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I really don’t know which is more impressive at the Pisgah Inn — the mountains or the sky. Every once in a while the two come together to create a stunning scene. That’s what happened this past June 24. We can’t see the setting sun from our room, but the sunlight caught the little cloud in the center of the photo and colored it with red and gold. Is it any wonder the we keep going back?
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The Smokies are are wonderful to visit any time of the year, and Betsy and I try to get to them as often as we can. I think Spring is our favorite season for visiting, but Autumn can be amazing as well. We often drive the Foothills Parkway, which is technically outside the park, but which does provide beautiful views of the mountains. I got this picture of the sky and the mountains from the parkway a few years ago.
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When Betsy and I visit Pisgah Inn, the early mornings are often foggy or very cloudy. But this year we had a morning on which the sky was mostly clear at dawn. I was able to get some pictures of the color in the sky, even though there was some for in the valleys below. O, What a Beautiful Mornin’! June 24, 2024.
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I never get tired of the view we have from Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I never get tired of trying to get a panorama which at least approximates the beauty we enjoy. I got the photos that made up this panorama on a morning in June, 2023. Many of the mountain tops were lost in a sea of fog.
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Betsy was treated like a queen on Mother’s Day this year.
Her sons Mark (left) and Bert (right) along with Robin, Mark’s significant other, treated us to an adventure along Citiico Creek in the Cherokee National Forest. They provided a delicious picnic lunch, and found a perfect picnic spot along the bank of the creek.
Good food, great company, and a couple of hammocks made for an ideal day. Since Mark has a jeep we were able to go back into the “boonies” and to have the place pretty much to ourselves. It would be an understatement to say that we had a wonderful time.
Of course, when Betsy gets together with her sons, just about anything can happen — and it usually does.
But the creek was absolutely beautiful.
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My Beautiful Bride and I love the Smoky Mountains, although we don’t like the busy times (or places) when there are so many tourists around. So we go to the park in the winter or visit some of the places that aren’t on everyone’s list of things to see.
I got this picture of the Middle Prong of Little River on a January visit to the park a few years ago. That’s Lower Spruce Flat Falls coming down the mountain on the other side of the river.
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Late autumn can be a great time to go searching for waterfalls — the weather is usually mild and there are fewer people on the roads and trails than is the case during spring and summer.
Several years ago we explored the Unaka Mountain area near Erwin, Tennessee, on Thanksgiving weekend. Being on the mountain was certainly much more enjoyable than facing Black Friday crowds at the stores and malls. We drove along some Forest Service roads and did some hiking. This pretty little waterfall is one of the sights we enjoyed.
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One of the nice things about living in eastern Tennessee is that autumn in the mountains can be spectacular. There’s no guarantee of course — Mother Nature is going to do what she wants when she wants to do it. There have been years when the autumn colors are muted and quite frankly, drab. But there are other years during which the colors on the mountains take your breath away.
My Beautiful Bride and I try to go on a ‘leaf-hunting’ trip every year. We usually make a loop — going through the Smokies over Newfound Gap, and coming the other way over the Cherohala Parkway.
The picture above was taken along the Cherohala Parkway connecting North Carolina and Tennessee several years ago. We hope we are as fortunate this year.
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I imagine that most ‘normal’ people use a vacation as an opportunity to sleep in and take things easy. Fortunately (or unfortunately) My Beautiful Bride and I are not ‘normal’. We often get up earlier than we normally would just to enjoy the sunrise.
That was certainly the case when we visited the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina in August. We couldn’t see the sun from the balcony of our room, but the sky was still beautiful at sunrise. The picture above was taken the first morning we were there.
The fog in the valleys looked like a blanket spread around the mountains below us.
Looking to the west also gave us a peaceful, serene view of the world from the mountains.
The sunrise on our last morning at Pisgah Inn gave us a lot of incentive to come back.
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Betsy and I traveled to the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway of North Carolina in October to enjoy the autumn colors. We found colorful trees, although there was not as much as we had hoped there would be. Mother Nature, however, more than made up for any lack of color on the trees by providing gorgeous color in the morning skies.
We got up at dawn each day to enjoy the show. The morning started with a single star shining down as the horizon turned a brilliant orange and red.
As the light increased we could see fog in the valleys below and mountain tops in the distance peeking through the fog.
The eastern sky slowly filled with yellow, orange, and gold colors, silhouetting some trees along the ridge line.
Yes, we definitely found some gorgeous colors in the mountains of North Carolina!
Senior Moments 