We had the privilege last Friday to go to the mountains. This is probably the last view from Clingman’s Dome we will have a chance to see this year.
On December 1st, the Smoky Mountain Park Service will close access to this part of the park. Don’t worry, though. The schedule re-open is April 1st.
Clingman’s Dome is the highest point in the Smoky’s. The climate there is similar to southern Canada. This is what we saw all the way.
I have seen snow showers in May in the upper elevations while conditions in the foothills – Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Cherokee are the opposite on top of the mountain. The winding road leading out to Clingmans Dome can be a bit tricky for anyone who doesn’t drive along curvy roads much and it is absolutely treacherous for everyone when there’s inclement weather. The Park Service is unable to maintain that stretch of road to keep motorist safe.
Our day trip was pure joy. I rambled a bit about our time spent in the mountains earlier this week, here. I haven’t had much opportunity to shoot with my Nikon D7000, but I was able to take advantage of using it to capture some pretty amazing pictures or at least I think so. Today, I wanted to share more photo ops of our little outing in God’s country on the Blue Ridge Parkway between Cherokee, NC and Water Rock Knob overlook on the parkway…
and these sunset pictures on the NC side of the Smoky’s on our way home…
Please join my NO-RULES Thursday Thoughts linky party below:
To participate in Miss Jenny’s Alphabe-Thursday classroom assignment of the letter ‘Z’, I would like to invite you to read/re-read Z is for …. that I wrote on April 7, 2011.
