Saturday night, John and I took in an early feature of "Stars Wars, Revenge of the Sith." This is the 6th in the series of 6 Star Wars films and unfortunately I think I missed a couple. This fact did not impair my enjoyment of the film at all, but it did cause a problem when John tried to explain the progression of the films. I became totally confused! Oh well! The film was very enjoyable on it's own and I am familiar with the main characters so I will leave it at that!

This morning we were up early to get in some hiking. With just a couple of months to go to our West Coast Trail adventure, we are anxious to increase our hike intensity. John picked the Road Prong Trail, which begins as a part of the Chimney Top Trail and breaks away to the left after a mile of hiking. Although only a little under 7 miles round trip, we climbed 2,500' feet in 3+ miles and dropped the same on the return hike.

We initially thought we would have the trail to ourselves; most hikers were going to the Chimney Tops. Quickly we discovered that Road Prong had a lot of hikers too. After a bit of hiking, it became evident that a group of Chinese tourists were hiking the trail under the watchful eye of several tour guides. We can't imagine why this trail was selected (aside for it's incredible beauty), several ladies really struggled to finish.

We hiked the trail in about 2 hours with a 15 minute break. When we arrived at the top, we were greeted by 50 Chinese visitors sitting in the grass with their lunch boxes and chopsticks. The group cheered and applauded each member of their contingent as he or she completed the climb. John commented that the scene reminded him of our Inca Trail hike last summer where similar cheering occurred as hikers summited Dead Woman's Pass (without chopsticks and boxed lunches of course).

The grass looked like a great place for us to enjoy our peanut butter sandwiches and apple so we spread out just to the left of the Chinese. We thoroughly enjoyed watching as exhausted hikers that we had passed moments ago arrived on top with big smiles and excitement. But while the visitors would get in a vehicle for the drive to Clingman's Dome, we had to put on our day packs and hike back to the Chimney Tops parking lot.


The mud bottom of this side creek appeared to have a high content of iron, more so than any of the other side creeks we passed. The color brought to mind the Ochre Beds around the Paint Pots trailhead from 2004 late summer trip to the Rockwall in the Canadian Rockies.

High above the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River

Photo from a bridge across the West Prong. Lush and beautiful vegetation!

A waterfall tumbling over boulders on the West Prong.

Wildflowers along the trail.

Close-up

If you are dazzled by the pictures and think you may have missed something by not visiting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this weekend, think again. Traffic was bumper to bumper and parked cars lined both sides of the road at almost every trailhead. Even worse was our foray into Gatlinburg to enjoy a tureen of hot vegetable soup and "skillet" of cornbread at our favorite restaurant, The Brass Lantern. Roaming the streets of Gatlinburg were all of the people that believe that a trip to the Smokies stops in Gatlinburg. But that is a whole other story.