We took a day trip and drove through the Smoky Mountains while in the area.  I had previously seen the Smoky Mountains when I took my grandson Kyle here a couple years ago on a search for snow.  We saw very little snow as it had been a mild winter and we only saw the eastern side of the range as the road from Cherokee down towards Knoxville was closed due to a landslide.

This time Jeff and I saw the western side of the range and we drove FROM Knoxville up to Cherokee, then along the ridges for a short time and back down the western side on a different road.  It’s very pretty!!  We saw a dam that was built during WWII to power all the factories that were making war material.  It was in an area that was prone to major flooding that just a couple of years before being built had severely damaged several towns downstream.  The dam regulated the water flow through the downstream area as well as providing power.

Here are pictures that we took: