Shacanage, “Place of the blue smoke”. That is the infamous blue haze seen over the Smokey Mountains….. https://www.weathergamut.com/2014/05/19/the-blue-haze-of-the-great-smoky-mountains/
When I started planning for my trip to the Smokies, I found a tour guide to give me a private tour so I could get some amazing shots.
He picked me and my daughter up at 5 30 AM and drove us approximately 6 thousand feet up to Clingman’s Dome, to watch the sun rise over the mountains.
Driving up there was an experience in itself. My ears popped continuously and since I am scared to death of heights, I had some tense moments.
When we first got up there, all we could basically see was the shaconage and fog-lots of fog. It was also freezing!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t in the cards for me to see a spectacular sunrise. It was so foggy and hazy that it was impossible to see the sun. When daylight started coming in, the blue hue faded but then all you could see was fog.
My daughter and I think its the bat curse striking again. For those not aware, we took a trip to Austin a couple of years ago. We spent 3 nights, in the height of the ‘bat season”, waiting to watch the bats fly out of the bridge. I had visions of all these amazing images that I was going to take. Those visions are still in my head because we didn’t see a single bat-not a one. For whatever reason, they decided to not fly out the entire time that we were there. We waited hours on that bridge all 3 nights.
Whether it be “the bat curse” or “whatever”, it is what it is…
We did move on from there and went to lots of other places and got some great shots. I will be dropping them on my FB page when I m finished processing and editing….