Over the last few weeks I’ve talked about some of the exploring I did in the area while everything was locked down, and while I did try to get out routinely, my go to place was where this image was taken, my old standby Foothills Parkway.  If you’ve followed along this blog for any amount of time you’ve seen tons of pictures from there.  It just yields so many nice scenes and has some really classic vistas for the Smokies.  It also happens to be just about 20 minutes from my house, which makes getting there for sunrise especially easy.  During the lock down period of the COVID days, however, this road helped me keep my sanity I think!  If for no other reason than to get out and drive for just a bit!

At the encouragement of my friend Bill Lea, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the “new section” of the Foothills Parkway this year, and today’s picture is the fruit of that.  On this particular morning it really didn’t look like anything was going to shape up.  The fog looked nice, but there was exactly nothing happening from a light perspective.  Out of nowhere, however, the sun broke through the clouds and started illuminating the range off in the distance there, and subsequently made the clouds look especially stormy.  The whole thing lasted maybe a few minutes and the sun retreated behind the clouds again and it was over.  For those few minutes though, it was quite beautiful!

More next week!

–Dan Thompson