our next stop was in Gatlinburg Tennesee. there is a tram there that goes up the moutain from downtown Gatlinburg to a place called ober Gatlinburg. the word ober, in german, means over or on top of. now Lorraine, up to that time had never gone on a tram. she is afraid of heights and it took some pursuasion on my part to get her to go. she said alright but she would keep her eyes closed.
3/4 of the way up i said, "look at that, someone left their wallet with money in it". she opened her eyes and was amazed at the sight of the mountains and the view. i told her to just look up or straight and she wouldn't be frightened any more. she did just that and enjoyed the rest of the ride up.
we got off at the top and looked around before going back down. from up there you can get a birds-eye view of the Smokie Mountain range and there does look like there is a haze of smoke over the top of the moutains.
here is a picture of the tram, and one of Lorraine holding on for dear life and looking at the sites and also the haze around the moutains.
being from a large city like New York, what they call haze in and over the mountains, we call it smog and have more of it. on some hot days you can barely see the city from the outskrts.
going down the tram Lorraine was a little braver. she opened her eyes occaisonally to look at the scenery. here is a pic of some of the town from the tram.
being it was mid afternoon and we had some time we strolled along the main street. it was very crowded with tourists and we stopped in a few shops to look and see what they were selling. we didn't buy anything, but we looked. as we looked into the stores we got hungry and went into some fancy restaurant they called, i think the name was, Mc Donald's where Lorraine had a double cheese burger and i had french fries and a coke. i hate their hamburgers but love their fries. after that we got in the car and took off for the mountains. actually, Gatlinburg is in the Smokies.
we arrived on the road thru the smokies at about 2:00PM. you know what they say about mountains, if you see one you've seen them all. we stopped every so often to look at the scenery which was really very nice. here is another pic of the Smokies from one of the roadway scenic spots.
we drove thru and into a city where we stopped for the night. the next morning about 5:30AM we took off again this time to go thru the Blue Ridge Mountains and to New York.
we arrived on the Blue Ridge Parkway at about sunrise. here is a pic of the mountains at sunrise.
there are lots of scenic overlooks on this road also and we took advantage of them and stopped along the way to see the scenery. some spots look over towns and the scenery has beautiful views from all over. occasionaly there would be some deer walking alongside the road or crossing the road.
we drove out of the mountains and thru West Virginia and Pennsylvania and arrived by my daughter in New York in the early evening. it was a very enjoyable trip to New York this time.