Last month in October, our lovely family plus Grammy and Gramps packed up and did a big roadtrip to Tennessee. We spent the night in Nashville, to visit with Shelley's brother Eric and his new family - Courtney, Drissy and Tatum. After the short visit, we all drove over a few hours to the area around Smokey Mountain National Park to camp and hike for a the next week. The area is chuck full of "tourist" attractions, but we avoided all those. Instead, we went bear searching, waterfall searching and mountain view searching! Here's a couple of our favorite mountain photos. 
First one shows off why they are called Smokey Mountains! Next one is a great sunset shot.
Along the tip ridge of the mountains is a wonderful overlook where you can see for miles!
Along the same ridge is the Tennessee/North Carolina state lines, too. Daphne couldn't resist the photo op... (Okay, okay so Shelley and Gramps couldn't resist the photo op, we just forced Daphne to be in the photo!)
The Great Smokey Mountains are known for their bear population. But we only saw three total, and one was just shot and killed (see post down below for more details). One was a tiny bear cub. It was about sunset and the cub ran across the road right in front of us! It happened so fast we didnt' get any photographic proof of the cub. We stopped and waited a few minutes to see Mom, but we never saw her. The next day, we were driving in the park and a ton of cars were parked. A Ranger was standing there and we asked what was going on. He said, "Bear" non-chalently (this is daily adventure for him, unlike us from Missouri who have NEVER seen a bear - if you don't count the small cub). So Ian and Gramps looked for it and spotted the bear up in the trees eating. Look in the middle of this photo and you'll see some black bur. It was easier to see in person....
See tons of posts below for many more of our adventures! 
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