Fabulous Great Smoky Mountain trip

Today we took a drive up through the Nantahala Gorge to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I anticipated a heavy volume of traffic and there was a lot of traffic. It actually worked out nicely to have so much traffic because we ended up going about 3 to 5 mph. This gave us plenty of time to view all of our surroundings without whizzing by at 35 mph. Our first stop was at the Sugarlands Visitor Center at the park entrance not far from Gatlinburg, TN. We took Little River Road to a stop at Laurel Falls trail. This is a 1.3 mile hike up the mountain on a nicely maintained path. The falls are really spectacular, in that you are right at the base of the falls when you cross a small bridge. The water flows beneath the bridge and falls probably 50 - 60 feet. We ventured up the mountain past the falls into an area that had some very large tulip poplars. This was supposed to be part of a virgin forest. I can tell you some of those trees were pretty tall and I would estimate about 100 feet. We didn't hike the entire trail into the woods because it was another three miles. We headed down the trail and at a point below the falls, observed four black bears. A mother and two baby cubs and across the trail on the higher part of the trail was another large black bear. The leaves throughout the park on the Tennessee side were some of the nicest I had seen and the drive through the park was spectacular. In the morning the Tennessee side had a heavy blanket of fog, but returning in the afternoon the fog had lifted. The North Carolina side was not as impressive because most of the leaves had already fallen. We exited the park and drove back through the Nantahala Gorge to the cabin.