Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 4

Got up early and went to Applewood Restaurant for breakfast—yummy! Rosie likes the finches that they have in large glass display cases there. They have little nesting pouches and swings made from twigs that the birds like to sit on. Very entertaining.

After breakfast, we went to the new Gatlinburg Conference Center where the Wildflower Pilgrimage vendors were set up. We met a number of artists and craftspeople. Rosie got 4 new birds for her collection, and I got a T-shirt, a fern book and several flower prints. I met a couple of guys who were pretty knowledgeable about botany and they gave me leads on lady slipper locations. This year there were live plants on display and one of the men went through all of them with me and identified the ones I didn’t know. Very helpful.

Steve said he’d like to go back to Porter Creek Trail because he thought somebody might have found his tripod case at the falls and brought it back down to the trailhead. He said that the really nice older couple we met on the trail had gone up after him and he thought they might have found it. So we drove to the trail and lo and behold, there was his tripod case hanging on the gate! There are still honest people in the world, it seems, even total strangers. We regretted again not exchanging names with the man and his wife.

We proceeded on to Trillium Gap Trail, on the Roaring Fork Motor Route. It’s a 1.2 mile hike to Grotto Falls and was a pretty easy hike compared to the previous two days. Notable along the trail was Squirrel Corn, the first we’d seen this time, and two large salamanders lying in a creek we crossed. Rosie and I also met a cute little yellow bird on the path who was busy gathering nesting material, and we watched for several minutes, waiting for Steve to catch up and take a photo. However, Steve thought he’d growl like a bear as he approached, and the bird decided not to hang around. It looked like a type of warbler.

These falls were my favorite thus far. We could walk under them and we stuck our hands in the water—brrrrr! The walk back was pleasant, too.

We followed Roaring Fork Motor Route the rest of the way. Steve stopped to take photos and Rosie and I walked part of the road along the creek. We found another place where butterflies were gathering on the ground and several very healthy clumps of Showy Orchis.

Near the end of the Route, we were pleased to see our elderly friends from Porter Creek Trail along the road taking photos! We stopped and told him we’d found the tripod case. He said he and another man had found it and brought it down to the gate. This time we exchanged names and gave him our card. He is Bob Jones from Nashville, and said he lives on Cheek Road.

We came back to our cabin, cleaned up and rested, ate our leftover Applewood dinner, then went into Gatlinburg for a couple hours. We had coffee and picked up donuts for the morning at The Donut Friar. We’re going to impose a donut moratorium when we get back home!

Rosie has decided she wants to be a dog, and she wants to wake up in the morning and actually have turned into one. What an imagination this kid has.