Our mission for the day was visiting Smoky Mountains National Park. Our big hope was to catch fall color. But sadly Mother Nature is not cooperating and the real fall colors are still weeks away. Smoky Mountain NP is promoted as being THE MOST VISITED National Park. Perhaps that should have set some kind of alarm bell off in the de-I "I hate masses of humanity" sensor.
Not to belabor the point but it was wall-to-wall cars. The park was packed. You travel on one-lane roads and there are all kinds of people who stop along the way to either take a picture or to look for an elusive animal sighting despite signage everywhere telling people to pull off the road to do such activities and the fact there are pull offs galore! As a result you are crawling around the park at less than 15 miles per hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Added to this was our own error in choosing at route that focused on a number of buildings and lifestyle of the area in the mid-nineteenth century which unfortunately was a complete duplicate of the kinds of things we saw at the Louisiana Rural Life Museum and the Old Alabama Museum.
So it was a fairly frustrating day. But there are always silver linings. There is something about these kinds of frustrating experiences that leads to greater interpersonal interactions. We had plenty of those. It has definitely been nice to be in a country where one can speak the language.
Also this part of the country is very friendly. At breakfast we were standing in line at a fast food place. I asked Commander Spouse if she had our map. A woman standing next to us asked where we were going and gave us directions.
Well as Gettysburg was the high water mark of the Confederacy during the Civil War, our foray into the Appalachians is the high water mark going East of our Road Trip. We have already started our way back West and will be spending the next week leisurely making our way back to New Mexico.
Photos
Today was a day for experimenting
I spent the greatest part of the day working with a fixed lens, a 17mm. This is a pretty short lens that has very good glass, gives you a wider angle and has the ability to shoot much closer in. But if you were weaned on a variable length zoom lens, it takes some change of thought to how you will plan your pictures
Let's start by entering the Park
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!
Even if there be a sprig of hope
Let's start by entering the Park
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE!
A road, free and clear, like this, will NOT be in your future
On to more serious photography
Studying a house and grounds
A Study of Tree Trunks
Studying Fall Color
Yet another house and barn study
Miscellaneous
Lovely couple from Mississippi
Oh and I saved this for last
Because...
...well because...
I'M EVIL HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
When we first entered the Park we passed this small waterfall with the perfect lighting for water pictures.
If it is any consolation, this is only about 25% of the pictures I took
Play Handel's Water Music' with them
2 comments:
I shudder to think how many photos of water you actually took, if the amount you have on the blog is only the cut that made it to publication...
I was actually listening to classical music based on folk dances, which seemed very fitting while watching the tossing waters of your pictures. Thanks for sparing us from the other 75%...
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