Monday, April 30, was my 50th birthday. Spending my birthday with my two favorite people is what this was all about. We had breakfast at the cabin, and then ventured into the park. Whether it was too warm, or we arrived too late, the Cades Cove area was not blanketed in its usual morning fog. And there was not much going on around the loop road, so we ended up stopping only at the Cable Grist Mill. I had the chance to finally use the new Lee neutral density filters there, getting some long exposures of the turning water wheel. We then stopped at the souvenir shop, and since I needed a hat, I bought a Smokies trucker cap (two of them, I couldn’t decide on one or the other), plus a few other items. We had lunch, and then scouted the Foothills Parkway for sunrise locations. On the way back into Townsend, we stopped at a country store, where Cathie found a table that she fell in love with. The table was a bear holding up the glass table top. It was hand carved, really well done, but, was quite expensive.

These mid-day diversions became a necessity for most of the trip. Although the weather was spectacular, there were little to no clouds during that week. This makes more for some very harsh light, particularly from mid-morning to late afternoon. Whether you’re shooting in the visible light spectrum, or infrared, that harsh light from the sun directly overhead does not result in the best photographs.

Once we finished at the store, we headed back into the park, and went to one of my favorite roadside rivers, on the road to Cades Cove. We stopped there for close to an hour, and because there are tall hills on both sides of the road, the sun was blocked, giving us some more even light. I utilized the filters again, getting some long exposures of the raging waters (the featured image at the top of this post was taken there). When we finished, our original plan was to head back in the direction we came. But, traffic was backed up all the way to our spot, due to road resurfacing near Tremont. Knowing how far that road was, we decided to head back to Cades Cove and then take the Rich Mountain Road, and head back to Pigeon Forge that way for dinner. It turned out to be a happy detour. First, at Sparks Lane, there was a large group of horses grazing, and walking right up the fence to check out us crazy humans. I was able to get some photos after I was freed from Cathie’s car. For some reason, Cathie decided to park right next to the only road sign on Sparks Lane, blocking me so that I could not open the door. After about 10-15 minutes of her merrily photographing the horses for herself, she realized I had not gotten out of the car. That’s when I pointed out where she had parked. Thanks, Cathie, lol! Once I was able to start getting some photos, the first of a few weird occurrences happened with my workhorse Nikon D800. As I was rapidly firing, the viewfinder suddenly went dark, and the metering was not working. Even after turning the camera off and on, taking out the battery and putting it back in, it was only when I had changed lenses that it started working ok. I went back to the lens I was using, and it seemed to be working fine again. This happened a few other times on this trip. I’m still researching what the issue could be. 

We continued on to Rich Mountain Road, and on the drive up the hill, we came across a bear. It was the first one I had seen in the park in my two trips. I was on the wrong side of the car to get any kind of decent shot. At one point, I had gotten out to try to retrieve my camera from the trunk, but this got the bear’s attention. To be safe, and to not encourage her to approach closer, I got back in the car. Cathie got several photos, that was good enough for both of us. Finally, we headed out to get dinner. I chose Bennett’s Barbecue Pit for dinner, we ate there the last time. The food is excellent, as was the beer, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly after a great first full day in the park.