Living in Eastern Kentucky, we are always surrounded by the beauty of the mountains.  Even though my husband and I never actually got out of the mountains we decided to take a little adventure away from our three girls.  Just me and my man, Josh, all alone for the first time in months!  We stayed at our family lake house and drove into The Great Smokey Mountains to hike a trail up to the Ramsay’s Cascade Waterfall.  The Ramsay Cascade Trail goes through one of the largest pockets of virgin forest in the Smokies, eventually emerging at the base of the 90 foot Ramsay Cascades.   This is a four mile, moderate hike starting at 2,000 feet elevation and ending at 4,200 feet.  It took us about 2 hours on the way up with a couple very small rests.   There was so much to see.  Butter flies everywhere.  It was so beautiful to see that many at one time flying around us.  It was almost magical from the butterflies, to the gigantic Tulip Poplar Trees, the bridges made from logs and the rock staircases.  We were about 3 miles into the hike when we saw a sign that said,”Bears are active in this part of the woods and have been known to cause death.”  That slowed me down a bit, I think Josh was happy about that.  Once at the top it was so beautiful.  Surprisingly, as tough of a climb as it was and not seeing many people on the trail, there were a lot of people at the top.  We had lunch, took a few pictures and then headed back for the 4 miles down the hill.  On our way we even ran into a bear!  He wasn’t very big and didn’t seem to even care that we were there.   The very next week we heard about a bear attack in the Smokies.  Thankfully no one was killed, other than the bear.   Check out some of the awesome pictures my husband took on our little adventure.