Great Smokey Mountains National Park

It's overcast and drizzling today so we decided to take a drive through the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. With our road guide in hand we chose to take the Newfound Gap Road from Gatlinburg to Cherokee, NC. We made a few stops at the pull offs to enjoy some beautiful scenery when there were breaks in the clouds, we also took a small detour and headed up Clingman's Dome Road, which takes you to, yep, you guessed it Clingman's Dome. Depending on what you are reading it is either the highest point in the state of Tennessee or the third highest point in the state of North Carolina. I'll let them fight it out, all I'm saying is, it's high. There is a half mile trail from the parking lot to the Dome but I think most of it was straight up. It killed my calves going up and me knees coming down. They say that from the top you can see seven states but today we were lucky to see seven trees. But we did it, we were there, there weren't any t-shirts to purchase so we moved on. Our next stop was Mingus Mill. It's still a working mill, it was built in 1886, they grind corn and wheat and sell the flour there. No electricity meant no credit card machine, this is the distraction I needed to keep me from shopping. From there it was into tourist trap, I mean Cherokee, North Carolina. There were signs directing us to a casino and Indian Village, we chose to take a bathroom break and head back through the park. The Great Smokey Mountains have some beautiful sights to see. They were breathtaking on this rainy day so I'm sure on a clear day they would be awe inspiring. It was a great drive but it's good to be back at the campground cocktail in hand. We'll be heading out to a local place for dinner before we turn in.