Tens of thousands of people visit the Great Smoky Mountains each autumn to view the colorful spectacle of the annual leaf change, as cold nights and shorter days bring on a final burst of color before the snows of winter arrive. Not as much is said of the incredible colors of spring - we not only have as wide a range of greens as does the green isle of Ireland, but we also have a pallet of reds, yellows, golds, and greys that spread up the mountainsides over a period of several weeks in early and mid-spring.
This stitch was made from a series of photos that look down the drainage of Deep Creek, one of my favorite regions of the Smokies during any season of the year. That's Short Beech Ridge on the left side of the photo. The Deep Creek trail traverses the valley beneath Short Beech Ridge, running down-valley towards the Deep Creek campground, Bryson City, and Fontana Lake. The Deep Creek valley was a favorite haunt of Horace Kephart, an early advocate of the National Park and well-known writer that told the stories of the lives of the early settlers of the Great Smokies.