We started out our day with a drive through the Smokies to Clingman’s Dome. This is a fairly quick hike on a paved path to the top of the mountain (a half mile 330 foot ascent from the parking lot) to a viewing tower. Marge, Ron, Gary, Noah and I (The Swartz family went on a much harder hike) started our climb to the top where the viewing tower was and quickly mentioned to eachother that we were amazed at how steep the climb was! Gary was pushing a sleeping Noah in his stroller and it was quite a job getting the stroller up the mountain. We made our way to the top and Noah woke up and wanted to walk the rest of the way up to the tower all by himself! On our way into the park:
Clingman’s Dome. This is the tower at the top of the mountain after hiking up the steep .5 mile incline:
Walking up to the tower. You can see in the last picture how windy it was…look at little Noah’s almost blowing away! It was a chilly 61 degrees at the tower.
A beautiful view from the tower. You can see in the second picture that we were above the tree tops!
We all went to a local old time photo shop in Gatlinburg. It was fun dressing up!! Sorry for the bad picture but I had to take a picture of the photo they gave us. (Back: Gary, Emily, Alan, Dawn, John. Front: Noah, Aubre, Marge, Ron)
We all had dinner together at a local BBQ restaurant. Noah was having so much fun playing with the menu that he forgot about the cracker in his mouth!
We all walked around Gatlinburg after dinner. We visited a build-a-bear workshop where Emily had a bear made….Noah and Daddy enjoyed the trick mirror!
"Life is like a box of chocolates…."
Rice's World 
August 22, 2008 at 10:43 pm |
wow – had to catch up for the last couple days….hahaha how BIG gary\’s feet look in this pic….wonderful pics – ALMOST like being there, without huffing and puffing up the trails 🙂
I LOVE the old time photo!