Beautiful Leaves in the Smokies. When to See Them, Where to Find Them. Fall of 2023

I love fall in the Smokies. I absolutely love to hike them when I can during the fall.

It can be tricky. depending on the weather the leaves can be green one weekend, at their height by the next and mostly dead a few days later. Still, I’ve never gone wrong trying.

Animated map of when the leaves in the United States are projected to change — *Animation by The Washington Post, original image from SmokyMountains.com*

Each year SmokyMountains.com puts out their Fall Foliage Prediction Map — a national map — that estimates when leaves will be at their peak.

Of course it is an estimate, but I have yet to find anything else that is close.

If you love the fall and the outdoors, this is a wonderful map to look at today, to plan your perfect weekend this fall — Oct 2nd, 9th or 16th in the Smokies,

Also worth noting: the elevation change in the Smokies (3,000+ plus) means that at any time different elevations will be at different periods. There are easily three different levels where both the tree types and the leaves change. Generally, the further up you go the more coniferous (pine & fir-like) there are, which makes the heights great places to view, but often less colorful themselves.

Some Great Smokies Viewpoints

This isn’t regurgitated guide books, this is all from my own explorations!

Drive to Newfound Gap — you can drive here, no hiking required. It gives a broad view of the middle Eastview of the Smokies.

Drive or Hike to Clingmans Dome — you can drive all the way there and either look out over the Southern part of the Smokies, or hike up to the viewing tower (0.6 miles, steep but paved) and get a 360′ view.) You literally can’t go wrong.

Hike Alum Trail towards Mount LeConte — The first 2-3 miles of this hike offers excellent views. As you approach the peak there are more amazing views, but you need to prepare to hike higher. Be ready for crowds: this is the most popular trail to Mount LeConte, if you can, go during a weekday to find parking, or park at Newfound Gap and find a way to get down to the trailhead (don’t plan on hiking down.)

Hike Mount Cammerer — This is a long and difficult hike. Somewhere around 10 miles out and back. The reward is a 270′ view from an old firetower, of the mountains, mostly outside of the Smokies. I never think of it as my favorite, but I also can never pull myself away after I’m there.

Drive Cades Cove — the 11 mile loop on the West side of the park, you can get out and hike short trails (0.5 miles +/-) or stay in the car. It’s worthwhile by itself, but during the fall will be amazing.

Drive Little River Gorge Road and 441 — this will take you from Townsend on the Northwest side of the Smokies to the South side of the Smokies and back. Elevation from 1300′ to 5000’+ means you’ll see the lowest point to the highest point.

The drive along the Little River never disappoints. There are multiple short trails you can take at pull-offs, along with viewing areas all along Newfound Gap. Expect this to take the entire day over weekends, pack a lunch and something to drink. (Bathrooms at Metcalf Bottoms, the Gatlinburg Visitors Center, and Newfound Gap).

Drive the Parkway — Two sections of road outside of the main park, East and West of Gatlinburg, each offers pull-offs with amazing views of the mountains.

Drive Greenbrier Road — I’ve only been here once, and during the winter. It’s main advantage is you can drive along it, making it very accessible.

Dozens of easy trails exist throughout the park. The Cosby Campground is full of them, Little River Road has multiple pull-offs with short trails that typically have adequate parking, the Cades Cove campground has accessible trails that can go as short or as long as you’d like, Middle Prong Trailhead near the Tremont Visitors Center also allows you an easy hike along a creek, and there are drivable areas in the East side of the park that I have barely explored.

Photos

Edited to show t the Smoky Mountains at their finest.

Creek crossing on hike to Alum Bluffs in the Great Smoky Mountains. iPhone 12 mini

Carsten, Katie & Elyonah Addington walk a path in the Cosby Campground during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Nikon d5600

Path to Laurel Falls during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Minolta DiMage

View from the hike to Alum Bluffs in the Great Smoky Mountains. iPhone 12 Mini

Leaves during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Minolta Dimage

View from Alum Bluffs during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Nikon d5600

Leaves during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Nikon d5600

Pull off on Clingman’s Dome Road in the Great Smoky Mountains during the fall. No hiking required. iPhone 12 Mini

Creek at the Cosby Campground during the fall in the Great Smoky Mountains. Nikon d5600

Pull off near Newfound Gap in the Great Smoky Mountains, no hiking required. Nikon d5600

Live Views

Want to know before you go? I’d always recommend asking your friends on Facebook first, but there are also webcams that will give you a pretty good idea of the colors.

Skypark Live Web Cam

Newfound Gap — you may need to visit this page to ensure you have the latest image.

Parkway Leaves

Smoky Moutains | 0 Comments

MGM Taken Down, Caesers Paid Up

Cybersecurity | 0 Comments

MGM was completely taken offline this week. Multiple casinos and hotels down, slot machines unable to pay out. It’s one of the biggest cybersecurity messes that has been made public (they can’t hide it!)

Caesers reportedly was in a similar spot, but they paid up instead.

It seems like most people don’t take us cybersecurity pros seriously when we say this can happen. I don’t know how much MGM would have had to pay but:

Their operational losses this week will be through the roof
The costs to investigate and repair will be incredible
The lost revenue between hotel cancellations — which are forced to offer for free — and lost gambling revenue must be huge
The reputational losses will be long-lasting. How many MGM customers will stay at Caesars going forward just to avoid the potential hassle of working with MGM?

Of course, for MGM this on $13bn of annual revenue, so would this matter to a smaller business?

Yes. Small businesses will typically have a higher ransom or recovery cost as a proportion of revenue.

The ultimate gamble is, is it less costly to go through a cybersecurity incident or defend against one? And if the incident is less costly, is it still worth it?

Fixed — Soundcore 30Q Poor Audio Quality on macOS

Tech | 0 Comments

I have a Soundcore 30Q that connects wirelessly to my MacBook Pro running macOS Ventura. But the sound quality went back and forth between great (headphone mode) and awful (headset mode).

After resetting the headphones, unpairing and repairing — all of the things — I finally found that Audio Hijack was causing the problem. I love Audio Hijack, but when I used the Soundcore Life Q30 as an input source it would switch modes, making music and video sound quality untenable.

Awful:

Disabled in AudioHijack, back to great:

So, posting this in hopes that the next person struggling with this admittedly super-edge case issue is able to find an answer!

BaguetteBox on WordPress without Plugins

Tech | 0 Comments

I wanted lightboxes for images on my site. I tried a plugin but it seemed to work inconsistently, probably due to how I have my site setup.

My next option was to add a custom class to links by hand, but that seemed awful. Finally, with an assist from ChatGPT, I came up with this code and leave it here for someone else.

It scans the entire page for any a tags that have an img inside of them, where the a href has an image filename in it (jpg, jpeg, png, webp). I have the code placed in the footer of all pages to ensure it is non-blocking.

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/baguettebox.js/1.11.1/baguetteBox.min.js" integrity="sha512-7KzSt4AJ9bLchXCRllnyYUDjfhO2IFEWSa+a5/3kPGQbr+swRTorHQfyADAhSlVHCs1bpFdB1447ZRzFyiiXsg==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/baguettebox.js/1.11.1/baguetteBox.min.css" integrity="sha512-NVt7pmp5f+3eWRPO1h4A1gCf4opn4r5z2wS1mi7AaVcTzE9wDJ6RzMqSygjDzYHLp+mAJ2/qzXXDHar6IQwddQ==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer" />

<script type="text/javascript">
  
  var j = jQuery.noConflict();
  
j(window).on("load", function() {
    console.log("Window loaded");
    
    // Filter and add the class to eligible <a> tags
    var links = j('body a:has(img)').filter(function() {
        var matches = /\.(jpg|jpeg|png|webp)$/i.test($(this).attr('href'));
        console.log("Checking link: ", $(this).attr('href'), matches);
        return matches;
    });

    console.log("Number of matching links: ", links.length);
    links.addClass('baguetteBoxItem');
    
    // Run baguetteBox on the entire body
    baguetteBox.run('.baguetteBoxItem');
});

</script>

Want to see it at work? Right here.