Our daughter and son-in-law had an out-of-town soccer tournament with their oldest, so we had a chance to host Madelyn this past weekend.  Her birthday was two days earlier and we promised her a day of belated celebration.  A picnic in the Smokies sounded the best after we floated a number of choices, but the weather did not look promising.  Storms and wind were supposed to be coming from the west,  and we figured any outing would be a washout.  We checked the radar map at mid-afternoon and finally decided to go for it anyway.   If you have kept up with these blog posts, you would know that Cades Cove would certainly be our target.  We were glad we went, because the further east we drove, the fairer the day became. 

Relatively speaking, there were few cars in the cove for a Saturday afternoon, so it was easy to get around to our favorite places. Marcy challenged Madelyn to to see if she could remember and count every kind of wildlife we encountered and there were high hopes for something exciting.  It was our luck that the bears were out in force.  I felt sorry for them because many of the shots I got were of them eating grass.   I understand that Spring is the hungriest time for bears, but I went to the site below just to see if grass was part of their usual menu. (Spoiler alert: it is.)

http://www.bearsmart.com/about-bears/food-diet/

I have a new lens, which allowed me to finally zoom in a bit on the wildlife!