The local weather on Tuesday night promised clearing skies and good weather for the following day. I enjoyed Tuesday so much, even in the rotten weather, that my new plan for Wednesday was to return to the Smokies while the rivers and creeks were still high and the photographs would have better lighting.
Of course, redoing the Smokies would give me two more shots of everything, starting with the Oconaluftee visitor center and back towards Cade's Cove, then returning to the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Pkwy (near the visitor center) and heading north on America's favorite road. Sorting through my pictures would be confusing, having passed each creek, waterfall and mountain three times in two days. And poor record-keeping wouldn't help either, when trying to identify pictured locations. I could worry about that later.
First stop Wednesday morning was the Oconaluftee visitor center, which I photographed from the same parking spot I had used the day before. It was still too wet to explore the homestead in more detail, but I got panoramas of the same scene from consecutive days for comparison. I've posted many of the panoramas on my Flickr site. To see them, a Google search for "wfp48" should get you there.
This first picture shows how fast and high the Oconaluftee River was early Wednesday morning. I stopped a couple of places and shot some video. I'm not very adept yet at videography, but the soundtracks captured with these short shots of the rivers make even them worthwhile.
This shot, looking south, was taken at a large overlook on US 441 not far from Newfound Gap on the North Carolina side. Higher up the mountain behind me is the Clingman's Dome access road and the North Carolina/Tennessee state line. It was a great place to shoot, because the clouds moving through kept changing the view.
The access road gate was open today, so I decided an excursion to Clingman's Dome was in order. The road wanders back and forth across the ridge and this shot, looking north into Tennessee, was one of these places. It looked completely different ten minutes later when I was headed back to 441. As is often the case, The Dome itself was shrouded in cloud.
This shot too was taken on the access road close to the ridge. I was on the North Carolina side and the cloud roiling up behind the pine tree in the center of the frame was on the Tennessee side.
To take full advantage of one of these photo excursions, the photographer has to manage his scope. You can stop at an overlook and shoot the grand view this seems to go on forever, then wander around a bit and shoot a small, intimate detail 20 feet away of a stream splashing by a rock. It would be a shame to miss either picture, but changing scope takes practice. It's all about being able to see the forest for the trees. . . and the trees for the forest.
These last two pictures (above and below) emphasize the contrast between light and shadow as your stare into the trees uncovers the layers of the forest. The river in both pictures is the Little River on the road to Cade's Cove.
My return engagement to the Smokies on Wednesday was not without incident. After rejoining 441 and crossing into Tennessee I saw a pull off near the entrance of a tunnel and was enticed to stop by several parking spaces and a pair of small waterfalls at the top of a grassy slope. The change in elevation between the parking spaces and the top of the slope was only about 15 feet. I gathered my cameras and made my way up a gravel path to the base of the waterfalls. I took several shots and a little video and it occurred to me that I should shoot the tunnel entrance from from this higher elevation. I needed a better angle on the tunnel, however, so I moved along the edge of the grassy slope.
I took a shot of the tunnel, but the view was mediocre at best and I was ready to move on. One step on some wet leaves was all it took. I realized my error in judgment immediately when I slipped, cameras in both hands, landing hard on the wet grass and finding myself a couple seconds later lying at the bottom of the slope, marveling at the realization that neither of the cameras sustained any damage at all. When I looked up, a man who witnessed my tumble had just pulled into one of the parking spaces and was getting out of his car. I made it my feet and, on assuring him that I was okay, we went our separate ways.
I continued retracing my drive from the day before, stopping at pull offs, judging various views, taking pictures. Back through Sugarlands to the Little River Gorge Rd on the way to Cade's Cove. It was a beautiful autumn day in the Smokies, I was early enough that traffic was still relatively light, the rivers and creeks were still running high. . . This was great! I was a bit muddy, but not sore in the least after my roll down the hill. What really surprised me, however, was that I was suddenly uninterested in taking any more pictures. Then it hit me. My roll down the hill had given me a shot of adrenaline and that, in turn, screwed up my blood sugar. Twenty or thirty minutes after slipping, I was hypoglycemic. Case solved. The only problem was, I still couldn't care less about taking more pictures. I wasn't hungry, but I really needed something to eat. Tomorrow's soon enough to take pictures.
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