We then visited my cousin Sonja (Sonntraut) Krautner and her husband Eric. They live about halfway between the Great Smoky Mountains and Knoxville, Tennessee. They both are Germans who immigrated to the U.S. in 1961. I had not seen my cousin for 50 years and we both were very happy to meet again.

The next day we made a tour through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Newfound Gap and Clingmans Dome with a 1/2 mile (800 m) hike to the obersavtion tower. The Great Smokies are named after a blue smokelike haze that almost always hangs over the mountains. The great number of dead trees in some areas  - caused by the Adelgid insect - is very depressing.

Cades Cove is a scenic area in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and an open air museum containing restored log cabins, barns and an operating gristmill.
Drive-through barns were typical for eastern Tennessee. Two men with pitchforks, one on a wagon load of hay in the drive-through and the other in the loft, could transfer the hay to the loft in a short time. The hay was fed to draft animals and milk cows in the stalls below at both sides during winter months.

House of the mill owner “Living Room” Gristmill Drive-through barn Log cabin from the early 1820s Butterfly

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