Day Three, Great Smokey Mountain

The problem with putting to computer the events of two days past after a day eventful in and of itself is that I am not certain that I will recall all or even the best of it. Once again, we drove on major highways only when we had to, and on twisting, hilly secondary roads everywhere we could. By 4:30 (1630 for those of us with 24 hr time on our watches) we were back on a major highway (66) of necessity, crawling through the rain in heavy traffic, in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. Pigeon Forge (or at least the section of it we saw) is a garish tourist trap designed to separate people from money as quickly and painlessly as possible, and if they can do it by catering to everyone's stereotype of mountain life and hillbillies, well that's just fine too. Dolly Parton, of Dolly Parton fame, has built Dollywood, an amusement park that cashes in on the fame of Dolly Parton; the major point of access to this promised land is in Pigeon Forge. In case this fact has escaped the weary traveller, there are plenty of billboards
to remedy that very thing.
Eventually the volume of traffic in Pigeon Forge and the next big city, Gatlinburg, fell away and we realized that nowhere near half of these people were headed to Great Smoky Mtn park to steal our camping spot and we relaxed. As we were crossing the park to camp on the North Carolina side, we had thirty miles of twisty, tree-shaded road with fantastic views and no sane reason to travel over 45 mph. The skies continued to be overcast through the park, and we took pictures of the clouds moving up the slopes and through the trees because we could.
We came, we saw, we camped. Yesterday we drove back into the park and then to an observation point at Clingman's dome. This is the site of the world's longest one-way, half-mile walk; coming back down is much faster and easier. For variation, we tried a short segment of the Appalacian Trail at the dome. More great views, more photos, of which one is included below.
This morning I had close look at a mountain farm display at the NC side of the park (Jane passed on the opportunity as there was a persistent odor of horse and a likelihood of allergy problems thereby). I can say that the concept of the lazy, shiftless hill-dweller is - if the sheer work necessary to survive on a farm like this one is taken into account - a total fabrication.
Then we started on the Parkway; and here begins complications enough to warrant a separate post later.