Mingus Creek Trl, Alum Cave Trl and Asheville Breweries, NC

Must wrap up the Great Smokey Mountains NP!  Lots of great hiking there, it is really hard to go wrong.  Do have my favorites though.  I think my top two of the hikes we did are the Alum Cave Trl and the Abrams Falls Trl.  I have already put up pics of the Abrams Falls Trail and this post has Alum Cave, which is not really a cave but a very large overhang/bluff with some great views.

We did a short trail, due to weather, at the end of the Lake View Drive.  This road dead ends abruptly at a tunnel. For some reason, the park never finished the road.  We saw another bear on this trail though bringing out total in the park to 4 bears!  

The Mingus Creek Trail is just another ;) lovely forest trail with lots of shrooms to take pics of:

This trail starts at the Mingus Grist Mill

Mingus Creek

 We drove to Asheville for an afternoon because they have lots of breweries there and some good sour beers!!  They also had many other very nice beers but this area of the country does some nice sours and that is not the norm. Since I love them, this has made me very happy;)

The Funkatorium.......

lots of barrel aged beers and
many other yummy varieties!
Mike found good IPAs

yes, all sours and they had more!

Hi-Wire Brewery
another place with some
great sours;)

another morning in the NP

We started out on this trail
knowing it was going to
rain and figured we would
do as much as we could. Alum
Cave was our goal and anything
else would be gravy:)

note the round "window" in the ridge

yes, this was my favorite trail

 We made it about a half mile past Alum Cave when it started raining which we knew would/could
go on for hours.  We headed back down and got quite the shower:)

Great day and great time in Smokey Mountains NP!