Sunday July 15th 2018
After a couple of comfortable days the heat and humidity were back today. The sun was shining bright most of the day and there was very little wind. The temperature peaked in the low nineties. It would probably have gone higher, but dark clouds arrived with the threat of showers around four in the afternoon. An hour later it was back to sunny and calm without any rain falling.
The slow moving waters of the Little Pigeon River.
The campground was busy place this morning. All of the weekenders were packing up and departing. A guy driving the campground tractor was busy returning rigs from sites to storage and other people were gathering at the pavilion for the campground sponsored church service. It appeared to be anything but a relaxing Sunday morning, but that is exactly what I decided to do. The idea of battling the twenty miles of traffic to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park was not very appealing. Most of my day was spent watching people come and go in the park, watching the river slowly flow by and watching TV.
Tomorrow I’ll be moving on to the east. I’ll be in the Ashville, NC area tomorrow night. I haven’t come close to seeing all of the things I’d like to see in this area. Next time I will come in the spring or fall to avoid some of the crowds. I’ll also stay nearer to the park. This campground has nice amenities and the folks running it are pleasant, but it is just too far away from the national park. It is really better suited as an overnight stop for travelers on Interstate 40 or for people visiting all of the “stuff” in Pigeon Forge.
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Pigeon Forge’s main draw is the Dollywood theme park and water park, but it has plenty of other attractions to go with it. The main drag has dinner theaters, miniature golf, go cart tracks, novelty museums, nausea inducing whirling contraptions and many other things. They aren’t really my thing, but they are the cause of all of the traffic between this campground and the national park.
I’ve started the preparation for tomorrow’s travel. I only have about a hundred miles to go, so I don’t want to depart too early. Checkout time for the campsites is noon, so I’ll be aiming for sometime after eleven. I can always kill some time at the North Carolina Welcome Center.
Blossom of the day.
