A couple of days of our vacation was spent in Cades Cove, a valley in the Smoky Mountains National Park. According to cadescove.net, "Cades Cove is today the largest open air museum in the entire Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Cades Cove has original pioneer homesteads, barns, businesses, pasture and farmland--a fitting tribute to the hearty people who lived here in the days of yesteryear."

The only way to see Cades Cove is by driving, biking, or hiking along a one-way road around the valley. Along the way, you can see preserved homes of the pioneers who settled the area as well as wildlife... if you look carefully. This website has a more in-depth e-tour of what you can see in Cades Cove.

Our first few minutes in Cades Cove brought unbelievable luck: a black bear sighting. It was a mother bear and her three cubs. And the cubs were so little, only a few months old. Cars were stopped all along the road behind us and people getting out to capture the moment on film.

A couple that was hiking the Loop stopped to talk to us and showed us pictures of the bears they had seen the day before. They even gave us a tip on a place where we might see more bears later. It was a little-known secret: a dirt road that cut across the valley and had a huge field of blackberry bushes growing next to it. We headed there next.