Our last day here. The visibility seemed to be a lot better today, so we decided to try to get to Clingman’s Dome again. It’s something I wanted to do and I know the others wanted it as well. When we got to Newfound Gap (about 3/4 of the way there) things seemed better. The visibility was still good and we were starting to get stoked for a great view from atop “the Dome”. Unfortunately, as we got closer the visibility went down. When we got there, we could see farther than the day before but we still couldn’t see any nearby mountains or even more than about 100 yards around the tower on the top of Clingman’s Dome. Oh well, we can’t control the weather!

KC, Bob and Norma then took off on a hike down to Indian Gap – 6.1 miles away. I got the honor and privilege of driving the car down to Indian Gap so they wouldn’t have to hike back up to Clingman’s Dome. While waiting for them to come down, I read more of the book and also hiked 100-200 yards up the trail to Clingman’s Dome and back – my knee was still bothering me. When they arrived at Indian Gap, they all thought that they had a nice hike.

I did learn why they call them the Smoky Mountains. When visibility is low, it’s because of low clouds – fog. However, the fog didn’t just settle in; it drifted and you could actually see it drift. It looked just like smoke from a fire wafting around. In fact, there were times when I was looking for a campfire or even a grass fire or forest fire because of the way the fog was moving. It even moved across the paths and through the trees as smoke would. Amazing!

After the hike, we went to Gatlinburg to do some “touristy” things. KC and I went on the Sky Lift while Bob and Norma walked around to a few of the shops. When KC and I got back down from the Sky Lift, we went into a few of the shops with our friends but we never did find a shirt we liked. Yeah, they had about a bazillion t-shirts but none of them had The Great Smoky Mountain National Park logo on them – they all had Gatlinburg or Dollywood or Pigeon Forge or some other tourist stuff on them. Bah! And none of us wanted to spend a lot of time looking for shirts so we just left. Besides, we were all hungry! We settled on The Alamo restaurant after asking a few people; and we weren’t disappointed. It was excellent — a bit pricey, but nothing like prices in the restaurants on the main drag of Gatlinburg.

When we got back to the cabin, we finished the jigsaw puzzle before heading off to bed. Big travel day tomorrow!