This is Day 5.  We slept in again.  This is getting to be a bad habit, you know.  I’m sure Sascha won’t stand for it.  Let alone my boss.After breakfast, we packed up the car and headed out for Cades Cove.  This took us to Sugarland Visitor’s Center first.  We looked through the exhibits and checked for other hiking books.  During our break there, we ran into several German tourists.  I’m not sure if they were on a tour or driving themselves, but there were a lot of them.

In the car again, we headed out across the park to the south.  Cades Cove is one of the areas settled first.  In the early 1800s, farmers were moving to the area and building log cabins for their families.  The Cove area is an 11 mile, one-way loop that stops at churches, homesteads, and other signs of settlement in the area.

We stopped by the Greenbrier Schoolhouse.  This side trip took down a single lane gravel road.  At the end, we found the single room schoolhouse used for a lot of years.  Inside, there were the typical benches and desks.  It still reminded me of a church.  Rich started back out for the door pretty quickly saying something about a bat.  I looked up and there was a single bat hanging from the ceiling.  All was quiet in there.  We tried to get pictures of him and then leave him to his sleep.

The Walker graveyard was also there.  I love graveyards.  The stones are curious.  There is so much history in a yard.  This one was being pushed out by trees and roots as well as eroded by water.  There were a lot of stones there.

We got to see a black bear.  The cars in front of us were stopped and we were trying to tell what was going on.  Several people were getting out of their cars and moving to the woods.  Finally, a very young bear sprinted across the road and headed for the woods.  Poor guy was probably just about 3 years old.  He was just a teenager in bear years.  The people were frightening him pretty badly.  I couldn’t believe that people weren’t afraid of him.  They were trying to get closer to him.

The cars started to move and we got back underway.  The first stop was to John Oliver’s home.  John brought his family to the valley in 1818 and built this log cabin.  It was pretty much a couple of rooms with fireplaces.  On the walk up to the cabin, a couple of ladies were standing on the trail yelling about something.  We never saw what they were looking at.  Didn’t matter, because I’m pretty sure they scared the hell out of it when they started shouting.

Back in the car, we headed up to the number of churches on the road.  The first was the Primitive Baptist Church.  I’ve never heard of this denomination, but I guess they have some differences from just the Southern Baptist.  The church is down a single lane gravel road.  With the number of cars, we had to stop for wide places in the road to get past each other.

The church is white clapboard these days, but would have been a log cabin structure in its earlier days.  There is a graveyard behind the church.  John Oliver and his wife are buried there with stones marking who they are.  One stone was for a man named Russell Gregory.  It indicated he came to the valley in the 1830s.  He was killed by rebel cowards for his support of the Union in 1864.

We got back out to the main road and to the Methodist Church.  The two buildings were similar.  You saw a lot of the same last names in the churchyard adjoining the church.  A stone for a man named George Seaton said he was about 75 when he died.  He might not have been sure either.

Next, we stopped at Elijah Oliver’s house.  This is John Oliver’s son.  He built his own home down the road from his parents and farmed for a while.  During the Civil War, he left the valley and then returned after the war.  He purchased his old farm back.

We started down the road thinking the house was close.  It wasn’t.  The first barn was .2 miles.  The rest of the homestead was another .25 miles or so back in the woods.  The house was interesting.  It had standalone kitchen from the rest of the house.  There was an addition on the side called the stranger’s room for people travelling through the area.  It was little more than a place to put a pillow on the floor.

Now we had to walk the half a mile or so back to the car.  It was very warm and humid by now.  The air conditioning the car felt great after the walk.  But we were tired, hot, and hungry.  Time to find a place for lunch.

Signs along the road tell you to be courteous and pull over when you want to stop or slow down.  Not many people observed the signs.  We had cars stopping all along the way or crawling at 5 miles per hour.  The hills would have been more fun at 25, like they were marked.

We stopped at the Cades Cove Visitor’s Center for a break and to have a sandwich.  A group of buildings were standing from an earlier time.  Rebecca Cable’s house was originally a store as well as a boarding house.  It was very spacious and a good example of a house at that time.  There was a smokehouse, corn crib, barns, grist mill and blacksmith shop there as well.

We sat up our chairs in the shade and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  You don’t need much, but a little protein helps when you are hiking.  With food, water, and a rest, we were ready to hit the road again.  The cars in front of us were going slow again.  A couple pulled off for some of the other churches and homesteads.  We continued on.  Down the road a bit, we saw a couple of people hanging on the side of the road.  Now what?

It turned out to be another black bear.  This one was not happy.  The cars in front of us were pulling off the road so they could also jump out to take pictures.  This was not going to make the bear any happier.  We didn’t get any shots of him and decided to push on.

Around the next corner, we came upon another obstacle.  There were bicyclists in the road.  The road is a lose term though.  It is more a country lane that one car can barely fit on.  The cyclists had nowhere to go to get off the road.  I manage to find spots along the way to squeeze by them.  The girl out front was being competitive and not wanting me or her buddies to get in front of her.  Poor guy at the back was being left further and further behind with every inch.  I’m not sure they knew that.

We finished up the Cades Cove loop and headed out to Townsend.  Townsend sits just outside of the park in Wear Valley.  There’s not a lot in town and it looks like it rolls up at 5:00 on a week night.  We did see several places to go tubing on the river there.  Thought of you, Rose. Not much to see here though.

We cut across country to go back into Pigeon Forge and hit the Kroger again.  We discovered there was no toilet paper at the cabin.  So the stop was necessary.  There were a couple of items we needed also.  I stocked up on some of the good country sausage as well.

We got back to the cabin around 3:30.  After cleaning up from the day, we headed out for dinner.  I had seen the Smoky Mountain Trout House in my research of the area.  It sounded interesting.  I knew that Rich loved trout and good trout is hard to find.  We drove by it on the north end of town as we were coming and going through.  This was the dinner destination for the evening.  We parked in their lot across the street and then made the mad dash across the Parkway for our lives.  People speed and don’t stop for crosswalks!

Once safely in side, we were seated by the window.  We could watch traffic zooming by at our leisure.  The entire place is maybe 10 tables total.  It was a very small place.  The menu is also small.  As their name implies, they do locally caught Smoky Mountain trout.  The menu lists the 10 different ways they do trout and they all sounded wonderful.  There were some other items, but that was limited.  They definitely do trout though.

The waitress was an older lady with a back or neck problem.  She was kind of leaning to the right side at an angle when she came to the table.  She was funny though.  We enjoyed talking to her.

Rich ordered smoked mountain trout with green beans.  I ordered the trout cakes with baked potato.  The meal came with complimentary hushpuppies.  I love hushpuppies and these things were wonderful.  Rich got a glass of the house chardonnay.  I stuck with lemonade.  Rich says it was the best trout he had ever had.  The trout cakes were awesome.  I truly have to recommend this place if you want good food in Gatlinburg.

After dinner, I had a couple of places I wanted to go and look at.  We drove into downtown and found parking.  Parking here is definitely at a premium and can cost dearly.  We found a $5 lot close to where I wanted to be.  We headed down and Rich had to direct me.  I would have missed it altogether.  It is called The Village.  It is a small, bricked lane with shops on either side.  It resembles a European village, but maybe smaller.

I wanted to go to The Celtic Heritage shop, which was closed until 7:00.  So we moved on toward the second shop I was looking for.  However, we got caught by other shops along the way.  We went into the spice and tea shop.  The smells were wonderful.  I picked up a couple of items for someone’s Christmas.  Rich got caught by the Hofbrau Haus restaurant, which turned out to be a cheese shop and sandwich place.

We finally wondered around to The Day Hiker.  I wanted to check out some hiking supplies.  The place was stuffed with all kinds of things.  When we came in, there was a young guy talking to the owner about trails and places.  They were having an interesting conversation and it was hard not to listen.  I found the couple of items I wanted.  Rich wanted to check out the t-shirt he saw in the window.  We found it and it was in his size.  The t-shirt stated:  I hiked the entire (in small letters width) of the Appalachian Trail.

We went to pay and kind of got caught in the conversation also.  Dave, the owner, has hiked most of the area and the Appalachian Trail.  We talked about trails and a local guy who was showing the younger man around.  The stories were pretty good.  Then we left and back to the Celtic Heritage shop.  I was hoping to find some tartan pieces, but they didn’t really carry much.  We headed to the car and back to the cabin.

It was time for the evening ritual.  Tonight, we had Sweetwater Brewing Company IPAs and sat outside on the porch watching the clouds roll in over the top of the mountain.  Some bats were flying over head and doing a pretty good dance for us.

We came in for a while to read, work on blogs, and rest.  We went back out when it got dark and we watched the stars and talked.  Unfortunately, there were no shooting stars tonight.  Then it was time to go to bed, to read for a while, and then sink off into dreamland.