Great Smoky Mountains

September 6, 2009
Today it rained in the morning and then scattered showers all afternoon until about 3pm. The road stayed wet enough that we couldn't collect today. I worked in my hotel room for about 6 hours and then we went to check out the park. Our first stop was an old Grist Mill. It was "built in 1886, this historic grist mill uses a water-powered turbine instead of a water wheel to power all of the machinery in the building." Our second stop was at Clingmans Dome. The hike was straight up and it was another reminder that I have exercise asthma and should really have an inhaler. We made it to the top pretty quickly while others were "dropping like flies". The engineer who designed the trail decided that switch backs were not going to be utilized...who knows why. Once we got to the top the view was great and I took a few photos before our hike down. We then tried to find the trail for Mingo Falls but we were given bad directions by the NPS guy at the visitor's center. We'll save that for another rain day. We decided to walk around the local park and we found a grove of bamboo trees that seemed out of place but was neat to walk through.