Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 2

Here we are at our cabin in Gatlinburg. I'm rather disappointed with it. Almost all the furniture is broken, there's only ONE coffee mug, and the pillows are paper thin. Oh well, we won't be here too much.

We left Corbin about 8 am and went to Cumberland Falls. The river is way up and the falls were pretty wild. After we looked at the falls, Rosie and I walked downstream along the banks and found a nice sandy beach where we built a little house out of driftwood. While we were on the beach, we could look across the river and see a very pretty falls called Eagle Falls. On the way back up, we spotted a little chipmunk in the woods. Steve took photos up at the falls for awhile and couldn't figure out where we went so he went back to the car to wait for us.

We then drove across a bridge to the other side of the river and hiked Trail 9, which was supposed to lead to Eagle Falls (but didn't—we were never able to get a glimpse of it). What we did see were 2 large snakes, one of them crawling up a rock overhang right beside the trail. Rosie spotted it first and after Steve took photos, they went on further down the trail. I, being curious as to how the snake was going to crawl up a completely vertical surface, hung around to stare up at him. To my horror, he fell off the rock onto the trail and I went screaming off before I could see where he landed!!!

There were many wildflowers on this trail. We saw a new one called Little Brown Jug, and also saw Squaw Corn, Fire Pink, Violet Wood Sorrel, Long Spurred Violet, and many others.

We came upon many large millipedes in the lower, wetter parts of the trail and yet another snake, this one climbing a tree. Whatever happened to the good old days when snakes just crawled on the ground?

We took a different loop back and followed a nice little creek for quite awhile, then went to the Dupont Lodge for lunch. It was very good and the highlight was the large windows by our table and the bird feeders outside. Goldfinches were flocking in and a little chipmunk was busily filling his pouches with fallen seed.

Then we got onto the interstate, which we'd managed to avoid thus far, arrriving in Gatlinburg to pick up our keys about 4:30, then heading straight to the cabin. We hauled all our stuff in, then went back to town to eat at Jose's Cantina, a really good Mexican restaurant. We walked around a bit afterward and searched the shops for a stuffed chipmunk, but were only able to find a squirrel. We finished up with a stop at the Donut Friar to get donuts for morning, a drive through the park on the way home, then turned in to get ready for a day of hiking and exploration on Monday.