We said goodbye to Net and moved on aiming for the little town of Gatlinburg to take in the fall colours in one of their best environments – the Smoky Mountains National Park.

This photo below is one of my most favourite photos I took on the drive there.

Taken from the car just looking up through the front window in the afternoon sunlight.

This little town of Gatlinburg was a special mix of European influence and very passionately god fearing folk. There were lots of tee shirts and bed coverings and pillows all about following Christ and having Jesus as your homeboy. But they also combined usually with some pretty cool animal and breed specific merchandise and some of the Border Collie stuff wasn’t half bad. I couldn’t go past a store without checking it out but Tim was very quickly assessing the Cross stitched Jesus Loves You cushions in the windows and announcing that he’d be staying outside. They weren’t all full of religion related offerings so I was willing to go and see what was on offer.

Gatlinburg had great pancakes, custard ice cream and a very small town atmosphere to it. It’s a primo ski vacation spot too in Winter.

I think we just missed the snow, it arrived just after we left. It was our home base for checking out a couple of places including Clingmans Dome the highest peak in the Smokies. It was about a 1.5km hike at a very steep gradient. A good workout and I was determined not to stop and get my breath the whole way up and was pleased I could do it. Great view from the top as well.

We drove along the Cades Cove route as well which is a fairly long 11 mile one way loop road that circles the cove, a valley surrounded by the Smoky mountains on all sides.

Managed to take lots of photos of the colours changing.

This was one thing I really enjoyed seeing as it’s not something you see growing up in Perth. Autumn is more like just that thing that splits Winter and Spring. Trees have leaves. Then they don’t. There’s no watching them change through all the colours of the rainbow. There’s also no running or walking exaggeratedly through piles of them making a satisfyingly loud wooshing, crackling, generally noisy sounds as you kick through piles of them. I like Autumn leaves I’ve decided. The ones on the trees and on the ground.

The wildlife was just hanging out, checking out the visitors briefly before resuming their conversations. The crows did have a lot to say for themselves.

This guy was impressive and largely unimpressed by the bystanders snapping pics of his harem. I didn’t get out because those antlers look pretty lethal and given his expression I thought it a less than safe idea to try and predict his mood whilst on foot.

It was on then to Franklin TN.

Franklin also has that small town vibe but way less touristy, more just old, historic and filled with really nicely built houses on serious sized pieces of land. In the burbs. That was really quite refreshing to see.

We ended up going to Puckett’s Grocery Market (actually a restaurant type dining deal) twice in downtown Franklin because the food was just that good. Went there on the recommendation from Richard Speight who is a born and bred TN guy, now living in LA, but who returns home every so often and will always take visiting buddies out to this place to eat. I asked him about TN when were in Dallas for the Supernatural Con.

From Franklin we then did the long drive North to Chicago 🙂