Breakfast muffins from the White Moon Cafe and Dark Moon Cocktail Bar, Sylva, NC. Strawberry, rhubarb crumble made with high quality ingredients and you can taste the difference. They are so good!

9

I love all the wildflowers along the roads this time of year. There are Turks Cap Lilies, Daisies, and Buttercups everywhere. In the trees the rhododendrons are just beginning to bloom.

Oconaluftee Islands Park, Cherokee, NC for a walk around the island and through the bamboo stand. It’s so tall!

6.5

Oconaluftee Visitors Center, Cherokee , NC to get our $5 parking tag and walk around the Mountain Farm Museum. No Elk in the fields today so we’re free to walk around. There were some big turkeys, though.

7

Mingo Falls, Eastern Cherokee Reservation, Cherokee, NC. 120-ft. waterfall on the Cherokee Indian Reservation reached by a 0.4-mi. access trail. A true beauty but oh, so crowded. We’re planning to come back in the off season and spend some time really appreciating it.

https://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/mingo-falls.htm

7.5

difficulty: 4

Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee at 6,643′. It’s more of a hike up than I expected. It’s packed with people despite being fogged in and freezing, it’s damp, breezy, not quite 50F.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clingmans_Dome

7

Newfound Gap. Suns out and the view is amazing.

https://smokymountains.com/park/things-to-do/newfound-gap-road/

7

We stop at several of the overlooks. The mountains are beautiful, covered in multicolored spring greens.

There’s quite a lot of traffic in the park and all the popular places have full parking lots. We found a quiet spot on the side of the road to climb down to the river and go rock hopping. The river was beautiful, it drowned out all the road noise and we got to enjoy it all to ourselves.

Cove Lake State Park, Caryville, TN for our picnic dinner and an after dinner walk.

https://tnstateparks.com/parks/cove-lake

5.5

Comfort Inn, Pioneer , TN

Price: $123/night