Place of 1000 Drips is one of my oldest and most enduring Smoky Mountains photos. This is a popular roadside waterfall along the Roaring Fork Motor Trail. Turn at stoplight #8 in Gatlinburg, bearing to the right at the top of the hill, you will enter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and begin a 6-mile…
Noah “Bud” Ogle was a Smoky Mountain farmer who lived from 1863 to 1913. The cabin was built in the 1880′s and consists of two cabins sharing a single chimney, known as a “saddlebag” style. The Ogle farm is the first stop on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. From stoplight number 8 in Gatlinburg,…
In the middle of a hot summer, I can get restless, and feeling a bit confined within the boundaries of “normal” images. I start to think “outside the camera.” For example, a few weeks ago I wrote a post about camera movement during long exposures to create photographic Impressionism. Today’s Smoky Mountains photos have a…
This past week I took advantage of a lovely spring morning to walk to Bud Ogle Nature Trail before my day in the Gallery began. The Bud Ogle Farm is a popular tourist stop at the start of the Roaring Fork Motor Trail, one of the best Smoky Mountains drives. Most people explore Bud’s cabin…
One of my favorite places in the Smoky Mountains opens today after the annual winter closure. The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a goldmine for pictures. Pioneer homesteads, amazing moss-covered boulders, waterfalls, and trails. On a typical year, I will go around the Roaring Fork a dozen or fifteen times, watching the seasons change along…
Earlier this week I was out at the Ogle Place along the Roaring Fork in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We had a snowfall followed by frigid temperatures. On this morning I was trying to keep feeling in my fingers with the temperature around 9 degrees! Photographing scenes like the ones above and below…
The route to Grotto Falls is one of the sweetest little trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, not much more than a mile. As the sign indicates, it’s a part of the Trillium Gap Trail which goes on up to Mt. LeConte. The trail starts from a parking area along the Roaring Fork…
In addition to a newly paved loop road for the Roaring Fork in 2010, the Reagan Mill got a brand new flume to carry the water to where the mill once was. So, although it is pretty and adds to the charm along the Roaring Fork, it is really just a “flume to nowhere” because…
When you come down the hill at the end of the Roaring Fork Motor Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, stop in at Ely’s Mill. It’s a neat little gift shop that dates from the 1920s with local crafts, and honey taken from the hives that stand in the field outside. You can…
Ephraim and Minerva Bales subsisted on 70 rock-infested acres along the Roaring Fork in the early 1900s. Walking around this homestead, it’s hard to escape the sense of overwhelming difficulty that surely characterized the life here. Compared to some of the home places in Cades Cove, or Cataloochee Valley, or even right down the road…
Alfred Reagan lived along the Roaring Fork in the Smoky Mountains in the late 1800s and early 1900s. His home is different than the other settlers cabins in this area in that it is constructed with sawn boards and painted. Supposedly Reagan chose the colors from a limited offering in the Sears catalog. Reagan was…
A few days ago we had a thick fog in the morning. I headed out just before daylight to beat the traffic into the Roaring Fork Motor Trail. The fog was still thick when I started around the loop. But the leaf-lookers were still in bed, so there was no traffic! I stopped the car…
This picture was taken along the Newfound Gap Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Just stopped the car along the roadside and took this random, typical shot of the woods held in the embrace of autumn. This time of year you can drive around the Smokies and find pockets of peak leaf color,…
The Ogle family goes way back in the Gatlinburg area. In fact, Noah Ogle’s great-grandparents, William (1756–1803) and his wife Martha Huskey (1756–1826), made a life here in the early 1800s. Noah (aka Bud) and Cindy Ogle settled on this 400 acre homestead in 1879 and lived here until Noah’s death in 1913. The Smoky Mountains…
The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is a narrow, one-way loop in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Start from stoplight number 8 in Gatlinburg, proceed up the hill and enter the Smokies at the Cherokee Orchard entrance. Jim Bales place is one of several early homesteads that are preserved in the Park. Who was…
It’s that beautiful time of year again when the Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) bloom along the trails and in the woods of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Mountain Laurel are similar to, and often mistaken for, Rhododendron. In the Smokies the Laurel bloom primarily during May, while the Rhododendron come along in June…
A packtrain of llamas is used to carry bed linens and supplies to Mt. LeConte Lodge. The llamas are easier on the heavily used Great Smoky Mountains National Park trails than horses. In the picture below the llamas are passing behind Grotto Falls. Normally, the packtrain makes the trip from the Grotto Falls Parking area…
Something green for St. Patrick’s Day. Nothing greener in the Great Smoky Mountains than the moss-covered rocks of the Roaring Fork. Conditions on the north face of Mt. LeConte create an extremely wet environment and a rich lushness of plant life. There may be no better example than the amazing green rocks and boulders along…
I live in Gatlinburg TN, on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smokies are a very spiritual place, and I attempt to capture some of that spirit in each of my photographs.
If you are in Gatlinburg, please stop in at my gallery .
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