Clingman's Dome

I don't remember when exactly but at some point Mom and I had gone up the Clingman's Dome Trail.  I made it then, but it really wiped me out.  Mom only a little past halfway up that time.  Today, I did walk it slow and stayed with the mom, but I barely felt any effort at all in doing it.  And Mom made it all the way.

On the first trip it was cold and windy.  This trip it was somewhat cold, very wet, and sometimes windy.  But the real problem for me was that we were walking up into clouds.  Most of the time, you couldn't see more than about 25-50 feet away.  This doesn't make for very good picture taking.  However if I had known that Photoshop does easily get rid of some of the cloud/foggy look, I might have tried a few more photos.  But I did get some I like.

Near the top of the Clingman's Dome trail, there is an intersection with the Appalachian Trail.  I like to go down to it and take a few steps on it, just to say I have been on the Appalachian Trail.  :-)

This is looking down the Appalachian Trail towards Double Spring Gap Shelter.

This is the sign.

This is looking up the Appalachian Trial toward Mt Collins Shelter.

This is, of course, the mom who has made it to the top despite all my pleas that we had gone far enough, because I was bored with walking in a cloud with no good picture opportunities.  At first she was going to be happy with just getting to here.  Then there was this couple.  A young man, who easily could have been a Biggest Loser trainer with how good he was at encouraging, and his girlfriend, a young lady in her 20's I would guess who was slightly larger than mom.  The boyfriend was trying to convince her to go ahead and climb up to the tower even though you couldn't really see anything up there because of the clouds.  So mom challenged the young woman that they could do it together.

 So here she is at the top.  When there's no cloud cover like this, there would be a really spectacular view behind her.  But oh well.

On the way down, I finally found some photos to take...little while flowers.

 Another little white flower.

 A cute little lizard on the path.

 My favorite part of this flower photo is the raindrop on the one leaf.

The cloud did lighten up some finally when were getting further down the trail.  This was one of the few landscape photos that I took and like the result of it.

I think this video is amusing.  Unlike most people, mom has just as much trouble going downhill (and maybe more so) as she does at going uphill. My favorite mom quotes while she was going down, in order of preference and I think maybe the order she said them in too.

• "I hate hiking down the mountain.  No I don't.  I like the challenge of climbing down."
• "Hi everyone.  I made it up the mountain.  Now I'm making it down, I hope."
• "I wish we didn't have to go the rest of the way down this hill.

If you click on this to see it full size, you'll notice it says the trail length is 0.5 mile.  That is one way, and is really only most of the way to the top.  I think if you include the ramp to the top of the tower and both directions, it is more like 1.2 miles.

The colors are brighter than they appear here, but the cloud cover muted them.

I do really like this one.  Although that red was much brighter in reality.

And with this, I am finally caught up on a month's worth of picture taking.