Great Smoky Mountains Nat'l Park

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May 27th 2007

Published: May 27th 2007

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Lpaw

Clingmans dome

views on the way to clingmans dome

2nd day on our trip. we started our day by visiting "clingmans dome" the highest point in the park, 6,643 feet. we were driving on clingmans dome road which is a ridge that is a state line of Tennessee and North Carolina. I looked in the park map and it appears that Appalachian trail is also a state line of Tennessee and North Carolina. it was fairly overcast and a bit cold up there. from the parking lot we hiked up half a mile to get to the dome or i prefer to call it "an observation deck". very nice views up there. i had planned to do a wild flower trail today but after we did a short hike at clingmans dome, Doug's feet gave him a hard time. He had blisters which i believed started since yesterday hike. He hung in there for a while before having to give up. we enjoyed the views some more up there before heading down. we stopped to enjoy some more views from high elevation at New Found Gap. at this point we were on NC side. we headed south to Cherokee visitor center to get info of the trail in that

Clingmans dome

an observation deck at Clingmans dome. looks like a spaceship to me.

area. we were quite exhausted. Doug wanted to rest his feet so we found a nice spot under a tree by Oconoluftee river at the visitor center. i took off my shoes and soaked my feet in the river. it was so refreshing. the water was quite cold so i took my feet off of the water after a few minutes.

it was close to 3 pm. and we started to get hungry so we headed to downtown cherokee to get lunch. downtown was not big there were souvenir shops along 2 both sides of the street. it was difficult to find a decent looking restaurant. we drove past a few run down or old restaurants. finally we found a burger place with pretty nice decor comparably to say most fast food restaurants. it was right across the street from a casio which is the only skyscraper in the area. i think they may have some good food there. however we did not check it out.

after a late lunch, we stopped by view points to take some more pictures of the smokies and did a short hike to Grotto falls before calling it the day.

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