Day 5 - Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Little River Road

Tuesday, May 11, 2022

Weather - Partly cloudy, high of 78F

Steps - Shaun: 17,122, Shannon: 14,215 (Shannon took her watch off before cooking so she's off a bit)

Varmints - one wild turkey, common goldeneye duck (we think)

Today was a full-on hiking day. We got a late start because we haven't used our "big packs" since our Southwest vacation in 2018. This meant we had to go through everything we'd left in them from before and figure out what we needed now. It was a bit of a cluster, if I do say so myself (and I do!), and then we decided NOT to use the dang things! Our thinking was that the first hike of the day was only 1.3 miles, so we could use our little packs. The only problem is that we didn't bring our little packs, so we put what we could in our pockets and carried our water bottles (even though we had 2 liters of water in our water bladders in our big packs!). There was the additional problem that it was really 1.3 miles EACH WAY, but hey, it was a learning experience. We'll be better prepared on Friday when we will face our most daunting hike (hopefully).

The hard-won picture of the park entrance sign

Anyway, once we were all packed up and finally made it on the road at around 10:00 a.m., we entered the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for the first time. Right out of the gate, we missed pulling off the road to take a picture of the sign, so I ended up pulling over at the next turnoff and walking back to take the picture. A little bit of a bonus was that in the process of walking, I found a really cool plant that had GIGANTIC leaves (which we later found out was a type of magnolia).

Our first hike of the day was about 30 minutes into the park from Townsend, going along the northern edge on the Little River Road (which was gorgeous) to a place called Laurel Falls. This is a really popular hike, and since we got there much later than expected, we actually had to park about a half mile from the trail head. The distance was advertised as 1.3 miles in our book, which we assumed was round trip, but we were mistaken, so the total walk for us was 3.6 miles (including the walk to and from the car).  

Lower right corner is the mountain laurel, from which Laurel Falls gets its name

Laurel Falls is an 80-foot waterfall with an upper and lower section that has a walkway between the two that makes you think you're walking right across the waterfall. The hike to the falls was almost totally uphill, so it was a bit challenging, but at least it was paved most of the way. This meant that the walk back was almost totally DOWNHILL, which was good because both of us had to use the restroom, so we made short work of the return trip. The hike was totally worth it though, and we felt like we'd accomplished something at the end of it.

Shaun, the daredevil

Next we rushed to the Sugarland Visitors Center (and the closest restroom), which was three miles further down Little River Road. Once we had taken care of our abused bladders, we went through the gift shop, bought some stuff, and then had our lunch of PB&J's, BBQ potato chips, and nectarines. It was good since we were hungry, but our nummy nummy bread from Whole Foods wasn't that great. Bummer.

A pretty rock we liked in in the river

After lunch, we went on a short (.8 mile) hike from the Visitors Center to a 25-foot waterfall called Cataract Falls. It was entirely flat (which I appreciated), and the falls were pretty but not near as impressive as Laurel Falls. After returning to our car, we started to re-trace our steps down Little River Road, this time armed with a book that described what we were seeing, but we didn't get very far. At the pullout for an overlook, a group in the car next to us mentioned a big backup caused by bears on the side of the road past Sugarlands. Of course, we had to go! And of course, we forgot to ask which road they were talking about! So, we ended up driving around aimlessly on Newfound Gap Road for awhile, not seeing any bears. We did, however, have our first official critter sighting: a wild turkey. After admitting defeat, we returning to our original plan of heading back down Little River Road toward Townsend.

The Sinks (this pic and the one below)

We stopped at two other waterfalls that could be accessed from the road; one called The Sinks, which was created when the river became backed up with logs from the lumber industry and had to be dynamited to clear the logjam. The dynamite ended up doing a lot more than that though. It actually re-routed the river!

Our final stop in the park was Meigs Falls, the second waterfall that we could see from the road. It was actually set pretty far back and could only be glimpsed through the trees, so I actually had to pull out my big camera to get a good shot of them. Four waterfalls in one day...we felt like we'd done a good job with our first official day in the park.

Meigs Falls

We stopped at a couple of little shops in Townsend on the way back to the cabin. Shannon got a fried pie that she was hankering over, so she was happy. Once we had both showered the bug spray off our bodies, we cooked a bunch of food to set us up for success the rest of the week. Shannon spent a couple hours working on Tickner stuff, and I wrote our blog. We need to get to bed early tonight because tomorrow we're driving to Cades Cove, where we have the greatest chance of seeing bears and other cool wildlife.  Since the best times are at dawn and dusk, we figured we'd get up at 6:00 a.m. (much to Shannon's dismay), which means that our day will probably end early. Shannon is glad about that because we got an awesome 2000 piece puzzle that she started to sort through day before yesterday, and she didn't get very far. We've never done a puzzle with this many pieces, so we're a little intimidated by this one to say the least.

A few pictures of the cabin for your viewing pleasure:

Our favorite spot: the screened-in porch