Mountain Postcards

Cades Cove, Newfound Gap, Clingmans Dome are where cars and cameras collect inside Great Smoky Mountain National Park. 800 square miles of pristine natural areas, with the Tennessee/North Carolina state line cutting through the horizontal center, the park offers some of the prettiest auto drives in the eastern half of the U.S., especially in the spring and fall. Cades Cove is a broad fertile valley surrounded by mountains in the western section of the park. The deer are so use to cars, they practically pose for you. At Newfound Gap you can straddle the state line and look into the valleys of each state. Yes, they look the same. Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the park, with a required large parking lot. Like most National Parks, Smoky Mountain is heavily visited. Patience with traffic and parking areas is rewarded by a quarter-mile walk down any trail where you can experience the sounds and smells the Cherokee Indians found hundreds of years ago.

Vicki and I did a fall color visit to the park. I was there to capture the color, she was there to keep me from venturing too far down a rocky ledge in search of image perfection. The colors and scenes are visual cliches, but in this waterfall, ridgeline, deep woods environment one can achieve a mental, maybe even spiritual rejuvenation. The postcard slideshow below is a mix of photos from last year and this year.