Sometimes, my favorite trips do not involve fishing. Okay, maybe I should have said occasionally or even rarely, but it does happen. This past weekend involved a trip to Asheville for a cousin's wedding. I promised myself to be good and leave the fishing gear at home, but when an opportunity to sneak off to Cataloochee presented itself, I was thankful that at least the camera was with me. Despite being one of my favorite places in the Park, I have only been there a handful of times. Clearly I need more time to explore in the Park (as well as gas money, etc), but when I do get the opportunity I always jump on it.
While most of the tourists were there to look at the elk, I was there more for the scenery and just to get outside. Of course, you can't go to Cataloochee without taking at least one elk picture. This big guy had been bugling a short time before. However, as you can see, he soon calmed down and decided to relax a bit.
Just across the road, the Caldwell house kept me busy for a bit. How many different ways can you take pictures of one house? I found at least a few...
Any trip to the Smokies would be incomplete without walking a few stretches of stream just to look for fish. There were plenty of fish feeding in the pool just upstream from the shot above (as always), but the rest of my scouting turned up no large fish as I am always hoping for. Of course, that's probably a good thing. Without a fly rod in tow, it is always tough finding big fish that are in a catchable state of mind.
Reminders of the rapidly approaching fall were definitely around. Fall flowers are blooming everywhere here at home and even in the mountains. The brightly colored leaves are my favorite though.
On the way in, the clouds obscured the valley. On the way out, they had lifted just enough to give that good Smoky Mountains look.
