I have photographs in my home of Cades Cove. I am an extremely patient person (I am a photographer and teacher), and am a deep lover of nature and of the natural world. I love the scenery, the cabins, the animals, and the solitude of this precious place. I have visited many, many times throughout my fifty years. The park personnel need to do a better job moving cars and people along.įirst, I need to point out that I LOVE Cades Cove, and have always said that, to me, it is the most beautiful place on Earth. Ecologically speaking, all of that exhaust has to be detrimental to animal and plant life. Needless to say, sitting in traffic breathing exhaust fumes from the other vehicles is not a pleasant way to spend the afternoon in the park. We spoke with a ranger the next day who told us that our experience was quite common and that bears were a frequent cause for delay. We incurred another stoppage which only lasted approximately 30 minutes. An hour and a half to two hours later, a ranger appeared and got the bears to move. A group of cars stopped to see the bears, and, after they finally moved on, another group of cars had stopped. A young man, who had run up to see what was causing the stoppage, told us that three bears had appeared near the roadway. This pattern continued for almost two hours. We remained stopped for 10-15 minutes and then traveled 50-75 feet before coming to another stop. We then came to an abrupt stop with vehicles ahead of us as far as the eye could see. We traveled the first few miles at a slow but pleasant pace. Our problem was navigating our way thought the eleven-mile loop road. The historical buildings were interesting, and the scenery, although not spectacular, was very nice. As it turned out, Cades Cove was the only part of the park where we had a negative experience. We arranged to stay in Townsend because we thought that Cades Cove would be our favorite part of the park to visit. We found the ice cream to be a very happy surprise after a hilly 90 minute ride! On the plus side, you pay for the rental bikes for 2 hours, and if you finish early they either refund some of your money or give you free ice cream. I would not recommend biking the loop on other days because it is very narrow and would be difficult to share the space with cars. Moral of the story - if you are renting bikes on a Wednesday, be there by 7am. The worker admitted that the system is new and they were still working out the kinks. Then again, it seemed some people in line had reserved online yet still showed up to find out their bikes weren’t there. This was not readily obvious on the website. We learned that just last week they began a new procedure where you can reserve bikes online a week in advance. When we arrived at 7:45am, they were already gone and we had to wait for others to return before we could begin the ride. We had also been led to believe that the rental bikes tend to sell out by 8:30am. When we arrived we found it is now closed the entire day. We showed up early because the website said the road was only closed to cars from 7am-10am. It was a beautiful ride, though those of who had done it 15 years ago had forgotten how hilly it was! We enjoyed the ride greatly, HOWEVER we found that the info on the website is not up to date. On the plus side, you pay for the rental bikes for 2 hours, and if you finish early they either refund some of your money or give you free ice cream.My family biked the loop on a Wednesday in July 2021 when the road was closed to traffic. My family biked the loop on a Wednesday in July 2021 when the road was closed to traffic.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |