Quiet Walkway #1 on Cades Cove Road

So this morning I went on a couple of walks on quiet walkways. If you don't know what these are, well it's basically just a small and usually fairly short trail into the woods. There are alot of them in the Smoky Mountain National Park, and they are usually much easier than the regular full blown trails in the Park. So basically at my current fitness level, or lack of a current fitness level, the quiet walkways are more my speed. I hope to eventually work my way up to more.

So this post will be about the first one I went on. I shall have a second post later about the other one. This was the first quiet walkway on Cades Cove Road as counted from the Sugarlands Visitor Center. The photo (also on Zazzle here) shows the first small stream crossing along this walkway. By comparison to later crossings in the day, this was definitely the easiest one. I just kind of find these little crossings to be fun. Not sure why, maybe it's just my general love of flowing water. but it's fun to be able to stand over the stream and watch it flow.


The trail was a fairly open and flat one, and easily walked. There was still a bit of snow around from the big snow last weekend. As there were no tracks in the snow that was still there, I think I might have been the first one on this walkway since the snow. I'm a big fan of snow. I left Texas because it was too hot for me. I stayed in Tennessee because you get to see snow, but there is not so much that it causes many problems. I really love living here near the mountains because you can get out to snow more, but it doesn't impeded the daily living further down in the valley.




The second crossing was more a river crossing than a creek crossing and a much longer log. It also felt a bit more dangerous as there was some ice on the log, but for most of it there was a handrail. Near the end though part of the handrail had been taken out by a fallen tree. I made it across though with very little problem. This area was not so scenic though because of the fallen tree debris in the area.






This was at the end of this short walkway. It was a nice small creek. The full size unobstructed image can be seen on Zazzle here. I was actually kneeling in the mud to get this photo, but I liked how it turned out. I got new hiking boots weekend before last, and this trip was my first real trip out with them. They worked well. My feet stayed warm and dry.


I took a number of other photos. But I think the one below is probably my favorite for this walkway and maybe for this trip. I particularly like the leaf trapped in the ice, and the shadows of the trees in the water are also neat. It is also posted on Zazzle here, where it looks better with out the copyright stamp.