Saturday, November 2, 2013

Day 31 Nov 2 - Sleeping late (who's surprised?) and an afternoon drive

We watched a late movie last night and choose to sleep in late today. After having the morning coffee and breakfast we headed out for the Great Smokey Mountains Park.

First order of business is always a stop at the visitors center to checkout the junior ranger program. This park was no exception. We think it helps to get Rosalie more interested and involved. All of the park rangers that we have met within this program have done a marvelous job in teaching the kids. Ranger Gott was no exception.

He went out of his way to help us out. We came to the park just as they are winding down their summer activities, which means not so many junior ranger programs. But, Ranger Gott filled in with an impromptu mammals discussion for Rosalie and a couple of other kids. Now we just need to complete the packet, go through the swearing in and Miss Rose will have badge number 5. The entire team is pretty excited about it....

The park is nice, the leaves are still turning at the mid to lower elevations so we did not miss it all. It rained and sleeted during parts of our drive, temp down to 36, so we did not do any hiking. It is supposed to be a bit warmer and sunny tomorrow so hopefully we can get some hiking in over the next couple of days.

It's a good thing we had the couple days of solitude at Falls Creek. Pigeon Forge is a mad house. Bumper to bumper traffic, few stop lights to allow cross traffic to proceed, lots of people. But, I guess we did get here during one of the busiest weekends of the year. Something about leaves dieing....

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