How I spent my Sunday

Yesterday I went to Knoxville and picked up my mother and my aunt and took them down through Pigeon Forge and Sevierville for food and shopping and ended the trip with a drive through Cades Cove. For me any trip to Sevierville always begins with a stop at the Smoky Mountain Knife Works.

Cades Cove is a beautiful valley in the Smoky Mountains which was settled by white pioneers in the late 1700's.

Today it is a large open air museum. It has been preserved as it would have looked in the 1800's.

Hunting has not been allowed for a long time so the wildlife have little fear of humans.

The quality of these pictures is not terribly good because they were shot from a moving car.

This is the Cades Cove Primitive Baptist Church.

I always imagined primitive baptists wearing skins and using stone tools, but that isn't what they mean by primitive.

The red sign warns people that it is a crime to feed, touch or disturb the wildlife.

The "don't feed the animal" signs are everywhere. They don't want the deer to become dependant on handouts from humans.

There are a number of structures surviving from the old days.

I would think that the size of some of these houses would indicate prosperous farms.

Note the lack of windows to let in the cold.

My aunt thought it would have been terrible to have to have lived in such a small cabin. I agree, but since this was a storage shed I don't think living there was an issue.

I would not have enjoyed living without electricity or indoor plumbing. And having to plow fields with a mule rather than a tractor would have not been much fun either, but you couldn't ask for a more beautiful setting.

As I said, beautiful.

Cades Cove was a functioning farm community into the 20th century. This barn would be about the newest structure still standing.

The Cades Cove store is located at the entrance/exit to the loop road. It has restrooms and sells cold drinks and snacks. One thing you would have once found in a store in a major tourist attraction like this would have been a large selection of film for your camera. Now there are only a few rolls tucked away behing the counter.

Digital has killed 35mm.