Gatlinburg trip, Part I: Great Smoky Mountains National Park

A first-ever trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn., from April 28 to May 2, in addition to fun and new sights, scenery and attractions to enjoy, produced something I fully expected based on previous travels -- reams (and more reams!) of photographs to process.

In my slight (feeble?) defense, Lee Ann's 3-year-old grandson, Jaxson, and son-in-law Matt came along, as did Lee Ann's youngest daughter, Lea, so ... getting family in the pictures seemed like the appropriate thing to do!

It's taken me this long to get through all the images, but get through them all, I did. So the dilemma then became ... what to do with them, how to organize and present them here, and in what order?

Ordinarily I tend to go chronologically, but because there was a significant mixture of both iPhone and digital camera photographs, I had to take a little longer to plan. Taking the extra time helped only marginally. So ... I'm going to simply jump in and see where it takes me.

Hence, the images you see here, as it turns out, are from the last full day on the trip, a day we spent several hours (finally) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a national treasure for sure. The photo leading off the post is one of the vistas I grabbed during the visit. But we could see the glorious mountains, hills and colors like this (just different vantage points) every day from the place where we were staying. But seeing the Smokies from afar like that wasn't like actually being in the park as we were on May 2. There, we spent a good 15 minutes on paved roads -- en route to the Trillium Gap Trailhead -- that dealt us scenery like what you see below.

Lee Ann had spent the previous day studying our trail exploration options, and we decided on Trillium Gap Trailhead, which ascends Mount Le Conte -- one of the taller mountains east of the Mississippi River. The trail promised us we'd come across several small rapids and falls before landing, approximately at the 1.3-mile mile, a sizable waterfall, Grotto Falls.

For me, Matt and Lea, 1.3 miles -- even climbing a mountain trail -- didn't seem too difficult. But when you're climbing with a 3-year-old and an adult with arthritc knees, it required all of us to pace ourselves properly. But we were troopers on this day, and we made it to Grotto Falls and back with only a dozen mild obstacles.

As always, if you'd like to view a larger, sharper version of a photo, simply click on the image. This is particularly helpful if you access the blog from a mobile device. To see a full gallery of images from the May 2 visit to Great Smoky Mountain National Park, follow the link in this sentence.

Photo geek stuff: Most of the images in this post were taken with my Canon 6D and Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD lens. I made three exposures of each composition, most of which I later melded into one image using Photomatix high-dynamic range (HDR) software. Halfway through processing images on this day's shoot, I upgraded from Photomatix version 5 to version 6.1, which gave me some very striking results in a new processing option called "tone balancer." With version 5, I'd often used the "contrast optimizer" option. But tone balancer tends to better balance lights and darks, offering a more dynamic rendering.

A couple more vistas (above and below) we came across, followed by (second below) a vista that includes a foreground showing remnants of some of the Smoky Mountains wildfires of 2016.

Above and below: While walking the trails, hikers need to pay attention to their footing. There are quite a few sections riddled with snaking tree roots like these. 

Above and next two below: Perspectives of Grotto Falls, our destination, the only waterfall in the entire park where hikers can actually walk behind. 

Above: This is the "wall" behind the falls that appears behind the gentleman standing two photos above. You don't see any cascading water in the photo above because I am standing behind the falls. 

Matt, with Jaxson at his side (above), capturing video of Grotto Falls; a closeup is below. 

Above: This is the stream from the falls, as seen from a boulder in front of the falls. The view looks down the hill we had just climbed, although the actual "trail" (the walkable portion) of that hill is to the left, out of the picture. 

Two other, smaller falls (above and below) that we came across walking toward Grotto Falls, and another falls (second below) we came across while driving out of the park. 

Above and below: There were many old structures scattered throughout the park. We came upon these two on the same site, about 40 yards apart, as we drove out of the park. 

Next up: Ripley's Aquarium