31 Oct. 2018 Color has Arrived!

What a difference a week makes! A week ago we drove through the park to Cades Cove and there was very little color. Today we repeated the drive and the colors were beautiful! The reds, browns and yellows covered the hills The leaves were falling off the trees and sparkling in the sun as they fell. They were swirling on the road in the breeze and from the passing cars like a psychedelic painting. It was a beautiful drive. Exactly what we had hoped to see while we were here. Tomorrow we head off to Nashville.

Thanksgiving is when???

25 - 30 Oct. 2018 Girls Weekend!

Leslie and her Mother, sister Cynthia, niece Lauren and Lauren’s 7 month old daughter, Olivia drove to Fredericksburg, TX for a girl’s weekend reunion.  They stayed at a charming B&B Cynthia found. There was no hot water that first night.  Diane was not a happy camper.  A call was made to the office with hopes they’d find the voicemail the next morning and get to work fixing the problem.  By 11am a second call was made and the situation was finally remedied. However, nobody got a bath or shower until that night…not even baby Olivia.  So all women grabbed Olivia’s baby wipes and headed for the bathroom!   It was Saturday and a beautiful day to walk Main Street and go through the many interesting shops.  Fiesta Winery tasting room was open and looked very busy (a good indication it will be a fun experience and the wines are good).  The tasting turned out to be a lot of fun and the wines were pretty good.  After the tasting, everyone bought a few bottles and requested a pink red wine slush for the rest of the walk down Main Street.  Baby Olivia threw a tiger sized fit, inhaling a breath big enough to make the impending scream something no less than legendary. How in the world does a 7 mos old baby notice that all but her are drinking pink drinks and hers is clear water?  Man, she is really smart, crawling, trying to walk and talking simultaneously…at just 7 months! Having stayed up too late chatting, it was a slow start to Sunday.  The day concluded with a visit to the 4.0 Winery and tasting room.  They have Lost Oak wines from the winery in Fort Worth.  Once again the weather was beautiful as wine and a cheese tray were consumed on a wonderful outdoor patio.  Ahhhhh.  Mostly it was an uneventful weekend except for Olivia’s memorable fit.  In this picture, she is just beginning to put 2 and 2 together.  Check out that face!  Being together like this again was incredibly unforgettable and initiating another little family member was truly special. 

Dinner Friday night at the famous Hill Top Cafe

Wine Tasting at Fiesta Winery. Baby getting mad.

Last day in from of our charming B&B

26-28 Oct. 2018 Rainbow Falls

 It was cold and rainy for the last two days, so David did laundry, worked and picked out some hikes for the coming day’s after the rain moves out. Sunday David awoke to a bright sunny day. After driving through the traffic in Gatlinburg, he arrived at the trailhead for Rainbow Falls to find the parking lot full. So he drove down the road a little farther and found an old logging road that he was able to back into with the beast. The trail to Rainbow Falls is 2.7 miles each way. David found the trail muddy and slick. Typical of Smoky Mountain trails, it is up hill for all 2.7miles and then down hill the same distance coming back. The trees are changing faster at the higher altitudes but the wind is also knocking them off the trees quickly. So it was a pleasant hike with the changing leaves on the trees, falling off as you walked and finally the carpet of leaves on the trail. The hike was a bit steeper than expected, but after little more then an hour and a half he came to the falls. The trip back was a bit faster but much harder due to the slippery conditions along with being tired. But it was a fun day. David heard from the Girls. It seems little Olivia (Leslie’s Grand Niece) wants to skip walking and go straight to driving. The girls are having fun shopping, sampling wine, and playing with Olivia.  

Olivia Learning to Drive at 7 months

Rainbow Falls Trail

Leaves changing finally!

A sturdy bridge

One of many falls along the trail

Another waterfall

Rainbow Falls

Close up of Rainbow falls

No climbing!

Best color all day

25 Oct. 2018 Busy day

Leslie packed up and flew back to Texas today for a girl’s weekend out. Leslie, her Mom, Sister, Niece and Grand Niece are headed to Fredricksburg for a weekend of wine tasting, shopping and catching up on Girls stuff. David was left behind to work, wash the RV and take care of Etta. Leslie will tell y’all blog followers about her trip when she gets back.

24 Oct. 2018 Blue Ridge Parkway, TN and NC

Today we decided to drive the southernmost portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway runs along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia for 469 miles to the Great Smoky Mountains NP. The parkway includes over 88,000 acres of land along the parkway and some natural areas. There are hiking trails along the parkway that we did not know about that look like they could be fun. When planning our trip, we had originally thought of setting up outside Shenandoah National Park so we could visit the NP for a few days and then work our way down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Great Smoky Mountains NP. Man are we glad we did not set ourselves up for that route! The Blue Ridge Parkway is a two lane, very narrow blacktop road with hairpin turns, steep grades and most importantly, short twisting tunnels. Many of the tunnels we drove through had one or more turns in them and the height of the tunnel at the edge of the road was less than ten feet tall. The center of the tunnels were taller but with the twisting turns, you could not have driven down the center since you could not see oncoming traffic. With our 13foot 6inch tall Wanderer, we would have been scraping the tunnel walls. 

Leslie drove today, so she had the fun of trying to keep “The Beast” on the road while David got to enjoy the views when not holding on for dear life. It was Leslie’s turn to give David a few scares and get even for Wears Valley Rd! There are lots of pull offs to taken in the beautiful views. At these higher altitudes, there was more leave color than in the lower altitudes of the NP. In another week it should be gourgeous. We drove the Blue Ridge Parkway from its southern most point in the Great Smoky Mountains NP to just outside Ashville, NC (about 60 miles). To get to the parkway, we drove through Great Smoky Mountains NP on US441 (taking the Gatlinbury Bypass) to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. At the top of the New found Gap, we crossed over from Tennassee to North Carolina. North Carolina is the 12th state since we left Texas in June. The Appalachian Trail crosses the road at this point. Seventy miles of the Appalachian trail runs through the park. The stretch of the Appalachian trail that runs through the park is one of the most remote and rugged portion of the trail.We stopped at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center to obtained our Blue Ridge Parkway passport stamp (our18^thPark Stamp). Then it was onto the winding parkway. We stopped at several of the pull offs to admire the beautiful views. We stopped at the Waterrock Knob Visitor center to eat our picnic lunch and walk Etta. By the time we got to Ashville NC, Leslie was tired of the constant turns so we jumped on I-40 to go back to Pigeon Forge. 

State Number 12!

View from Newfound Gap

Appalachian Trail at Newfound Gap

A little color just starting to show

View from the Blue Ridge Parkway. You can see why they are called the Smoky's!

Blue Ridge Parkway. The road is narrow with lots of low hanging trees.

Selfie along the Blue Ridge Parkway

22 Oct. 2018 Great Smoky Mountains National Park

We made our first foray into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We drove through Gatlinburg so Leslie could see what it is like. The sidewalks were packed with people and the traffic crawled through town. It reminded us of Wisconsin Dells with all the tourist traps and junk stores. We decided we would take the bypass from here on out. We made our way to the Sugarlands Visitor Center and collected our17^thPark Stamp. From the visitor center we drove along the Little Rivers Road to Cades Cove and then around Cades Cove. There was a little bit of tree color but not a lot along this lower altitude route. It has been too warm, but the cold snap we are supposed to have in the next several days should kick off the leaves to change color. We saw some wild turkeys along the Cades Cove road (hmmm, how long till Thanksgiving?) and some deer. The traffic wasn’t too bad. With Leslie’s knee still hurting her we choose not to do any hiking. We still have not heard from the doctor. We took the one-way gravel road, Rich Mountain Rd, out of Cades Cove to avoid the traffic. The road was a primitive gravel road but was in good shape so it was a fun drive back. 

Wild Turkeys

21 Oct. 2018 Pigeon Forge, TN

John, Cheryl and Betty came by today to see our new home and hung around for some more visiting. We might have planted a bug in John and Cheryl to get an RV! Betty told David that just after her and John’s father had gotten married, they had lived in a trailer by the college campus, but it was not as nice as ours.