On Top of Old Smoky

This is going to be a big blog since I'm two days behind and I need to let you know what we did today too.  Let's start with Wednesday.  Rain was in the forecast every day while we were in the Smokies.  We were trying to hold off for a clear day to go to Clingman's Dome, which is the highest point in the park, but it just wasn't going to happen.  On Wednesday, we thought we'd take our chances to drive up there and hope we can see the view.  On our way into the park, we saw a bear cross the main road in Gatlinburg, which is a four-lane road!  We were happy to see a bear and I was thankful it was not on a trail.  On our way to Clingman's Dome, as we got higher and higher up, there were more and more clouds and it started raining.  At one point, I suggested we just turn around and go back to the lower elevation to do the Grotto Falls hike that we had planned for that day.  I was overruled by the boys.  My mood wasn't getting much better when we got to the parking lot.  It was raining, foggy, a very chilly 39 degrees, and windy.  On top of that, we had a half mile uphill hike to get to the dome.  I'll let the pictures show you what we saw at the top and that is the most fake smile I have ever put on when getting a picture taken.  Jamie and I didn't let the boys live this one down the rest of the trip.  I'm sure on a nice day it's a beautiful view and I'd love to do it again in better weather.

Barry

Clingman's Dome

Our spectacular view

I'm not as happy as I look here

Mingo Falls - a super quick hike we did on the way to the North Carolina side.

At Clingman's Dome, we were already halfway to the North Carolina side of the park that has elk.  Instead of hiking to Grotto Falls in the rain, we thought we would have a more pleasant time doing a drive in the rain.  We scrapped Grotto and then drove to Catalochee Valley.  This is also on the other side of the mountain, so we finally saw sun and blue sky for the rest of the afternoon!  The elk did not disappoint either.

The drive to Catalochee actually put us closer to our campground, and on the way to the campground was the hike for Henwallow Falls, which we were planning to do at some point on the trip.  We decided to scrap Grotto altogether on Wednesday and do this hike instead.  Holy crap, this hike was crazy!  Keep in mind, we have not had a sunny, clear day the entire time we've been here, so days of rain has made this trail incredibly wet and muddy.  The trail also has a ton of exposed tree roots that are very slippery because of all the rain.  The trail gains about 900 feet of elevation over 2.2 miles.  Thankfully it's a gradual uphill so it isn't too strenuous; until you get to the last tenth of a mile.  This was the steepest, narrow, most slippery downhill I've ever seen!  I never thought I'd say this, but it was slower going downhill to the waterfall than uphill on the way back for that tenth of a mile!  Despite the crazy trail conditions though, the 80-foot tall waterfall was pretty cool!  I didn't blog on Wednesday night because we didn't start this hike until 4:30 pm.  By the time we finished we only had enough energy to shower, eat, play one game of cards, and go to bed.

Henwallow Falls

On Thursday, we spent the entire day in Asheville and we had a blast!  We started with the Biltmore (the Vanderbilt mansion).  Again, rain was in the forecast, so we took advantage of the sunny morning and hit the gardens first.  I just love gardens.  I could stare at them all day because for some reason it's so peaceful to me to watch things grow.  I must have taken a picture of every single flower that is in the conservatory and I was super jealous of the orchid collection they have.

Pretty view of the Smokies on our way to Asheville

Conservatory

After walking through the gardens, we did the self-guided tour of the house.  They have audio tours available, but we didn't do that for some reason.  I'm sure it's a great tour though.  The Biltmore has employees stationed outside of many of the rooms, probably more for security reasons, but occasionally they'll throw out some facts about the house or the Vanderbilts.  One fact that sticks out is that Mr. Vanderbilt's room was lined with 24 karat gold on the walls.  I guess when you have that much money you can be a little tacky.  I got a kick out of the fact that one of the rooms was called the Tapestry Room.  Because where else do you display all your tapestries?  ;-)  While we visited the house, they had a special exhibit going on where the different rooms would display mannequins wearing costumes from the movie Titanic, so you'll see some of those sprinkled into the pictures below.

Rose's outfit when they get on the boat

Mr. Vanderbilt's room - the walls were lined with 24k gold!

Mrs. Vanderbilt's room - the gold on her walls was silk and not 24 karat gold.

Rose's dress when she and Jack are at the front of the boat (Jack's "King of the World" pose).

Rose's outfit when the ship goes down

Draw me like one of your French girls.

The Vanderbilts had their own bowling alley

The Vanderbilts had an indoor pool

The huge dining room.  On the other side of the room is a pipe organ!

Included with a ticket to the Biltmore is a free wine tasting at Antler Hill Winery on the property.  Guess what happened as soon as we parked there to have lunch and wine?  It started to rain!  Thankfully the rest of our adventures that afternoon were inside.  We enjoyed lunch at Cedric's Tavern where we tried a sampler of beer.  Then we went over to the winery and had wine in small glasses.  We were surprised that the Biltmore's winery was actually pretty good!  After the Biltmore, we headed to downtown Asheville to hit three breweries.  We went to Burial, Green Man, and Wicked Weed.  All were pretty good, except we all agreed Burial was our least favorite, with Wicked Weed being our favorite.  We got home from Asheville around 9:45 pm, so that's why I was behind another day on the blog.

On our last day in the Smokies, we woke up to the sun.  Our last freaking day in the park, and it's a beautiful day with no rain in the forecast.  We only had time for a hike to Grotto Falls this morning and we couldn't have picked a more perfect morning to do it.  If you start Grotto Falls at the Grotto Falls trailhead, it's about a 1.4 mile hike one-way with about 500 feet of elevation gain.  Our tour guide Steve, from the llama trek, almost scared me out of doing this hike because he said it goes straight up and gains about 1500 feet of elevation.  I'm guessing he may have done that hike starting from the Rainbow Falls trailhead which does start significantly lower.  I'm just fine with the way we did it!  Grotto Falls isn't the largest waterfall (it's only 25 feet tall), but it might be one of the coolest because you can walk behind it!

Looking out from behind the waterfall

Trillium

The reason we didn't have a lot of time in the park this morning is because we had to start working our way back home today.  The RV has to be back by noon tomorrow and from Gatlinburg, it would be about a 6 hour drive.  On the way home though is Andrew Johnson National Historic Site in Greenville, TN.  We had to get there to catch a tour before they closed for the day.  If you go to Andrew Johnson's house, make sure you take time to drive up to the cemetery to see where he is buried.  The Johnson family plot has a stunning view.

Andrew Johnson's house

Baby ducks we saw at our last campground

All-in-all this was a great trip and despite all the rain, we really ended up lucking out quite a bit by being able to do our hikes before or after the rain (other than Clingman's Dome).  This was probably the perfect time of year to get to the Smokies, which is the #1 most visited park in the National Park Service.  We had mild temperatures which were nice for hiking, no bugs, and it wasn't very crowded at all.  Even though the weather was stupid, we still did everything we wanted to on this trip.

Learning how to RV was so much fun!  Steve and I are definitely on board with RV life and after our finances settle down with building a house, it's time to start saving for one of our own and doing this some more!  We learned a few things that we've made mental notes for future reference to be easier the next time, but otherwise our first time RVing was a success!  We just need to make sure I'm not the one in charge of closing and locking the side door.  ;-)

We were so happy to have Craig & Jamie join us on this trip.  They are always so much fun to hang out with and travel with!  When we weren't hiking in the woods or on our many adventures, we were chilling in the RV watching movies or playing cards and drinking beer.

Tonight's the second night we were able to have a fire and make s'mores due to all the stupid rain, so I'm going to go enjoy that.  Thanks for following along on our vacation!  I might blog tomorrow about the house since we'll be stopping by after dropping off the RV.  I do know HVAC supplies were dropped off there last Saturday, so there should have been some progress on the house.