, we wore jackets that morning, but didn’t need them again the rest of the week. It smelled like fall, too. There was a crispness to the air, and the carpet of leaves on the ground was beautiful. We drove through tunnels of gold and orange leaves. On second thought the foliage was beautiful, and we hoped that it would develop some more as the days passed.
The owner of the cabin brought us a new TV and hooked it up, but, sorry to say, wifi was coming, just not yet. The local weather forecaster was assuring people that the fall color was late due to the unseasonably warm weather, but that it would be coming. It may not have been the ultimate in fall color, but we were quite pleased with what we saw on only our first morning in Bryson City and Cherokee, NC.
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 