Every April, the Great Smoky Mountains has a five day event called the Wildflower Pilgrimage which features various classes, tours, exhibits, and hikes pertaining to the flora and fauna in the park. Up until this year, we had been unable to explore the beauties of spring in the park because of prior commitments and travel. But this year we carved out some time to hit the trails in search of wildflowers.
On Thursday, Keith and I walked the Gatlinburg Trail. This is one of our favorite trails because it's wide, flat and scenic. It runs from red light #10 in Gatlinburg to the Sugarlands Visitors Center. It's one of only two trails in the park that allows dogs. It's a popular favorite for dog lovers, hikers and runners.
On Friday, we headed to Townsend to hike part of the Chestnut Top Trail. This trail is known for its variety of wildflowers so we decided to check it out. It did not disappoint. I hope you like what I shot.
That's just a few of the beautiful flowers we saw. I really enjoyed shooting them. We closed out our day with a picnic by the river. It was a perfect day.
On Saturday we decided to hike the Baskins Creek Falls Trail. I found this to be a very difficult trail because of all the "up and down" hiking, but I made it. The waterfall was quite impressive after all the rain we had the night before.
Finally on Sunday, the weather was a little "iffy" so we decided to stay close and walk the Fighting Creek Nature Trail behind the Sugarlands Visitors Center. Apparently there used to be a school house nearby and after school the boys would go down to this creek to fight, thus the name "Fighting Creek". It has quite an impressive number of varieties of trees and flowers, as well as the John Ownby cabin.
We finished our hike off with a visit to Cataract Falls, also a short walk from the Visitors Center.
We had 4 great days of hiking over 12 miles and enjoyed all the flowers and critters we saw. Well, all but this one!
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