Cades Cove and Abrams Falls

This is a trip for any warm, sunny day. Cades Cove is located in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, TN http://www.nps.gov/grsm/index.htm. We love it about any time of the year. Spring is nice when everything is alive and blooming and Fall is nice when the colors are at their peak. The drive around the Cades Cove http://http//www.cadescove.net/auto_tour.html is 11 miles or you can cut across at Sparks Lane or Hyatt Lane and shorten your drive. Usually in the morning hours or late evening there are plenty of animals out feeding. Occassionally you might see a bear. We also rode our bicycles around it a few times. During the summer months the road is not open to cars on Saturdays from about 6am to 10am. Makes for a super ride with just bikes or walkers. There are some hills that we usually have to push our bikes up but most of the road is either level or downhill. It's a very beautiful and peaceful ride. We also rode it one time at night. That was really an experience. It gets very dark in there at night without proper lighting (that's another story for another time). There are lots of places to stop and picnic or tour some of the old cabins that remain from the pioneer days. There is still a working mill and two churches from the pioneer days. If you live in this part of the country or come to visit, you must visit Cades Cove. It's hard to imagine how tough life was for the pioneers lived there so long ago.

About half way around if you like to hike there is Abrams Falls http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/waterfalls.htm. It's an easy 1 1/2 hr hike to the falls. It's a beautiful waterfall. A great place to cool off those feet on a hot day before hiking back to the car. If you take this drive in the fall when the colors are at their peak the traffic is bumper to bumper so we would advise going at another time unless you get there really early. It's a wonderful way to spend a day in the mountains.