April 21
April 22
April 23
April 24
April 25
April 26
This would turn out to be our longest, most intense day. We got up early (5:45) and headed for the Foothills Parkway for some sunrise photography. The parking lot there was almost deserted - only two other cars with two photographers in each. The photo to the left is one of the ones from this morning.
Once the sun had risen sufficiently, we headed back to the Carriage House for breakfast, then back into the Park.
Our main destination today is White Oak Sink, off the Schoolhouse Gap Trail. We had only gone a short way down the trail when we spotted our first grouping of yellow trillium (photo on the right). Deb got ready to set up, opened her camera bag, and discovered that she had left her camera in the car.... Good thing we stopped so close to the parking lot. The hike to White Oak Sink is a couple of miles.....
We had a clear sky today, which was nice for the hike, but made the flowers harder to shoot. Good thing we had diffusers....
The spot along the way where I’ve found lady slippers before was still easy to find, but we were about ten days too early for the lady slippers.
Next along the trail was a large rock with some lovely columbine on it. It was too breezy to get good pictures of them this year, however. The photo on the left is one I took of the same clump a couple of years ago, when the air was calmer.
The wildflowers in White Oak Sink were pretty good. I’ve seen the phlox thicker in the past, but that might just be a timing problem. There was a large hiking group in the Sink also, so it got a bit congested. However, we heard about some interesting spots for flowers as a consequence, so it wasn’t entirely bad.
We were sitting just off the trail shooting a large group of white trillium (see the photo on the right) when one of the hiking group rather smugly told us that "this was a fragile environment and we try to keep to the trails as much as possible". I was sitting on grass at the time..... Her self-righteous attitude riled both of us for a while.
After shooting various things on the main Sink floor, we headed for the far end, where the caves are, turned left past the wild boar traps, and took off up the hill for the next sink over (almost a mile away). This sink was filled with shooting stars and photographers, so we kept going to the next sink, which was filled with bluebells. The bluebells were pretty to look at, but they were down a very steep slope which ended in another cave... We could see the slide marks in the mud where others had slipped going down to the flowers and just didn’t want to risk the equipment (or our bones) in the descent, so we admired them from afar.
When the photographers that had been at the shooting stars arrived at the bluebell site, we returned to the shooting stars and had them to ourselves (see the photo to the left). They were much closer to the trail....
We also spotted some showy orchis along the trail back to White Oak Sink.
Once we returned to the main part of White Oak Sink, we found a log at the edge of the path and ate the sandwiches we had brought with us.
Then we headed back for the parking lot. It was still too breezy for the columbine.
After we crossed the creek, we encountered two men on horseback. They were looking for some caves. Assuming they meant the ones in White Oak Sink, well, the trail is much, much too steep for horses and the men had slick riding boots on, so they turned the horses around and headed back to Schoolhouse Gap Trail, churning up our trail as they rode....
We got back to the car around 3 pm to find a very full parking lot - we were the third car to arrive that morning, but the parking lot soon filled up. We returned to the hotel for a bathroom break, more film for Deb, and a short rest.
Then we drove up Little River Road, making a couple of stops along the way. Our first stop was at Meigs Falls (photo on the right). The clouds had increased enough to facilitate shooting these falls.
We tried to stop at The Sinks, also, but the parking lot was too full. We’ll come back....
However, the parking lot at Laurel Falls was almost empty - much emptier than I’ve seen it in a long time, so we parked and hiked the 1.2 miles to the falls (photo on the left).
On the way back to the parking lot, we spotted two birds in the trail. One was a Black and White Warbler and the other we haven’t identified, but was a solid, bright yellow songbird with a black mask. After they flew off, a Dark-Eyed Junco landed on the trail. Neither of us had our cameras handy, so these remain mental pictures.
Returning to the car, we drove on to the Sugarlands Visitor’s Center, which had just closed. However, the restrooms were open and we stopped anyway.
From there, we headed up Newfound Gap Road, stopping at the parking lot at Newfound Gap itself to look around a little. Then on up to the parking lot at Clingman’s Dome. The view there was pretty hazy, and the car’s thermometer said 44, and the wind was very brisk, but Deb got out anyway to walk around a bit. I stayed in the car....
The Park Service has left a lot of dead trees in the area which clutter the foreground of any picture you try to take from there. And the haze made it hard to see the layering that is usually so good from this vantage point. So we dropped back down the mountain a ways.
We stopped at the first overlook after leaving Newfound Gap (it’s just above the one called Morton’s Overlook). There was one car in the overlook and the occupant was a photographer from Nashville who had driven over for the day. We managed to park without hitting his tripod and proceeded to share the view with him (photo on the right). It wasn’t quite sunset, but so close that we’ll count it as such. Sunrise and sunset shots in the same day!!!
We could look across from here to the parking lot at Morton’s Overlook and it was solid cars. The edge of the overlook had tripods so close together that no one could move. I’m glad we didn’t try to stop there!!!
On down the mountain to Pigeon Forge for dinner at the Cracker Barrel. Vegetable soup and biscuits. We finally returned to the Inn at 9:45 pm. It had been a looooooooong day. We figured we hiked and/or walked close to 13 miles today.