Mind the Newfound Gap

We return you now to the days of yester-month, wherein our heroes are lost in the wilds of the Great Smoky Mountains, trying to find their way back to civilization.  No, really.....  Okay, not really, but we did have to go over the mountain and through the woods to Grandma's house....  No?  We didn't?  We went where?  Oh, that's right!  Cherokee, North Carolina.  Through the Newfound Gap, which is a funny Eastern and Southern Way of saying a pass or a road that goes between two peaks.  The cool thing is, it crosses the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Springer Mountain, Georgia to the top of Mount Katahdin, in Maine.

That's a hella long way to walk!  But some people do it, and more power to them!  We, on the other hand, decided to walk about ten feet, just to say that we did it. 

There's a rest area at the top that marks the spot where Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the park in 1940, and it features a memorial to the Rockefeller Family to thank them for the donation that completed the acquisition of the Park's land.

Going down the other side of the pass toward Cherokee, we passed by Mingus Mill, a corn mill built in 1886, restored in 1937 and undergoing restoration yet again in 2011. 

Pandora, of course, had to play a little bit in the stream but by then, we were pretty close to our destination, so the wet dog in the car mattered less than it would have at some other time.