Is it Day 4 already?  Well, just Day 3 for Rich.  It’s Sunday and we slept in.  I got up early, but Rich was still sawing logs so I left him.  I came down to get caught up on my blog.  But wait, I’m still behind!

Rich finally woke up and stumbled down the stairs to join me.  We made breakfast from the goodies we picked up at the store.  Rich found this hickory smoked pork sausage.  It’s in a linen bag and smells incredible.  He made eggs, sausage and hash browns.  I found some real grits at the store and that’s what I had.  What can I say?  Once a southerner, always a southerner.  Even if you don’t sound like one.

Today, I thought we would start out slow.  I knew we weren’t in shape for miles and miles of hiking.  So we started out on the Motor Nature Trail, which is just inside the park north of Gatlinburg.  This 5 mile driving trail has several spots to stop off and walk trails.  The first stop was the Ogle cabin.  It’s a pretty well preserved homestead for one of the first families to settle this area.  The nature trail around the homestead leads you through what would have been the fields, the outbuildings, and property.  The grist mill by the creek was neat.  It was small, but did what they needed.

The trail around the property was only .7 miles, but it was rocky, hilly, and full of tree roots.  You couldn’t look up because you had to look where you were walking.  I’m not sure how they farmed for all of the rock!  The temperature was pretty warm in the upper 80s with high humidity.  We were pretty well soaked by the time we got to the car.

We continued to drive the motor trail, which wound its way up the side of the mountain overlooking the town.  Luckily, it was one-way traffic so I didn’t have to contend with oncoming traffic.  There were overlooks with great mountain views.  Our next hike was Grotto Falls.

Now the day hike book says 1.3 miles.  The sign at the trailhead said 1.4 miles.  It felt like 10!  Unfortunately, it was mostly up on the way there and down on the way back.  I told someone on the trail that while going up, my lungs were burning.  On the way down, my legs were burning.  Either way, it was a lot of pain.  I feel really good about an hour after the hike is over.  Just wish I felt good when I got done.

Rich was joking that we must have crossed 10 creeks to get to the falls.  We counted coming back and it was only 4.  Two of them were very wet and one was dry.  One had a nice little waterfall, just not a big one.  We did see a lot of bear scat on the trail.  Luckily, we didn’t see any bears.

The trip was painful, but the falls were worth it.  The Roaring Fork Creek starts at the top of mountain and drops at the falls and continues down through into town.  Grotto Falls is exactly like the name implies.  You can walk behind the falls in a grotto space carved out by the water.  Rich walked back there and I got his picture.  I didn’t try it since it was all wet and slippery.

We met some interesting people on the trail.  At the falls, a man about our age had just gotten there.  He was asking if the trail on the other side of the falls went anywhere.  He was out hiking and trying to figure out how far he could go before he had to turn back.  This was about 2:30.  He still had to walk 3 miles back to town!

We got back to our car, which was parked about half a mile from the trailhead, and finally sat down.  All of my muscles were screaming at me.  Rich was having some trouble with one of his knees on the trail.  It was very happy to be in a comfortable seat.  Our total hike for Grotto Falls was 2.8 miles there and back.  The walk to and from the car was another half a mile.  The homestead walk was .7 miles.  We did 4 miles!

We continued down the rest of the motor trail and popped out just northeast of town.  We decided to go into town for dinner and then get back to soak our pains. We stopped in at Calhoun’s.  Turns out, they own the Smoky Mountain Brewery.  So their menus were very, very similar.  We had BBQ chicken and pork.  I got corn pudding as my side and Rich stuck with the cole slaw.  The food was pretty good and Rich was able to try another Smoky Mountain Brewery beer.

I’m finally getting the hang of driving in Gatlinburg.  The speed limit downtown is 10 miles an hour.  The roads are four lane, but very narrow.  On Saturday, the streets were packed with cars and people.  Today, there was less foot and car traffic.  I think you have to be psychic to drive here though.  You just have to know when people are going to step into a crosswalk before they do.  I’ve seen a lot of close calls.

After dinner, we started back to the cabin.  I saw a line of rocking chairs in front of one hotel.  A bunch of people were sitting out there rocking on the grass in front watching the people walk by and the cars drive by.  They looked very comfortable.  It’s nice to see people amusing themselves on vacation.

We got home around 6:00.  We took showers and stretched out on the couches to recuperate.  We are so out of shape.  But then, that’s why we go hiking on vacation.  Since we were hurting, it was a good time to use the hot tub on the porch.  Rich fixed two glasses of Wild Turkey’s Kentucky Spirits bourbon on ice.  We crawled into the hot tub and sat back to enjoy the bourbon.  Life was good.

After hot tubing, we sat on the porch and watched the Mt. Leconte fade into the mist and darkness.  It’s really kind of neat.  As the temperature goes down, the clouds crawl over the top of the mountain and it looks like it is gobbling up everything.  The darkness sets in and we only see the lights from a hotel that sits in front of the mountain.

Tonight, we sat out there for a quite a while talking and sipping our bourbon.  We saw two shooting stars tonight.  I can confirm the number since I saw them both as well.  Finally, we came inside to work on computers and read some before bedtime.