We spent eight days hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's one of our favorite places on Earth! We stayed in a cozy little cabin called Stream of Dreams. We had our own little waterfall and boulder-strewn creek, plus a big porch and hot tub, which we used every night after hiking all day. We did mostly new-to-us hikes and saw waterfalls everyday. We revisited our first ever hike in a national park together--Ramses. This time with ten years' experience of hiking national parks. This ten-miler was much tougher than we remembered, but at the top, we had it to ourselves. We were famished after hiking up craggy boulders for hours. Imagine my horror when I dropped my apple, and it plunged into the falls below. "Apple!" I kept crying, sniffing, watching it bob in the pool below. We tried something new--sleeping in a little bit. I needed it after four months on my new job, which is stressful! Arriving on trail late, had an unexpected advantage: most people were on there way down when we were on the way up, and we had many beautiful places all to ourselves! Video here. We heard and saw lots of elk in the Cherokee area.
