Day Trip to Cades Cove

Since the last posting, we've been doing some of the more mundane things of life. We went out to dinner one evening. We did laundry. We cleaned house. We took our walks and just generally enjoyed our place in the world.

And then on Monday afternoon, our neighbors from Leesburg arrived. They will be here for two weeks and it will be fun having them around to do stuff with. They got their motor coach shortly after we did and this will be their longest trip out in it so far.

We’ve had lots of rain this week and have had to dodge the storms to do anything. Yesterday turned out to be no exception.

We took off with our friends at about 10am. We drove through Cherokee and the Smoky Mountains into Tennessee and had lunch at Gatlinburg.

From there we drove west to take a tour of Cades Cove. This is a beautiful area that has been somewhat preserved since the 1800s. It was very interesting to see how the people lived in that era. I’ve always said I would not have made a good pioneer and seeing these homes and buildings surely reinforced that.

Our first stop was at the John Oliver Place. As you can see, we had a bit of a hike to get up to the house.

The house itself was just one room with the big fireplace on one end. There were steps to the second floor, but they were pretty steep, so I didn’t go up. The guide book says that’s where the sons of the household slept. Everyone else on the main floor.

This is the back of the house, with Julian and our friend, Larry, to the right. Looks like they had some heated debate going on.

We passed by three different churches, two Baptist and one Methodist. As time was getting short, we didn’t stop at any of them. We did stop next at the Cable Mill and Visitor Center. This is a shot of the house there, which was built in 1879 and enlarged over time.

This is the grist mill, which still works.

Here’s the Cantilever Barn.

They had a demonstration near the barn of different toys the kids played with back then. It was like sitting in grandma’s house! They had the button on the string, only they used small wooden disks cut from branches and with two holes in them. People were amazed by these things and yet I remember them so well from when we were kids.

This is the smokehouse. It still smelled smoky in there.

Here’s proof we were really there. This is in front of the house, which was little more than three rooms and an upstairs.


From there we headed back out of the “park”. It’s a long, slow drive on a one-way, narrow road. And people kept stopping in the road to take pictures of the deer. But we managed to be almost out by the time the rain started to pour down on us.

We drove back home by a different route, which seemed to go faster than the way we had come over that morning. It rained on us the whole way home and then for a couple hours more. Poor Heidi, who hates water of any kind, had a hard time of it. And her dinner was late, to boot!

So far today we have sunshine and nice weather. We’re a bit tired of the rain, so we hope this weather will hold up for a few days.

Until next time, happy trails to you all!