I forgot to mention that Sweet Sweet and I also went hiked to a place called Grotto Falls in the last post, which ended up being a complete beating with way too many people. It was a two mile hike and the worst part about it was that two miles is short enough that just about any person can hike without problem, which means that all of the smokers and overweight folks seem to relish in the accomplishment by taking a ton of pictures and generally lounging around feeling very proud of themselves. I know, I shouldn’t make fun of overweight folks (and 90% of the people who we saw were probably overweight), but I am.
This is the only clear picture I could take . . .
While this is what we really looked at.
We left after about 5 minutes.
The next day, Sweet Sweet and I wanted to start things right and we went to another falls called Laurel Falls. This was a paved path and during the day this place was packed with cars, but we were the second group up and it was all ours for the 10 minutes that we were there.
Our final hike was on a trail called Chimney Tops. This was, by far, the toughest trail we hiked the whole trip, so it was fitting that it was our final trail. Nearly all uphill the entire way.
Here’s Sweet Sweet.
A river runs through it.
So we get to the top, or what we think is the top, and we realize that there is some really steep and slick rock that needs to be climbed in order to get to the top-top. I decide to traverse as far as I can.
You can see Sweet Sweet at the very bottom.
The views from where I sat.
This guy was at the top.
And he took my picture too.
My last pictures of the trip.
Sweet Sweet and I lounged by the pool that afternoon as we decided to stay one more night in Gatlinburg. We drove 17 hours the next day all the way home.
A huge shout-out and thank you to my brother, Ryan, who watched Blue and Zoey while we were away. Much love.
Seek The Substantial 
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