Smoky Mountain National Park is our last “official” stop before we arrive home. We drove three, hard, 400+ mile days to get here. Then, it’s back in the car, over the mountains, off to Cades Cove, up Clingman’s Dome Road and ALWAYS looking for animals! I ask you… what are we? Chopped Liver??? Oh, I know, sometimes Zoe and I think we’re princesses or people and we are. But we do have 4 legs just like bears and deer, right?
Anyway, we know why these mountains are called Smoky Mountains! When we went to Clingman’s Dome, we couldn’t even see the top of the mountain. The top was hidden by a cloud. Everything looks hazy, and it makes me blink and blink. I thought that we wouldn’t go very high here, but the folks figured out that we actually climbed as many feet as we did in Rocky Mountain National Park on the Trail Ridge Road. It’s just that it is 6000 feet lower and no tundra. Plus, no snow. We really wanted snow again before we hit the beaches.
We even got some R and R time outside the car in a river. Mom had a fit because both of us decided to drink the river water. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea – Zoe got a guppy tummy that night but was fine the next day.These critters here are really hard to see in amongst the trees. But, you should have heard Dad when a bear crossed in front of us today. He got so excited that Mom shushed him. There were deer everywhere if you were lucky to see them and we even saw Wild Turkeys.
Plus, we saw bears on four different times – a mother and 2 cubs, another mother and one cub, and two young cubs who seemed to be alone. Lucky for us, though, we were in our car. I saw on TV that a bear had attacked a man and his son plus chased the Ranger. The guys had planned to hike that same falls trail the next day, but it was heavily patrolled and closed to the public. Dad said that they had asked about bears at the visitor center the day it happened and had been assured that there was no problem at all. I’m glad they didn’t go!
We think we want to come back here in the fall when we can see through the trees better. Zoe and I like this area, and it doesn’t take as long to get here as it does to Colorado.
Tomorrow we leave for Chapel Hill. We’ll see most of you there and hope that those of you that our folks met along the way will visit us in North Carolina. What a summer it has been! 
Phaedra and Zoe forever!
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