i sure do love tennessee. one of my very favorite parts of living here is how close it is to the Great Smokey Mountains.. i was born an outdoor lover.. growing up with my dad taking me to the Smokeys almost every other weekend is probably the reason why.. but i just couldn’t love it anymore than i do. pair that love with the inability to sit still for too long and you’ve got a great sense of adventure. i’m lucky to have met and married a man who can’t sit still for very long either! so, we’re sitting on the couch on saturday afternoon just twiddling out thumbs racking our brains for something to do that night other than stay at the house. these were some of our unfruitful ideas.. 1] go kayaking.. take too long to get the yaks-racks on the car 2] go wakeboarding.. or even boating.. no boat [sold it last year.. bummer] .. we even considered renting a sail boat.. hmph. 4] buy a boat.. kind of disrupts the who “downsizing” thing we’ve got going on now 3] walk around downtown.. did that the night before…. then we remembered that the fireflies [lightning bugs for those of us in the south] were doing their little mating dance @ Elkmont in the Smokies! Bingo!! I wish I had a camera by my side to capture the look on our faces! And we were off!
Every year for 2 weeks in the summer there is a certain breed of firefly that mates around the Elkmont campground in the Smokies. Right when it gets completely dark they begin to blink in unison. Think, Christmas lights. Hundreds and thousands of fireflys blinking all at once. It was one of the COOLEST things we’ve ever seen. We are just nerdy enough to adore them. I tried to get a pictures of them on my bulb setting.. without any luck.. just a black frame. This is FOR SURE something you need to see for yourself! If you can get past the long long lines for the trolleys to take you up there.. and the completely obnoxious people around you saying “it’s-just-a-bunch-a-bugs” or the folks ACTUALLY trying to take flash pictures of the bugs and scaring them away [big WOW to this one]… then you will LOVE LOVE LOVE them! They will be taking shuttles from the Sugarlands Visitor Center to Elkmont until the 19th I believe [check to make sure]. And get there around 5:30 – 6:00… [shuttles start at 7] or you may not even be able to get on the trolley.
Happy Bug Watching!!
I adore you. I literally just laughed out loud. omg. so awesome.