Friday, October 7, 2011
Cheri Oct-6-11
8:58 AM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
Gay did a little cleaning on the bike this morning and then grilled some pork chops for lunch. A little later we hopped on the bike and went downtown to the Three Bears General Store.
They had a little bit of everything there—even 5 black Himalayan bears out back in their enclosure we could check out. It was pretty sad; there were no trees or grass, just cement with water they could get into if they wanted. At certain times of the day they allowed people to feed them from the walkway above the pen. We watched them for a bit, whenever they wanted to go down the stairs, they backed themselves down—odd! They had an extra tuff of hair around their necks.
We had a little time to kill, so we went back to the 5th wheel and by 3:30pm we were ready to head to Cades Cove. It’s located in the western corner of the Great Smoky Mountains Natural Park. This is a 4,000 acre valley that is a natural paradise and a historical museum. You can drive the 11 mile one-way loop around the cove. Cades Cove was for centuries a hunting ground for the Cherokee Indians. A treaty in 1819 opened the valley to settlement. By 1850 there were 132 families farming in the flat land.
Today Cades Cove is home of one of the most complete collections of historic structures in Southern Appalachia. There are a number of cabins with the out building and a church you can check out. We visited this site last year and checked out all of these places. Our plan for today was to just ride through and check out the wild life.
We stopped in at the Visitors Center before starting the loop. One of the workers there told us evening was a good time to drive the loop. He even said they could not open the gates on time this morning because there was a bear right there by the gate.
We began the loop at 5pm. Just as we started, we spotted a group of wild turkeys. Right away the traffic began to back up. We were bumper to bumper the whole way through the park. We got a glimpse of a bear (we think) and saw 3 big bucks along with a number of doe.
We had to keep pulling over because the bike would get real hot from going to slow. We pulled into the half way mark to take a break and Gay got some pictures of the old grist mill.
The 11 mile loop took 2 ½ hours! It was not a fun ride.
The ride home was in the dark, the temperature had dropped and we needed to stop and put on extra clothes to keep warm. We arrived home at 8:30. We had put on 78 miles today.
Gay has uploaded pictures of the day click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Three Bears and Cades Cove.
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