Oh, Look, I Went to a Waterfall.....

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Who ever would have guessed that? As I previously mentioned, it’s a day of old favorites. This is Cataract Falls, which is located about 3/4 of a mile behind the Sugarlands Visitors Center at the Gatlinburg entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s one of the easiest waterfalls to get to in the park (in fact, if you discount the Sinks, which was caused by dynamiting some rock to make way for a railroad, it’s THE easiest waterfall to get to in the park!). The path is pretty level (I think six or seven steps to climb, that’s it [nothing like those 160+ steps I had to navigate last year to get to Mingo Falls]), and it follows a stream most of the way through the woods until you get to the falls. The falls were up today, thanks to all the recent rain in the region. The walk was terrific, with the area very bright because most of the trees haven’t sprouted their leaves yet. Give it a month and it’ll be a very shady walk. Today, however, it was perfect. But then, it always is.