Morning in Cades Cove

The results of an early morning drive through Cades Cove:

Wild turkeys struttin' their stuff!

Gobbling!

Handsome prince!

Look at those flashy colors!!

A friend of CarrieBearie's.

"Oh! What are you doing here?!! Don't you know? You're supposed to stay on the road!" (mutters as exits stage left: "dumb tourists").

The Hamp Tipton Place.

Visitor "autographs" in the Tipton cabin...

Tipton's double-cantilever barn.

The Carter Shields Cabin.

And back to the first morning shot. I had spent quite awhile waiting on the sun earlier, hoping to photograph the horses in sunlight. But no. Right before the sun crept up on them, the horses all wandered back to the barn for breakfast!! Ergh! But, on my second partial pass at the loop, they were back out, so...!

So, the main tourist to-do here is the loop road. It is a paved one-way 11-mile road (with a couple dirt cross-over, one-way roads) that people can walk, bike, or drive. This gets back to the less-cool parts of this part of the park... Cades Cove is extremely popular. The likelihood of getting stuck behind lots of slow-moving, or often stopped, traffic is very high. Now, if everyone is stopped to look at a bear, AND you get to see the bear too? Well, that's OK then! But that's not usually the case... And this one morning, a whole bunch of us actually got stuck behind an entire family on bikes. If the family could all pedal at 20 mph, no problem! But this gaggle included little teeny kids on little teeny bikes...not exactly 20 mph material...! I was astonished as the rest of the family motored on around a curve, leaving their poor little boy behind. He was off his bike, walking as fast as he could to catch up. I felt sorry for the kiddo and disgusted with his family - for both being unmindful of their own child, as well as unmindful of the rest of us, who were stuck going about 2 mph!! Unbelievable.