Mountain Vacation - Critter Pictures

One of Kevin's favorite places to visit while we are in the Smokey's is Cade's Cove.  It is an area located in a valley in the National Park.  There are several churches and cabins that visitors can walk to and through from where the area was first settled, but the reason that Kevin likes it so much is that it is a great area for wildlife viewing.  We always go late in the afternoon and bring snacks for a picnic and stay to watch the animals as they graze before dusk.  Although it is Kevin's favorite, I will admit that seeing the animals in their natural environment is neat and this year Maddy really got a kick out of looking for the animals.  She never found the monkey that she kept trying to find though:).

The first animals we saw were turkeys.  Not very exciting, but hearing Maddy say "gobble, gobble, gobble" is super cute!

 See the two black spots in the picture it's a momma bear and baby bear.

This is the first time we had seen bear in the park, and while it was cool and I am glad that we saw them in the cove and didn't stumble upon them on a trail.  They seemed to be aware of the humans taking pictures of them, but went about their business of eating.

 A deer.  We saw several of them and I thought they were all does.  My husband then explained to me that they shed their antlers and that in general the deer there seemed to be smaller bodied than those we have around here. 

 Another bear.  This one was a bit closer.  About thirty feet or so from the roadway, and she and her cub had quite the audience.  Several cars stopped to snap pictures of the pair.  This was a bit close for me, but it was amazing to watch from the other side of the road by the car. 

The rangers were always close by to make sure that the spectators were being respectful while watching the wildlife. 

 The cub stayed by her mama and was pretty playful with her.

The wildlife viewing was very neat and having Maddy get excited about animals and make the different noises that they make while driving through the cove was cute.  The pictures of the girls from our vacation and us are couple posts down since I did that one first.  It was a great trip and like all vacations, went by too fast.