Our Honeymoon - Thursday's Adventures

Thursday we decided to drive through the Smokey Mountains a bit. We stopped at some of the scenic overlooks and saw some beautiful views of the mountains! I'll put up a couple of the pictures to give you an idea of how pretty it was.

Funny story about one of the overlooks. We asked an older lady to take a picture of us by this sign, and we handed her the camera. She took the camera and started trying to look through the zoom/lense part sticking out the front! (Wouldn't you think she'd know not to look out the front even if it was a digital camera?!) We helped her turn it around, and miraculously, this is the good picture we got!

At one point, we walked up a rather steep path to a scenic overlook that had been built (and which kind of was shaped like a mushroom). On a clear day, one can see quite far out in the Smokies. We couldn't see incredibly far, but it was still fun to get four different views of the mountains.

The path up to the overlook crossed the Appalachian Trail.

Later int he day, we decided we wanted to see some more scenic views, so we headed down a scenic roadway. We then got to one point (a road off the main drive), where there was a gravel road that went off into the woods and a sign that read "Unimproved Gravel Road." We debated whether we should go down this unimproved gravel road or not, and eventually decided to do it. (It made us feel a little bit better that we had seen another car go down it while we were trying to decide.) It was reasonably flat, but gravel and very, very twisty and windy. Ryan's hope was to see some more bears since it was later afternoon/early evening when we were driving. I documented our little adventure with a few videos, which I will not bore you with. 

One view of the road.

We ended up driving on the road for an hour and twenty minutes. Our GPS only told us we were driving through the forest (not that we were even on a road!). We sadly did not see any bears, but only a bunny and a butterfly. Once we got off the unimproved gravel road, we were very glad to see a two lane road with yellow stripes!

We made our way back to the Pigeon Forge area, where we had a nice dinner at Olive Garden (despite our interesting waiter who called us "Lady" and "Man"). We then headed back to the cabin and watched a movie.