Day 12 - Heintooga Ridge & Balsam Mountain Roads

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Weather - clear and sunny, high of 80F in the lowlands and 72F in the mountains

Steps - Shaun: 5,468, Shannon: 4,329

Varmints - 2 elk, turkey vulture, numerous turkeys, small raptor we didn't see well enough to identify, chipmunk

How to describe today? Disappointing? No, too harsh. So-so? Also not quite accurate. Great, until it wasn't? Better. 

We decided to make today a driving day to give Shaun's knee a rest, so we planned a trip to the southern edge of the park, including a trip around the Heintooga Ridge/Balsam Mountain loop, a visit to Fontana Dam and Lake, and a return to Townsend via the Foothills Parkway along the western border of the park. As you can see from the map above, things did not go quite according to plan.

We had a late night, so we woke up and got ready an hour later than usual. We left the cabin after 10am, and started toward the Townsend entrance to the park. On the way, Shaun decided that she wanted to stop at a little collection of shops on Hwy 321 because they had a gallery and other gift shop-types of places. It was a little disappointing because the gallery was closed and the rest of the stores didn't have much to see, but Shaun did get a pretty teal speckled jelly roll pan that will go well in her kitchen.

After that little detour, we got back on track and headed down Little River Gorge Road to Newfound Gap Road. We took that to its end at the Oconaluftee Visitors Center, where we stopped because it was open! The exhibits were really well done, explaining a little bit about the history of the Cherokee and Euro-Americans who have inhabited this area. We'll learn more about the Cherokee who lived here once we move on to Bryson City.  What we do know is that the people who remained after the Trail of Tears  formed what is now the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.  There's a Museum of the Cherokee Indian in the nearby town of Cherokee that we're excited to visit as well.

We did briefly drive through the Big Cove community in the Qualla Boundary, the traditional name for the Eastern Cherokee Indian Nation Land Trust, and it was super cool because the road signs had both the English names and the Cherokee names written in the characters of the Cherokee syllabary (the written version of the Cherokee language, with each character representing a syllable). We're excited to spend more time in the area and learn more about the Eastern Band and their culture.

We spent a bit of time in the shop at the visitors center, buying another jigsaw puzzle (of course!), more postcards (double of course!), and other goodies, before continuing on. In order to get on the Heintooga Ridge Road, we traveled up the southern-most section of the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is something else we would like to explore further, as it runs all the way up to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and we'll only be seeing specific sections of it on this trip. The overlooks were beautiful, and we stopped at one to eat our al fresco lunch. 

From the parkway, we turned onto the loop road, which is paved for the first stretch and had several beautiful viewpoints looking out on both sides of the ridge, toward Newfound Gap and Clingmans Dome on one and Maggie Valley, which we haven't yet explored, on the other. Just at the point where the pavement ends is a short trail to the Heintooga Overlook. The overlook had some benches perfectly positioned to take in the beauty of the view, so it was a great place to stop for a few minutes, breathe in the fresh air, and enjoy the day. The path was lined in delicate wildflowers, and it made for a nice little jaunt to stretch our legs.

The road became Balsam Mountain Road at the unpaved section, which was one-way and "primitive." We thought it was better maintained than the track we took to get to Cataloochee, and it was nice that it was one-way so Shaun didn't have to worry about meeting someone abruptly around the next curve. The road followed an old logging railroad line along the sides of the mountain and down into a river valley, starting at 5,535 feet in elevation and ending at about 2,000 feet. 

Along the way were numerous wildflowers, including a different kind of trillium than we had seen before, and lush forests, starting with conifers and mountain laurels at the top and changing to deciduous trees and rhododendron groves down below. 

We didn't see much in the way of vistas, unfortunately, catching glimpses of the mountains through the trees every once in awhile, but it was nice to be in the cool comfort of the forest for awhile after our vista-heavy day yesterday. 

At Pin Oak Gap, we swung around and started heading back toward the end of the loop. One fascinating thing our road guide pointed out was that we would be passing the headwaters of the Straight Fork on the road. As we wound our way down, we would continue to encounter the Straight Fork, and we would see it grow from a small trickle at the start to a rushing river by the time we left the road. It was exciting to follow along with the "gradual maturity" (as the book put it) of the river.

Just before we left the gravel road to get on Big Cove Road and travel toward Fontana Dam to continue our day, we started to hear weird noises coming from the Jeep's right front tire. It started as a banging, then scratching, and settled into the sound of something rubbing against something else. We can only hear it when the car is moving, so it's definitely related to the tire or breaks, not the engine, but Shaun didn't feel any different in the handling or breaking of the car, so we're not exactly sure what it is. Still, no way were we going to continue on our regularly scheduled road trip around the western side of the park with a potentially faulty brake. Especially when we were already on the opposite side of the park from our cabin and had a 90-minute trip back up Newfound Gap Road as the shortest route back.

We gingerly made our way back, with Shaun trying not to brake too much (kinda hard when weenies who didn't know how to drive on mountain roads held us up), scaring all the elk we saw away with the noise, and by the time we got to the cabin, the sound was basically a rubbing noise when the brake was deployed. We're going to take the car to a mechanic tomorrow, which has the potential to derail all our plans going forward, but better safe than sorry, especially on these mountain roads. We'll let you know what happens!

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