Please forgive some of the blurry images. My photographic ones have been replacedby the originals, but the food images may be blurry from import from an old blog site I used to have. The content is still good, and the important images are still good. 🙂

Our plan for the day was to rent a jeep in Gatlinburg (so that we wouldn’t put too much wear and tear on our car), go into the mountains, tube and then finish off with CadesCove – so the whole family could see it. Rented jeep – check. Our first stop? FOOD! We went to a place called Wings R Us.It’s located in Townsend, right near the caverns and Cades Cove.

They’re food was really good. The buns that they use for their hamburgers and BBQ were HUGE! I got the Cades Cove BBQ with onion rings, but couldn’t finish it.

It was a great place to have lunch. I wish I could have sampled everything on the menu. The staff was very pleasant. Here’s their link which includes their menu: http://discovertownsend.com/_dine/wings_r_us_townsend_tn.htm

On to the mountain! We wanted to go up to the highest point you can get to by car – Clingman’sDome, but it was closedfor repair, remodeling…..they were re-surfacing the parking lot, installing larger bathroom facilities to support all the people thatarea gets, etc. They werescheduled tore-open 6/21/10. We ended upat the 2nd highest point – Newfound Gap, elev. 5000.

This is from Newfound Gap:

This is from the overlook just before Newfound gap:

After eating and going up to the top of the mountain, we didn’t have enough time to tube. Bummer. So onwardto CadesCove (If you want more information on Cades Cove, check out the post from Day 4 of our trip):

When we left Cades Cove it was about 6pm. The boys wanted to go swimming one more time (we were leaving the next day), so we went to another great swimming hole which I had researched before going on vacation. The locals call it the Wye. It’s at the intersections of Hwy 73, Little River Rd. & Laurel Creek Rd.

They’ve got a large parking area here and port-a-potties – better than nothing.