Rainbow Falls and Bear hunting

I actually had a lie in this morning as I didn’t wake up until 7am. Unfortunately the sun rises behind the trees so we don’t get such a good view at this place, although it’s still a lovely outlook.

After we figured out how to work the coffee machine – it took about 5 attempts for me – we had a light breakfast of bagels and jam.

Bob had to work today. The ladies decided to do a walk. We dropped Mark, Jim and Steve off in Gatlinburg town – which is quite large and always busy – and Marie drove us in the bus to the start of the Rainbow Falls Trail.

Almost as soon as we started walking we saw some chipmunks. They are very fast and really hard to photograph but Ali managed to get a picture of one of them.

The hike up to the waterfalls was through the forests and a gradual incline.

We passed a small waterfall on the way and stopped for a photo.

There were obviously other people walking the trail and we got chatting to a couple of American women, so we asked them to take a group photo.

We had to cross a couple of rivers too but luckily they had stepping stones to get across.

Just before we got to Rainbow Falls there was a smaller waterfall.

After just a few more minutes we came to Rainbow Falls. The waterfall is 80ft high and on sunny afternoon you can sometimes see a rainbow produced by the mist from the falls.

Sid and I decided to climb up to close to the top of the waterfall.

We stopped here for a few snacks and shared a bottle of wine.

As we were eating a couple of red squirrels made an appearance.

It was then back down the same way we came up.

As we got back to the bus we were all a little disappointed that we hadn’t seen any bears but decided it wasn’t meant to be. The traffic going out of the car park down to the main road was really slow – and then all of a sudden we saw a black bear by the side of the road.

We were all so excited and amazed we had actually seen a bear. And then, a couple of hundred metres down the road we saw another one.

And after a few seconds she went up on her hind legs and 3 little bear cubs ran across the road to join her before they all disappeared back into the forest.

The rest of the drive home, via the supermarket, was not so eventful.

Once we got home, unpacked and started cooking, we were sitting in the lounge when Mandy suddenly spotted a bear on the driveway. We all rushed outside to see it walk away up the drive.

This was the biggest of the bears we had seen and was probably around 280lbs. Black bears are the smallest of the bear species in North America and can live to 20 years in the wild. The black bears don’t actually hibernate in the same way as other bears. Their heart rate does drop but they remain slightly alert and active.

So after all that excitement we continued to make dinner.