Also before we arrived at the park, we stopped by to see Ashleigh's family friends in Townsend, Tennessee, which borders the park. They could hardly have lived in a more convenient place, as Townsend was the best way for us to enter the park anyway. Sharon Cox worked with Ashleigh's mom, Susan, back in the 1990s. Sharon's husband is Gary. The two of them recently moved to Tennessee from Maine along with their mother, Mildred, daughter, Kim, her husband Ralph, and two sons Cody and Mitchell. Of that clan, Kim has been a professional chef, and prepared a luxury lunch spread. The house they live in is beautiful with multiple adjascent porches, some screened, some not. We ate and were merry for a couple hours.
We then went into Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our campground was at Cades Cove. That area was teh site of a village many years ago, which was mostly or completely cut off from other communities. Eventually a legal change to the terretory resulted in the people being booted off the land, which became a park, and their houses and buildings became tourist attractions. To me it seemed like they got a raw deal; where are squatters' rights when you need them?
There is a 12-mile loop road around the Cove, and the 12 miles of road was full of 11.8 miles of cars, nearly bumper to bumper, moving a few feeet at a time in tiny waves. We decided to bike it before the sun went down, and we had a great time doing it. By the end we were tired of peddling, but overall we exited the loop near the same cars we had entered with, except that we had stopped to see a few of the sites, so we made pretty good time compared to the cars. At the first stop along the way, a bear ambled up the path. All the tourists took pictures and it abled into the woods. It was a skinny, unhealthy looking bear, maybe mangy.
We cooked a little dinner and met the campers next door. The family father insisted on helping me torque my lug nuts, "so at least you know what they are torqued at." Yes, good thinking sir. He whipped out a torque wrench and pro set of lug drivers. We torqued my lug nuts to seventy pounds.
Also, the rangers at the park put on a little show, a cheesy slideshow and talk about the changing features of the park. We didn't get a picture of that, though, it probably would have put you to sleep.
The pictures in this slideshow are also of our second day, which I will post separately.
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