Our worst weather day, but turned out okay!

Tuesday, March 26

My original plan for Tuesday was to do another day focusing on some major National Park sights (similar to Monday).

I had a certain area of the park bookmarked for Monday (which we did), and another section (the first half of Newfound Gap Road) and a couple specific hikes cued up for Tuesday.

However, starting on Sunday night, we began getting weather alerts on our phones for upcoming “High Wind Warnings” for Monday night into Tuesday, as well as probable rain. The wind warnings were pretty significant sounding- as in >50+ mph gusts, supposedly.

Our weather was great on Monday, and mostly fine Monday evening, though we did feel some stronger breezes picking up by Monday night. It definitely didn’t look good for Tuesday, though. 😦 We figured we’d play it by ear, sleep in a little and see what the day brought.

Relaxing morning….

I was still up pretty early on Tuesday, but alone, so I made some tea and lounged on the couch for a bit with the fireplace on. It was gloomy looking outside, so, cozy.

At dinner the night before we’d discussed maybe planning to get brunch out Tuesday morning, assuming the crummy weather. We’re usually not big “breakfast out” people in general (though Ivan actually is, but I’m really not…). We tend to normally just grab a quick whatever breakfast, but we’ll often do one bigger, sit down breakfast out on vacation.

The rainiest day is always a good choice for this activity. 🙂

It actually was not raining when we woke up, nor was it particularly windy (near us, anyway). According to the national park website, though, there had been lot of wind damage at the higher elevations overnight. Almost every major road in the national park had at least one closure due to downed trees!! (Essentially blocking off pretty much every major artery of the park.)

The radar also showed a bunch of rain moving in, too.

Breakfast out!

So, after tea, then a grocery run with Ivan, we eventually all headed out for brunch around 10:30ish at a local pancake house. Of course, we had to wait…. (Clearly, not the only ones with this idea.). But I don’t think we waited more than 15 minutes, so it was no big deal.

We had a very nice, relaxed breakfast. The only negative was that before he even ordered, Asher suddenly started not feeling that well (upset stomach). He decided to not eat and went to rest in the car.

After breakfast, we stopped back at the condo briefly to make a plan for the afternoon (and drop off Asher, who still wasn’t feeling great.).

The hikes I’d planned originally were out, clearly. (The roads were literally closed! And though weather wasn’t nearly as terrible as predicted, it seemed… very questionable.)

We decided to try to visit one of the main Visitor Centers, Sugarlands. (The one we had skipped that was jam packed on our first day.) We’re fans of Visitor Centers, especially when they have nice exhibits and/or an informational movie.

Fortunately, it was WAY less crowded this time and we got right in. Oh! And this was so funny- as soon as we walked in, I ran into a family we know from home! A girl from Asher’s swim team that we used to carpool with all the time. How ironic!!! Haha. Obviously also in the Smokies for spring break.

This was not my favorite visitor center. Sadly, the movie had been discontinued, apparently. (Bummer! We’ve seen countless national park videos around the country and they’re always so educational for the kids.) The exhibits here were not that great, either. I mean, it was all “fine”, but we’ve been to much better ones.

(*We visited a different visitor center later in the week in another area of the park- the Oconaluftee Visitor Center- which was MUCH better, IMO. So if you ever go, keep that in mind.)

We poked around, I bought some cool “Smoky Mountains” Christmas ornaments for the boys in the gift shop (boys, if you’re reading, forget I said that…), and browsed the exhibits briefly.

Cataract Falls

Most of the main thoroughfares in the park still had very problematic road closures, so we next decided to just do the 1.5 mile round trip hike to Cataract Falls. The trailhead is right off the visitor center parking lot, it was marked as “easy” (so no issue with potential rain) and, biggest perk, we could access it! lol.

It was very pleasant! It followed along this pretty babbling brook.

There were a decent number of other people on this trail, which makes sense, since we were all in the same boat with limited options at that time.

As you can see though, we still had plenty of room to spread out and hike alone.

And here’s the falls! Not the world’s most impressive waterfall, but it was actually really nice, especially considering it was just down a simple visitor center trail.

Here you can see the size a little better, with these little ones in the pic:

Ethan climbed around a bit (the best he could wearing CROCS…why he wore his Crocs, I don’t know. Seriously, what is it about Crocs and middle/high schoolers these days.)

Then Ethan, Ivan and I continued on down the trail a bit. We had to balance across some stones to cross the river, so my parents opted to just head back toward the car instead of doing that. (This other trail was like 8 miles long, so we wouldn’t be hiking the whole thing- just a little portion.)

It was very beautiful, and deserted! It started to rain lightly at this point, and was fairly humid- it had a rainforest vibe through this section in some parts.

There were some nice viewpoints from along here and I was surprised how much I liked this random hike.

It eventually started to rain pretty hard, so we turned around and headed back. It was warm, at least. I actually find (occasionally) just walking in the rain to be quite charming! 🙂 Especially in a quiet forest, along a babbling brook.

Back at the car, we stripped off our wet layers and headed the few minutes back toward Gatlinburg.

Fortunately we didn’t need to drive the whole strip- just a short part. Of course…. it was busy. HA.

I realize Gatlinburg may seem like a huge turn off to many people, but I’d urge you to not let it deter you from visiting this area. There is really NO reason you’d have to spend any time in Gatlinburg (or even stay near it!), if you didn’t want to.

We never set foot on most of the strip and stayed very limited to our one little end (with an easy parking lot and a couple restaurants we liked, which we ended up frequenting multiple times.) And, our resort was located outside of town, too.

Ethan was hungry, but the rest of us were still hanging on from brunch. It was raining and probably 4:30 by now though, so not much else to do. We decided to go back to the Gatlinburg Brewing Company (easily our favorite place on the trip!) so Ethan could get a personal pizza, and everyone else could have a pre-dinner beer. 😉

It wasn’t busy in there, so that was nice. We just sat and chatted, etc for an hour or so.

Eventually, we moved just one restaurant over and upstairs, to a Mexican restaurant Ivan had scoped out. By now we were hungry for dinner. 🙂 (And, apparently, another beer.)

The food was REALLY good!! At first I was leery- we’ve had some very disappointing Mexican food experiences when we’ve traveled. But this was great!!! Super authentic. It’s always a good sign when all the employees are native Spanish speakers as well as most of the clientele. 😉

Ivan and I shared this molcajete- big bowl of shrimp, grilled chicken, steak, a pork chop, Mexican cheese and rice, beans, guacamole, habanero salsa + tortillas.

My parents shared these quesadillas:

And this huge (delicious) chicken soup, which I am sampling in the photo:

Basically, we spent from 4:30-7:30 just hanging out between the brewery and the Mexican place, but it was really fun! A perfect way to spend a rainy evening, relaxing, good conversation and nice family time. (Minus poor Asher, who ended up wanting to stay at the condo all afternoon just napping/ playing on his phone.)

Heading out from dinner, the skies suddenly cleared, wind was gone! And the forecast was sunny and dry for the rest of the week. Yippee.

Back at the resort, Ivan, Asher and I all went in the hot tub. (He was feeling much better! Not sure what the issue was, but he was totally fine the rest of the trip.)

This day deviated pretty significantly from what I had “planned”, but we all agreed it ended up still being a really great day! Low key, still got some nature/ national park stuff in, and good connection time. 🙂