Since the previous day’s visit to Clingmans Dome was a bust, we headed up there first thing on Friday. The view was much better. The Clingmans Dome trail is a half mile paved trail up to a lookout ‘tower’ at the top. I suspect it’s highly traveled because it’s paved, and that people are surprised to find out that they’re still climbing a mountain.
The second event for the day was a hike of about 4.5 miles along a portion of the Appalachian Trail. We took a break from the ‘waterfall theme’ and hiked out to a site called Charlies Bunion – apparently named for rock formation that looked like a bunion on the foot of some guy’s friend. The hike out was pretty nice – more elevation change that I expected given that we were supposedly hiking along a ridge. We took one brief detour to check out one of the shelters that are found along the trail, but otherwise hiked straight out to Charlies Bunion. After climbing around a bit and taking a few pictures, we headed back. Right after the shelter was a turn off for Jumpoff Point which was reportedly a pretty short and nice hike, so we turned out that way.
Maybe half a mile to a mile down that trail it started to sprinkle so we decided to turn back. We didn’t make it back to the main trail before it was completely pouring. Fortunately it was warm, so other than getting soaked it wasn’t that bad.
We stopped again on the way down the mountain at the same place as we saw the sunset through the valley the night before. We didn’t stick around for sunset this time, which in hindsight may have been a mistake because, at least further down the mountain, it cleared up pretty nicely for the evening. We did stop briefly on the outskirts of Gatlinburg at a city park to wander in to town a little bit and find a few geocaches (they’re not allowed in the National Park).
The view in the morning from the Clingman's Dome parking lot.
Panoramic view. It was windy and smelled of trees. Lovely.
The viewing tower at the top of Clingman's Dome and the spiral path leading up to it
Heading back down the trail
I think this was before we got to the true Appalachian Trail, but it gives a fair idea of what the hike was like. More rocky than the waterfall hikes.
This was the actual Appalachian Trail jut before the shelter.
One of the shelters along the Appalachian Trail, a little fireplace on the right and bunks for maybe 8 people.
This was the rock formation just inside of Charlie's Bunion.
I think this was the actual "Charlie's Bunion" that we were hiking to.
View from the Bunion up the continuation of the Appalachian Trail.
Panoramic view from the look-out point / destination from our day hike to Charlie's Bunion.
Janet climbing on the bunion.
And it was the soggiest of days.
This is where we saw the sunset the night before, but we didn't hang around that long this time.
This one had a bit of post processing done to it...
