If you’ve ever hiked in the morning, you’re well aware of the fact that spiders are busy all night, spinning webs to catch their next meals. Spiders have a uncanny knack for stretching their webs across trails, as if they are expecting that the next creature to hike through will be an unfortunate insect, destined to be their breakfast. Usually, however, the next creature to pass is you. This is not a good thing for the spider. Not only are you unappealing to the spider’s appetite, but you destroy the arachnid’s food trapping apparatus, tearing it apart and leaving the poor spider with no means of acquiring sustenance. Plus, you end up with the sticky filaments all over whatever body part happened to encounter the web. Somehow this always seems to be your face and hair. You then spend the next few minutes trying to get as much of the stuff off of yourself as you can, resume your hike, and find yourself walking into another web a few feet down the trail.

This problem is not unique to humans. The young bear in these photos recently visited Happy Bear’s Hideaway, apparently attracted to the scent of the burgers I was cooking on our charcoal grill. This young fellow (Ok, maybe he’s a she, I really couldn’t tell) came up the hill alongside the cabin, and apparently ran into – and through – some unlucky spider’s food trap. Unlike most human hikers, who can’t get this stuff off themselves fast enough, he seemed oblivious to its presence.

Incidentally, I do like to name the animals that live in my neighborhood. So what did I decide to call this web-covered critter? Webster, obviously!

Happy Bear’s Hideaway is located on the outskirts of one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the nation, home to a fabulous assortment of plant and animal life. Near the bottom of the food chain, insects make up a significant percentage of the fauna, serving as the primary source of nutrition for a variety of birds and small mammals. Even the Smokies’ renowned black bear, normally an herbivore, will claw into a fallen tree to enjoy a meal of grubs when fruits and nuts are in short supply. In short, bugs play an important role in sustaining the higher forms of life that make the Smokies such a magnificent place, and their absence would deprive the region of many of its signature species.

Unfortunately, however, insects cannot distinguish between wilderness and populated areas, and don’t confine themselves within the park boundaries. Wherever conditions are suitable for their life, they move in. Further, they have no concept of “indoors” and “outdoors”… they invade whatever environment they deem to be a suitable habitat. This is where they make the transition from a critical part of the ecosystem into a plain old nuisance.

One of the comments most frequently found in our cabin guest book concerns these bugs, primarily the centipedes, millipedes, and ladybugs that seem to be in the cabin on every guest visit. Nobody wants to share their vacation space with the crawly things. While they aren’t harmful to humans (especially when dead), they are unattractive to look at, and gross to step on, particularly with bare feet!

Our rental management company is engaged in a perpetual battle to keep these pests out of the cabin (I know, because they charge me for it every month!) Despite their best efforts, in the battle of Man vs. Bug, the insects always seem to prevail. Sort of. In fact, the pesticides are quite effective at exterminating these pesky invaders. The problem is, it just kills them, it doesn’t physically remove them from the place. This results in a lot of dead bugs lying around, which tends to give most folks a bad first impression when they walk in the door. Who wants to stay in a vacation home that’s got dead bugs in the TV room? Further, insects are incredibly prolific, and every generation that gets wiped out by insecticide manages to leave enough eggs behind to hatch and create the next wave of pests. The battle never ends.

The bad news is, we don’t expect to win anytime soon. There isn’t a whole lot we can do about the bugs that we aren’t already doing. We spray the house to kill them, and then suck them up with the vacuum cleaner. Over and over again. The cabin is vacuumed after each guest visit, and yet the bugs are back when the next guest arrives.

So what can be done? Pull out the vacuum cleaner and remove the dead critters. Enjoy a bug-free cabin for the next few days, and then do it again. In between, go out on the deck and enjoy the view of the beautiful woods, and the distant mountains. As you admire the natural beauty of the Smokies, I believe that you will agree that the minor annoyance created by a few crawly things is a small price to pay for a truly awesome experience.

In addition to providing information about hiking and other local attractions, this page is intended to give past and future guests information on changes that we continue to make to improve Happy Bear’s Hideaway. We take all feedback from guests into consideration, and sometimes add features based on it.

This month, we made a couple of improvements to the lower deck, to make its use more enjoyable for ourselves and others. In anticipation of the summer months, we added two rocking chairs and a small table, in order to encourage folks to sit out on the deck and enjoy our wooded surroundings. Also, we installed a roll-down shade along the west side of the deck, next to the hot tub. This can be lowered to create a little more privacy when using the tub.

Finally, based on repeated feedback that the hot tub was not heating to the set temperature, we determined that people were unintentionally putting the tub in “energy saving” mode. It is very easy to do this accidentally, and the controls on the tub are not at all intuitive with regard to getting back into normal operating mode. We added a laminated placard on the wall to explain how to do this.

Welcome to our Hideaway!  If you’re a guest, we hope you are enjoying your stay.  If you are a past guest, thank you for staying with us, and we hope to see you again soon.  If you haven’t been to our cabin yet, we hope that you will come to our corner of the Smokies in the near future.

This is the called our Hike-Along page for a good reason: of all the great things there are to do in the Smokies, our favorite activity is just getting outdoors and exploring the miles of trails that make the Great Smoky Mountains National Park a hiker’s paradise.  There are trails of every length and level of difficulty, including some that can only be reached by boat.  There are trails that can be hiked in an hour, and some that can take multiple days.  The Smokies also include a stretch of the legendary Appalachian Trail, the over 2100 mile long Georgia-to-Maine thoroughfare that a few hundred people through-hike in its entirety each year.

So, let’s get hiking! We’ll start with an easy one, which is a must-do for anyone who is paying their first visit to the Smokies: the trail to Laurel Falls. Laurel Falls is a beautiful, 80 foot high waterfall which is bisected by a footbridge. The bridge, which is actually part of the trail, provides a close-up view of the upper falls; the lower cascade flows beneath your feet. The trail to the falls is a gradual 1.2 mile climb, which is suitable for families with children. There are a few sections which are a bit steeper, but they are fairly short. Unlike most of the trails in the park, the Laurel Falls trail has been paved, in order to control erosion. However, the pavement is not especially smooth, so it is not considered wheelchair accessible.  You should plan a minimum of one hour to hike from the trailhead to the falls and back.  90 minutes to two hours is more likely if you are walking slowly, stopping often, or plan to spend some time at the falls.

In addition to its short length and relatively low difficulty, another reason this makes a great starter trail is that it is close by. The Laurel Falls trailhead is located on Little River Road (also seen as Fighting Creek Gap Road on some maps), 3.7 miles west of the Sugarlands Visitor Center. This makes it one of the nearest trails to Gatlinburg. The trailhead is exactly 10 miles from Happy Bear’s Hideaway, and it normally takes 20 minutes to get to it from our cabin.

As a result of its close proximity to the primary park entrance, as well as its scenery and length, the Laurel Falls trail is quite popular and heavily used.  During weekends in the summer in particular, the trailhead parking lot fills up quickly, resulting in many late-arriving hikers having to park at overflow areas along the roadway, up to one-half mile in each direction from the trailhead. It is therefore recommended that if you want to hike this trail, you should get an early start, in order to find a parking space near the trailhead. Starting early will give you the additional benefit of having fewer other hikers on the trail with you, providing a more close-to-nature experience. Upon arriving at Laurel Falls, photographers will also appreciate being able to take pictures of the falls without having a crowd of people in the scene!

For those desiring a longer hike, Laurel Falls trail continues past the falls for another three miles, where it intersects with the Cove Mountain trail.