Jun 13, 2010

Synchronous Fireflies

The Synchronous Fireflies of The Great Smoky Mountains were amazing.  There's apparently this one specific species of firefly that does this and it can only be seen in TWO locations world wide - China and Gatlinburg.  The lights on the fireflies are more of a white or blue than the normal yellow ones that we seen in our back yards.  And true to the article that I linked to - they started about 9:30 PM.  

We left Knoxville about 3 PM and drove up to get a parking space at the visitors center.  We went on a little hike and I'm not sure I've ever been that sweaty.  It was just so humid.  It wasn't really hot but the humidity was horrible.  It was a nice, light hike.  We came back, ate a picnic dinner and then got in line for an hour and a half to ride the trolley up to Elkmont.  We found a seat in a less crowded area and sat down to watch.  It was really awesome and there were literally thousands of fireflies lighting up the night!  They were beautiful.  And it was incredible to watch them do their thing.  There were so many people up there and I really do think that it might be better to go on a week night - if you can get off work early enough to get up there and you don't mind a late night...Didn't get back to my house until after 1 AM.  I would definitely recommend it.

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