An Even 50! We hiked close to 10 miles during our several visits to the Great Smokey Mountains and the kids earned their 50th Junior Ranger Badge of our trip (well at least Joseph and Morgan did...the younger kids might be a badge or two behind)! Quite a milestone that equates to almost 1 Junior Ranger badge per week for the last year....now the trick will be actually remembering every park! We timed our visit to overlap with Lori's cousin Chopper and his family who were visiting Gatlinburg and the Smokey Mountains from Pennsylvania. We made a couple hikes before Chopper and crew arrived, but we saved almost 5 miles of hiking for Clingman's Dome (the highest point in the park) and Andrew's Bald. We didn't have a view from Clingman's Dome because of the low clouds....on a clear day you can see at least 4 states. After the hikes, we did a driving tour over to Cades Cove where there are still several home sites from before the National Park was established (officially dedicated in 1940). The Great Smokey Mountains National Park was established after many people had settled in the mountains, so the federal government and private donors (namely John D. Rockefeller) raised 12-million dollars to purchase the private property to establish the National Park. Incidentally, the Rockefellers were also instrumental in building the beautiful bridges for the carriage roads in Acadia National Park in Maine!
We drove really slowly on the 11-mile loop around Cades Cove in search of black bears who frequent the area. Cades Cove has a big clearing where settlers cut trees to build homes and establish farms and the bears like the berries around the clearing...but we didn't have any more success seeing bears than we did getting a view from Clingman's Dome. We did see several deer including a doe and her fawn that walked within 30 feet of us on the trail as they tried to get back out to the forest. Chopper, Stacy, Charly and Avery proved to be terrific hikers and linking up together in the National Park was definitely a fun time for us!