Moonrise on the Cove

First off, sorry about the somewhat unnannounced hiatus from blogging. I spent the month of May in Germany, and have been dividing my time now between work and school, a quality combination.

On a recent trip into the mountains with my dad, we decided to make the drive through Cades Cove in the park. In order to try and defeat the crowds of tourists that normally plague this beautiful area, we decided to try to make it in just before the gates closed 30 minutes after sunset. It was a good idea. We made it to the back of the loop and decided to take an 'unimproved' dirt road (unimproved is an overstatement...it was a normal gravel road) over the ridge and out of the park, and in the entire journey saw a total of 2 cars and 1 hiker. I've been in and out of the park hundreds of times and I've never seen it quite that deserted, not that it was a bad thing. It was very nice to be able to enjoy one of the most naturally beautiful areas of the mountains without the constant annoyance of the minivan loads of urbanized individuals stopping and glaring at every one of the hundreds of deer in the cove that they might happen to see, or having an individual attempting to prove Darwinism by walking between a bear and her cub. Watching the the moon rise over the mountains and fields was an experience not easily forgotten. It seemed like another era, driving down through the cove in a Jeep without seeing another individual.