GSMNP Celebrates Fall Harvest with Annual Mountain Life Festival in the Smokies

Every year at mid September the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) hosts the annual Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee North Carolina This year this popular program will be taking place on Saturday, September 19th, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

This Mountain Life Festival helps preserve the legacy of Appalachian folkways and is meant to be a tribute to the people of European heritage who moved after their land was purchased in order to create the Great Smoky Mountains national park. The event is suitable for all ages and the activities are free.

Besides there being artifacts and historic photographs from the national park’s collection on display, this living history event will include demonstrations on old fashioned life skills such as blacksmithing, lye soap making, food preservation, hearth cooking, apple butter making, and chair bottoming. There will be a music jam session too from 1:00 to 3:00 pm.

One of the highlights of the Mountain Life Festival has been taking place for more than 30 years. The sorghum syrup demonstration, shows how with the use of a horse powered cane mill and a wood-fired cooker syrup is made much the same way it was produced a hundred or more years ago.

For the first time ever the Great Smoky Mountains Association (GSMA) which helps support the park is launching the new Mountain Farm Museum audio tour with free handsets available to visitors and members. There audio tour devices will be distributed for use on a first come first serve basis.

The location where the event take place right of Newfound Gap Road US411 has pretty vistas, a small working farm area with numerous historical structures and a hiking trail along the river which si one of the few places in the GSMNP where you can hike with your dog.

The farm area also contains one of the satellite herds of North American Elk in the Smokies introduced into the area in 2001. Since this is Rut season, male elk are especially active and aggressive so you must keep your distance from them for their safety as well as your own.

Volunteers Needed For Clingmans Dome Information Center

One of the greatest contributions you can make to the Great Smoky Mountains national park is your time as a park Volunteer, and right the now the National Park Service is actively looking for volunteers to staff the Clingmans Dome Information Center from April 1st through November 30th, 2014.

The volunteers need to work at the Clingmans Dome Visitor Information Center will be asked to work at least one 4 hour shift per week and are needed all days of the week with the most staffing required Friday through Sunday. Shifts are from 9:30 am until 1:30 pm and 1:00 pm until 5:00 pm.

Since Volunteers are needed to provide educational, recreational and trip planning information a basic knowledge of the Great Smoky Mountains national park and surrounding area is very helpful even though volunteers are provided orientation and training before their tour of duty.

The Clingmans Dome Information Center first came into being last year by moving the bathrooms into the Clingmans Dome parking area and converting the space into an information center where visitors could ask questions of park staff and volunteers as well as make small purchases of book, maps, tee shirts and other park related items.

If you are interested and could attend the mandatory training that will be held at the Oconaluftee Administration Building just inside the park on 441 North of Cherokee, North Carolina on Thursday, March 13, 2014, please contact Ranger Florie Takaki Monday through Friday at (828)497-1906 or by email at: Florie_Takaki@nps.gov.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Public Meeting on Road Construction Projects

It's not your imagination. For years the Great Smoky Mountains national park roadways have been in a constant state of much needed repair, increasing the comfort and improving the safety of everyone using these roads and parking areas stretching from the complete overhaul of the Cades Cove Loop Road and the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, to the to the major rebuilding of Newfound Gap Road after this year's devastating landslide.

What you may not realize it the added bonus of the reduced costs to repair park and visitor vehicles that traverse these roads now that they are in far better condition as well as the reduced environmental impact of these improved parking areas and roadways. There is also a significant economic benefit to the area between the contractors and their employees.

The stimulus help pay for many of the larger projects including the incomplete section of the Foothill Parkway between Wears Valley and Walland which is still ongoing and closed to all vehicles, bikers and hikers, the Sinks Parking Area and the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail.

Further work such as drainage system improvements, roadway resurfacing, stone-wall masonry rehabilitation, and slope stabilization is still being done and in the planning stages for Newfound Gap Road US441 and the Gatlinburg Bypass.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials are inviting the public today and tomorrow to meetings n order to give an update on current construction and future planed work on these key roadways.

The first meeting will take place today Monday, August 5 from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm at the Sugarlands Visitor Center Training Room, about 2 miles from the Gatlinburg, Tennessee park entrance.

The second meeting takes place tomorrow Tuesday, August 6 from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm at the Oconaluftee Administrative Building which was the old visitor center near the Cherokee, North Carolina entrance.

Public questions and input is very helpful as demonstrated by how smoothly the Cades Cove Loop Road repaving job was accomplished with the least impact possible to park visitors and local business that depend on them.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Road Conditions

The Great Smoky Mountings National Park Is Looking For Volunteers in North Carolina

If you love the Great Smoky Mountains national park, you can give back to the park by becoming a volunteer which is a very rewarding experience.

Presently the GSMNP is looking for volunteers to rove in and around the Oconaluftee Mountain Farm Museum, the Oconaluftee River Trail and along a part of Newfound Gap Road/US441 from now until Nov 9th, 2013.

Volunteers should have knowledge about the park and will be providing information to park visitors such as approaching and disturbing wildlife, littering, historical information and places to go in the park. When necessary, a volunteer will need to assist park rangers with traffic management.

Volunteers will also need to provide visitors with information on viewing elk and other wildlife safely, about the elk reintroduction program in the GSMNP and the elk's role in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

To participate or for more information, contact the Oconaluftee Visitor Center at (828)497-1904. Volunteers will be required to take an orientation and training session on Friday, April 26 from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm at Oconaluftee.

Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee Area of Great Smoky Mountains national park

In the upper elevations of the Great Smoky Mountains national park there is a touch of color and the heat has broken and even in the valleys the heat of summer has been broken so the annual Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee is right around the corner.

Come to the farm museum on Saturday September 19th from 10 am to 4 pm and learn why leather britches are not pants, what carding means when it has nothing to do with ID and what it's like to make your own soap while listening to great Appalachian style music - all for free!

While I am sad to see what for me signals for me the end of summer, this is one annual event in the Great Smoky Mountains national park I have not missed for years.

The location of the Farm Museum is perfect in beautiful green valley alongside the Oconaluftee River surrounded by low mountains that will only have a hint of color just a minute inside the park boundary at Cherokee.

Expect the hands of time turn back more than a hundred years and see interesting live demonstrations by park staff and volunteers such as lye soap making, hearth cooking, food preservation, broom making, quilting, blacksmithing, chair bottoming, along with apple butter and apple cider making. You will get to sample warm cider too!

A special edition this year to help celebrate the parks 75th anniversary is a showcase Appalachian folkways along with historic artifacts and photographs from the national park's collection will also be on display to help pay tribute to the former resident who lived where the park now stands.

Corn husk dolls, hominy making, old time toys and other interesting demonstrations about what home life was 100 years ago in the Great Smoky Mountains will be going on around the farm museum.

You can also learn about the more than 40 types of apple tress the Cherokee and the early settlers grew from Ron and Suzanne Joyner from Big Horse Creek Farm in Ashe County, NC. When I interviewed them in the past they were a wealth of knowledge and they presently have a nursery with more than 300 varieties of custom-grafted heirloom apple trees.

In the farm itself, you can watch an almost 40 year old tradition of the Great Smoky Mountains national park: the making of sorghum syrup. The Appalachian early settlers did not have table sugar and they grew their own sorghum and with a horse-powered cane mill and wood-fired cooker made this important food stable.

Students, staff, and volunteers from Swain County High School through a cooperative agreement with Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains Association will be feeding the press which is pictured above and making the sorghum syrup.

Through all the celebrating at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee, don't miss the musical entertainment by Marshall Crowe and the Bluegrass Singers.

Bedsides the event, take some time to stroll down the Oconaluftee River hiking trail which is one of the 2 trails in the park that allows well behaved leashed dogs and stroll around the farm with its historic buildings and picturesque landscape.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Junior Ranger Day

Saturday April 26th marks the 2nd annual Junior Ranger day special activities for kids to be held in all 3 Great Smoky Mountains National Park visitor centers from 11 am to 2 pm.

Children and their parents can join in fun filled and education activities such as searching for wildflowers and salamanders, toy making, weaving, even making dinner bells at a blacksmith shop.

According to Great Smoky Mountains national park Superintendent Dale Ditmanson "National Junior Ranger Day provides a great opportunity for children and families to spend time together learning about the Park that offers an array of educational experiences and recreational opportunities right in their own backyard." He went on to say "We hope that our local residents will take advantage of this program to interact with our staff and the resources, and, at the same time, plan a day doing activities in the Park."

The visitor centers in the Great Smoky Mountains national park where the junior ranger programs are taking place are:

• The Sugarlands Visitor Center near downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee
• The Cades Cove's Cable Mill Visitor Center at the back end of the Cades Cove 11 mile loop road near Townsend, Tennessee.
• The Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee, North Carolina

Special age appropriate Junior Ranger booklets which were produced in cooperation with Great Smoky Mountains Association can be purchased for $2.50 each at park visitor centers and are available for ages 5- 6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12.

441 Newfound Gap Road in Great Smokies Mountains National Park closed due to icy conditions

Newfound Gap Road was closed due to snow and ice shutting off the major artery that runs through the Great Smoky mountains national park connecting Cherokee North Carolina with Gatlinburg Tennessee.

Drivers last night were surprised to see this major road in the GSMNP closed as in the lower elevations there was no snow or ice - nor even flurries. Temperatures around midnight were still in the upper 30s at Oconaluftee and the Sugarlands but at the higher elevations at Newfound Gap which is typically far cooler, slippery dangerous conditions prompted the parks department to close the icy road and kept it closed through out the night.

With temperatures expected to climb above freezing Newfound Gap could possibly be opened again later today, but real warming is not expected until Sunday which could make for a lot of very unhappy post thanksgiving drivers if they would have to take an alternate route most likely being I-40 to get over the mountains.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park International Bird Conservation

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park will be holding 2 days of events highlighting International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) and this years International Migratory Bird Day theme "Birds in a Changing Climate" examining age old practices of bird observation and being able to foretell future weather patterns.

Long before computer models and advanced weather forecasting techniques, farmers based crop planting decisions upon the movement and arrival of migratory birds. Observing the migration of birds is allowing scientists today see the how the current changes in weather patterns is affecting the birds and animal and plant species that are connected to the migration of birds.

Both International Migratory Bird Day demonstrations start at 8:00 am and will be held at the North Carolina National Park Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee this Saturday May 5th and at the Tennessee National Park Sugarlands Visitor Center near Gatlinburg on Monday, May 7th.

There will be demonstrations led by Park Biologist Paul Super as well as guided bird walks. In order to show visitors how birds are caught, examined, banded and eventually released without being harmed, Paul Super will set up delicate mist nets and demonstrate how they work.

A special visitor the Costa Rican coordinator of the Partners in Flight international bird conservation initiative Pablo Elizondo will be participating in this event. He will also be working with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park researchers into the summer in a cooperative venture allowing Pablo Elizondo to share his knowledge with park researches as well as learn some of their techniques as well.

Pablo Elizondo will be giving presentations to the pubic on bird conservation and the efforts that Costa Rica is making on conservation. For years Cost Rica has been actively protecting its natural assets acknowledging the value of their resources to its citizens as well as value of ecotourism.

Many of the resident birds of Smoky Mountains are intimately connected with Costa Rica and other Central American and Caribbean countries many thousands of miles away since they spend the winter months in more temperate climates. Clearly conservation efforts to protect migratory species need to far reaching since migratory birds pass through and inhabit many countries.

Thankfully there are international efforts working to protect migratory bird species and their unique habitats in the national parks in the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The National Park Service's cooperative Park Flight Migratory Program is part of this valuable international conservation effort.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Elk need your help!

The Great Smoky Mountains national parks largest resident is the Elk who were reintroduced in 2001 after being extinct in the wilds of the North Carolina and Tennessee Smoky Mountains due to over hunting for more than a century.

The National Parks Park Volunteers-in-Parks program is now seeking volunteers who are able to assist the staff by helping provide visitors to the park with information, help in traffic control of tourists coming to see the elk and making sure that visitors coming to the park are not antagonizing the elk by approaching them too closely, shining lights at them or using bugles to simulate their mating call all prohibited activities.

This new Great Smoky Mountains National Park Volunteer program is going by the name Elk Bugle Corps referring to the sound the elk mate during rutting when the male bull elk bugle and spar in dominance battles with one another.

The elk are primarily in project in the North Carolina Cataloochee Valley section although strays wander to as far as the Oconaluftee visitor center and further. The Volunteers are needed for the Cataloochee Valley from May 25th through November 19th which are peak elk viewing times and see the most visitors to this section of the National Park looking for Elk.

Late springtime mean calving for the elk where new mother at times leave their calves alone in fields which can be an invitation to disaster if curious person comes along and an irate mother elk returns to her young to see humans close by.

The rutting season is a fantastic time to watch and listen to the elk, but it is also a time when this huge potentially dangerous animal is more agitated.

The park needs volunteers who can help from 5:45 pm - 8:45 pm who can sign up for either a particular day of the week or a whole week at a time. The most help is needed on weekends.

If you are interested in helping the magnificent creatures call the Great Smoky Mountains National Park's Volunteer Coordinator at (865) 436-1265 by May 7 to receive an information packet and on May 17 and 19 there will be a Bugle Corps volunteer training session.

A Smoky Mountain Riddle about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

What do Restaurants in the Smoky Mountains, The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the North Carolina and Tennessee department of motor vehicles, and the Friends of the Smokies organization all have in common? Biodiesel.

Thanks to the generous support of drivers of NC and TN who were kind enough to purchase the beautiful Friends of the Smokies specialty license plates as well as a Clean Fuel Advanced Technology grant The Smoky Mountains National Park will soon be able to fuel their diesel fleet of almost 2 dozen vehicles on the North Carolina side with a biodiesel blended fuel.

Biodiesel is a cleaner burning alternative to petroleum diesel and is produced domestically from renewable sources such as used cooking oils, soybeans, corn and various other organic oil sources. Since it is produced domestically, it reduces our dependence on foreign petroleum and production of biodiesel creates virtually no polluting byproducts.

Biodiesel in its purest form is from 100% "organic" sources but is often blended with petroleum diesel. The National Park service will be using B-50 which means it is a 50 - 50 mixture. Regardless of the blend as long as the "bio" part f the blend is clean and pure, diesel engines usually don't require any modifications. While 100% bio is preferred this is a huge step in the right direction.

According to Dale Ditmanson the Park Superintendent "This biodiesel refueling project will help us achieve our long-term goal of stabilizing or improving air quality in the park...We also see it as a great opportunity to lead by example as we host local school groups and millions of visitors from all across the country and world."

Just having the Great Smoky Mountains National Park committed to using Biodiesel is not enough. Two distribution centers are going to be set up on the North Carolina side of the national park. The first larger Biodiesel station will be a 4,000-gallon tank at the Oconaluftee Maintenance Yard in Swain County, and the second smaller 1,000 gallon tank will be located to fill park vehicles in Cataloochee Valley. Combined these distribution points will dispense and estimated 12,000 gallons a year reducing the national parks annual consumption of petroleum diesel by 6,000 gallons a year.

In order the finance this incredible project, the Friends of the Smokies is donating more than $8,000 which was raised from the sales of specialty license plates in NC and TN. $20 of the $30 charged for these special plates ends up with Friends of the Smokies.

The Friends of the Smokies also secured grant that exceeded $33,000 from the Clean Fuel Advanced Technology Project, which is managed in North Carolina by the North Carolina Solar Center and NC State University. Help from the project was also received from the NC Department of Transportation, the State Energy Office of the NC Department of Administration, and the NC Division of Air Quality.

If you don't have a Friends of the Smokies license plate to help support the Great Smoky Mountains National Park order your Friends of the Smokies plate on your next Tennessee or North Carolina license plate on your next renewal!