Gatlinburg ... a Practically Unplanned Adventure! June 27 - July 5, 2009
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christiejay · 08-29-2009, 02:37 PM

Late last night I realized I never came back to post my next update yesterday afternoon!

Sorry about that!

Day 5 - Wednesday, July 1, 2009

For this morning, we were going to visit a couple of "smaller" areas in the National Park, neither of which we had ever done before: Greenbrier and Cosby. These areas must be entered from Highway 321, which meant they were right up the road from our resort. I don't remember why, but we didn't leave the resort until 9:00. But even with that late start we ended up being able to do all that we wanted. Well, as usual I had added in some additional trails on my wish list, and we didn't do those, but I didn't really think we would anyway. So we set off up the highway and got a little bit different view of the area:

We turned in at Greenbrier first. The road was paved for a little while, then turned to a gravel road, before dead-ending at a trailhead. Views from the drive in:

I took a couple of pictures while Jay got ready for the hike.

Today we were going to be hiking approximately one mile up the Porter's Creek Trail.

Most of the trail followed the river so we got a lot of water views.

Here's Jay and Joshua by a rock that looked like wood.

On the other side of the trail was woods.

And this might just be my favorite picture from the whole trip. I've always tried to capture a nice shot of the sunlight filtering through the trees. Maybe it just took getting a digital camera to be able to do it.

This picture of Jay and Joshua shows the trail really well. It was a road, that must be used fairly often. It is gated, so the public can't drive on it. It's not very steep and really overall an easy hike.

About halfway up the trail we came upon this really impressive homesite. The front steps:

Getting up the steps was fairly easy, but just past them it was very weedy. I almost didn't continue, but I'm glad I did. Here's what's left of the chimney:

There was a nice view from the family's "back yard" as their plot was elevated above a ravine. But for some reason I didn't get any pictures of it. I did take a few pictures showing different views of their stone fence. I can't imagine how long it must have taken them to construct this.

Continued in next post ...

christiejay · 08-29-2009, 02:50 PM

... continued from previous post ...

Soon we came upon this bridge

And just past the bridge was a family cemetery. It was so beautiful and green with all the moss, and the family's descendants must have recently been out to place some new flowers. But it still doesn't erase the sadness, especially when so many of the graves are for young children and even babies.

We continued our walk - Joshua liked the millipedes

And with the help of my hiking book we found the rusted remains of an old car!

One more bridge!

We were high above the river now!

And a snail ...

Finally we reached our destination, about one mile in. It was the site of an old barn and cabin that were used by a hiking club for many years, but no longer in use.

Jay had walked on ahead, and when we caught up with him he gave us the bad news - we wouldn't be able to go up to the barn because the ground was covered in bees! What is it with the bees on this trip? I wondered if we could walk around the edge of the meadow to the left, and maybe get past the barn to go on to the cabin. But only a few steps in I discovered that there were a lot of bees in the meadow as well. Turning around to go back to the trail, I noticed a side trail around the barn. I thought we could get to it from back at the main trail so we backtracked a little bit to find where it started. It was very pretty on that side.

Soon we came up on the far right-hand side of the barn. But it appeared the bees were very active down here as well. It's possible that we could have gotten by but I definitely didn't want to chance it. If one bee stung one of us, I'm sure the rest would be all over us in no time at all. Not something I wanted to experience! I was so sad not to get to check out the cabin. But the trail we were on continues to a waterfall. So on our next trip, if we decide to hike to the waterfall we will have another chance to check this out.

We hiked back down the trail and passed a guided hike group on our way. I thought that this would make the perfect trail for a guided hike - not too steep and fairly even terrain. Once we got back to the truck we drove toward the entrance to Greenbrier to have a picnic. We had passed two picnic areas on our way in - one that had several picnic tables scattered around, and another that had a huge pavilion. We chose the first site with lots of tables. But it ended up being wet, I think it had rained last night, so we just ate on the tailgate of the truck.

Up next: More new adventures

lauren-roxy · 08-29-2009, 06:28 PM

What a peaceful trail. Sorry about the bees.

**chezp** · 08-30-2009, 02:50 AM

What a shame about the bees.

I love the photos, especially the ones of the sunlight streaming through.

pamcarey · 08-31-2009, 12:53 PM

I too love the picture with the sunlight streaming through the trees! Very pretty!

MGW · 08-31-2009, 02:35 PM

My family loves exploring old cemetaries, such interesting history. Thanks for sharing!

christiejay · 08-31-2009, 03:28 PM

Thanks to all of you for your comments, and to continue reading!

Unfortunately I am running short on time today - first cub scout meeting of the year this evening, got to leave in just 3 hours, and I've got to sew on a couple of new patches - so I will post the next update tomorrow.

Meggera · 08-31-2009, 03:29 PM

I love the log bridges. Those are so cool. But, I have come to my favorite part of your TR - Greenbrier. GORGEOUS!! I, too, love your picture of the sun streaming through the trees with the stream below. That is beautiful!

Hugmonster · 08-31-2009, 11:00 PM

Just caught up. I am glad you are sharing all of these beautiful pictures.

**Colexis Mom** · 09-01-2009, 09:17 AM

Just getting caught up again Christie! What great pictures! It looks like you guys are having a great time!

christiejay · 09-01-2009, 04:43 PM

Thanks everyone! Welcome home, Marnie - looking forward to reading a trip report from you soon! Alexa looks so grown up in your new sig pic.

Note: This week I start work again, on Wednesdays and Fridays. So the updates won't be every day anymore. But I do plan to keep doing them on a regular basis. Sorry I missed yesterday - that was our first scout meeting of the new year. Hopefully I can squeeze in some updates on most Mondays before we go to our meetings, I will try to anyway. Next one coming up in just a little bit.

christiejay · 09-01-2009, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meggera

I love the log bridges. Those are so cool. But, I have come to my favorite part of your TR - Greenbrier. GORGEOUS!!

Thanks, we I think were surprised at how much we enjoyed this area. We will definitely be going back. I didn't really mention it, but the trail we were on continued all the way up to Mt. LeConte. We only walked the first mile, which was also the easiest portion. It starts getting steeper where we turned around at. But not far past us was a waterfall we might try walking to another time, and this is also the area of the park with a trail to another popular waterfall - Ramsey Cascades. That trail might be a little too strenuous for me and Joshua, I'll have to really consider it. But Greenbrier definitely deserves a return visit!

christiejay · 09-01-2009, 05:14 PM

Continuing with Day 5 - July 1

After lunch we headed back out to the highway, and then further up to the Cosby section of the national park. Here are the pictures I took during the drive.

We were looking for the Cosby nature trail - it is one of only two in the park that we still haven't walked. We had to drive all the way in, and park at the campground amphitheater. The trail started just behind it. Joshua took his junior ranger book on the trail with us because there was a leaf identification exercise to do, and I knew we wouldn't be able to remember which leaves we saw by the time we made it back. Plus, several of the leaves were very similar, so we definitely needed the book to help us sort out the differences.

Love the trunk/roots of this tree ... or is it two trees dancing?

This tree looked very strange from this angle.

But coming around the other side you see that part of it had split and fallen.

The trees were so tall here. I believe this area of the park was not hit too heavily by the logging companies. You have to keep on looking up and up and up to find the tops of the trees. It made it hard to identify some of the leaves we were looking for, when you had to look so high to find what kind of leaf was growing on that tree!

See up at the top of that tree/s?

Here's a closeup of it - it's like the two trunks had fused together somehow.

This is the trunk of a tree at the end of the trail. There were probably about 10 or 12 of these worms on and around it, that we counted.

There was a connecting trail that I was hoping to hike, but it was starting to get late. Maybe next time we can come back to this area and try it out. As we came back to the truck, we noticed a large crowd of men gathering. Not sure what they were getting ready to do - it seemed like there was some kind of activity planned. They weren't dressed in uniforms or suits, they didn't have their families with them, so I don't know. Maybe just some type of research thing?

We drove back to the resort so that we could rest and freshen up before we got out for supper. I took some pictures on the way back.

If you look in the middle of this picture, you can see a silver line going straight up the middle of the mountain. That's the cable for the tram cars to Ober Gatlinburg.

We did make one more stop - Food City! It is right by the resort and Jay wanted to pick up a few things. Joshua and I waited in the truck. He got some Pringles snack packs, spray butter, canned biscuits, and bacon.

Up next: What will we do tonight?

**Colexis Mom** · 09-01-2009, 08:28 PM

More great pictures Christie! Good luck with the job!!

christiejay · 09-01-2009, 09:27 PM

Thanks Marnie! I'll be with the babies again, but our room won't be full right away. We will have 4 on Wednesday, 4 (1 is different) on Friday. Then in October a 5th one will be old enough to start coming. They are hoping to get us a 6th which will max us out, but we're hoping they don't.

Plus, two of the babies are twins, so the chances are good that if one is out the other one will be also, giving us the possibility of some quiet days here and there. We'll see!