Thursday July 19th 2018

Tonight I’m in Concord North Carolina just north of Charlotte. I’m staying at the Camping World Racing Resort at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. I have a level site with full hookups for the next four nights in a gravel covered parking area with a few trees here and there. The campground really doesn’t deserve the title of “Resort”, but it is reasonably priced for what you get.

Site K85 at the Camping World Racing Resort at the the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

The temperature was cool this morning as I packed for the move. It was in the sixties. I’m don’t think I’ve experienced that temperature since May. The altitude west of Asheville helped. There was some fog this morning and I drove through a few showers on my way to Charlotte. It was only in the low eighties in the Charlotte area when I arrived. It got a little warmer when the sun broke through the clouds late in the day.

I had one minor detour on the trip. I missed the exit off of Interstate 26 to turn east. About five miles down the road, at the first exit in South Carolina, I had proof I’d missed my exit. I got off the highway and back on in the other direction. There was construction in the area of the exit I wanted. Maybe that was why I missed it.

Charlotte is more of a metropolitan area than I expected. The road signs indicated that I was still over twenty miles from the city when I entered heavily congested roads, with industry, retail and housing developments lining the sides of the highway. I took the Interstate 485 beltway a third of the way around the outskirts of the city area. Taking Interstate 85 through the city was an option, but I’ll take less traffic and better road surfaces any day. It was a few more miles, but I didn’t have any problem finding the speedway on the north side of the city in the community of Concord.

The campground is across the street from the Motor Speedway. It’s on the road to the Drag Strip beside the Dirt Track. This is a stock car racing mecca. Before I booked this location, I checked to make sure there weren’t any races scheduled this weekend. I imagine this area can turn into a real traffic nightmare during those events. The campground probably fills up and I wouldn’t be surprised if they charged more.

Wednesday July 18th 2018

The humidity and the temperature were down today. I gave the air conditioner a rest for most of the day. The afternoon sun got the temperature up into the mid eighties. I put the air conditioner back on to cool the sun warmed interior of the motorhome late in the day.

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My plans to do more touring in the Asheville area changed. I got into planning mode this morning and started working on reservations for the next few months. It can be a real juggling game to get plans locked in. I try to find and lock in the longer most difficult places to stay first. This allows me to change direction if there isn’t any available space. Things get difficult when you can’t get commitments. I prefer to deal with campgrounds that have online reservations systems. You get immediate feedback on availability with online systems. Today I was dealing with two places that didn’t have online systems and I wonder what kind of system they actually have. I was on the phone for twenty minutes with one and another had to call me back after getting access to the office computer. It only took about half an hour before I got a call back followed by ten minutes on the phone. I was moving right along when the “boss” called me an hour later with a problem.

As of now I have a couple of travel nights left to book in July. They shouldn’t be a problem since they will be on the Interstate 95 corridor. I’m still working on the first three weeks in August. My first choices in the Civil War battlefield areas of Maryland and Pennsylvania aren’t working out. Now I’m looking at moving north through central or western Pennsylvania into New York State. I’ve booked the end of August into the Labor Day Holiday weekend on Lake Ontario in New York and I’ve booked the first two weeks of October including the Columbus Day weekend in Massachusetts. There are still travel stops of one to two days to book and a couple of additional two week blocks.

One thing I’m discovering is that the northeast campgrounds are expensive. When I lived in the area I didn’t believe the Internet chatter about the high cost of camping in New England. Now that I’m armed with two years of experience in other parts of the country I’m finding some of the rates unbelievable. The Columbus Day weekend at one place was going to cost $80 a night.

I’m moving on tomorrow. I’ll be traveling about one hundred and fifty miles to the Charlotte North Carolina area for the weekend.

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Tuesday July 17th 2018

My RV home is located in a campground very close to Interstate 40. Being near a highway or a railroad track is fairly common for campgrounds. The noise doesn’t usually bother me. Last night was the exception. They are doing night roadwork on the interstate highway a few hundred feet from my RV. It started around 8PM and was intense until near midnight. After that it was quiet most of the night. I woke up a couple of times probably because of construction noise, but it didn’t last long. The next really loud and prolonged noise from the highway was around seven thirty in the morning. How good a rest I got is questionable. So far this evening there hasn’t been any sign of a repeat construction performance.

The camera is level, the land slopes hard in this area.

I spent some time today driving around the area. The mountainous terrain was a little surprising. I always thought Asheville was on the edge of the Appalachian mountains. It’s really in the Appalachians. Keeping in mind these are eastern US mountain heights not western heights, there is a lot of uneven ground. What really drove the point home to me is the fact that the Blue Ridge Parkway passes to the east of Asheville.

I avoided the Biltmore area of town. Visiting the estate of George Vanderbilt is not on my list of must sees. It moved even lower on my list of “could” sees when I saw that they had turned a simple estate tour into an all day attraction with a corresponding large price tag. Most of what I saw today were everyday city sights like businesses and stores. It was a good familiarization drive.

Storms moving in during the afternoon.

Back at my RV home this afternoon I walked around the perimeter of the campground on trails cleared by the owners. It parallels the highway in some areas and cuts across streams and gullies in other areas. The trails are a nice feature of this campground that you don’t find at many commercial campgrounds.

A little pollen goes a long way.

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Monday July 16th 2018

The weather was not the best for traveling today. A cold front was approaching the area. Shortly before I got up this morning a brief shower passed through. It was very humid outside and everything was wet for my outdoor travel preparations. I took my time and was ready to travel just before eleven.

I only had two noteworthy experiences on my short 100 miles of travel. The first was at the gas station. Of the four possible lanes to access the pumps I could only use two of them because of the access angles. One of the two lines was blocked by a car that seemed to be parked. I had to wait for a motorhome and a truck pulling a trailer to finish fueling in the one available lane before I could take my turn. Overall I was there for close to forty minutes. About the time I was finished fueling a woman and three kids came out of the store and got in the car parked in the other lane. She was oblivious to the chaos she’d caused by not parking in one of the many available parking places.

Interstate 40 through the Appalachian mountains is a very winding road. I didn’t have any particularly steep grades but I needed to go slow for many of the twists and turns. In the middle of all this a thunderstorm moved overhead. The rain came down hard enough that I had to have the windshield wipers on high. Visibility was difficult. I was keeping my spacing with the tail lights on the truck in front when a little compact car without its lights on decided the space between a trailer truck and a motorhome was the place to be in a rain storm. The driver was mistaken. I backed off even more and the storm took pity on my situation and let up. The compact car took off as soon as the rain subsided. I think I out ran the storm.

Site F24 at the Asheville West KOA. This campground is still in the mountains at about 2400 feet elevation.

After I got set up at the Asheville West KOA another storm arrived. I sat inside and watched the rain wash down the gravel campground roads digging gullies in the dirt. The thunder in the area was loud, but I didn’t see any lightening. After the storm I had a big puddle in front of my door. I need to jump from the steps to dry ground until the water sinks into the ground.

I’m around ten miles west of Asheville North Carolina. I”ll be here for three nights. Tomorrow I’ll figure out what kind of touring I’m going to undertake.

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.

Saturday July 14th 2018

Today began with a surprise rain storm. It rained for about and hour. Checking the weather radar on my phone it looked like the storm popped up right overhead and didn’t move very much. There were scattered very isolated storms all over the area for the first two thirds of the day. Toward evening the conditions improved and the sun came out. The temperature was in the seventies most of the day only breaking eighty when the sun came out.

Cloudy view of the mountains in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The rain put a delay into my plan to head into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park before the crowds. I didn’t leave my RV home until ten in the morning. By that time, my prediction of heavy traffic was more than fulfilled. I was in heavy stop and go traffic most of the way to the park. In the park the traffic was moving right along, but the parking areas were all full to overflowing. The trail head for Laurel Falls that I was planning to stop at was so congested, a park ranger was on traffic duty. He was stopping people from parking along the road.

A view of the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I continued my drive along the park road. The narrow curvy road followed the Little River closely. You were either flirting with a drop into the river or hugging a rock wall to allow oncoming traffic to pass. If I wasn’t driving, I’d have been fighting nausea it was so twisty turny. I stopped at several of the less congested pullouts along the way to watch the river flow. The river got faster and rougher as the altitude decreased and the water volume increased. Near the town of Townsend a national park authorized concessionaire was doing a brisk business renting tubes and ferrying riders along a slightly calmer section of the river. The river was full of people of all ages floating down the river on the tubes.

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After about twenty miles on the park road, I returned to the commercial world in Townsend. I still had a long drive back to Pigeon Forge on US 321. It was only slightly better than the park road. It was a little straighter with wider shoulders, but when it turned there was usually a building right on the edge of the road. Traffic was also heavy, but got much worst when I reached Pigeon Forge. Coming south into the park this morning the stop and go traffic was mostly go. Heading north back to my RV home the stop and go traffic was mostly stop for several miles.

View of one of the attractions in Pigeon Forge. I saw a similar fake piece of the HMS Titanic in Branson MO last month. You’d think one of them would have the back half. Many of the attractions in Pigeon Forge are the same as the ones in Branson.

I did more driving than walking today, but it was still a good touring day.

A little pollination.

Friday July 13th 2018

Today was full of many changed plans. I got a later start to the day than I originally planed, but set out on my plan for the day anyway. My goal was to hike to Grotto Falls which is located off the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. The motor trail is a loop road from the center of Gatlingburg. Perhaps because of my late start, but more likely because it is summer tourist season, it took me over half an hour to travel the mile and a half through Gatlinburg. Then I missed the turn. I was in the wrong lane and my visibility was blocked by a trolly until I was most of the way through the intersection.

Some of the colorful flowers in front of the Gatlinburg visitors center.

My first change of plans was to head into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park on route 441 and see some of the sites along the road as it climbed the northwest side of the mountain range. The views of the mountains were spectacular. The clouds were kissing the top of the mountains just like smoke. You could see one of the reasons behind the name for the region. At my second stop along my way up the mountains, I had a revelation. If I kept going into the park, I stood a good chance of running out of gas. The stop and go traffic through Gatlinburg really drained my tank.

Cloud topped mountains.

Change in plans number two was to turn around and head for a gas station on the other side of Gatlinburg. Using the bypass through the park to avoid Gatlinburg the ten miles to the gas station went quickly. I only had a little over a gallon in the tank based on the amount I put in. The second part of this change in plans was to continue north back to camp. I didn’t want to fight my way back into Gatlinburg only to find the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail and its parking lots loaded with cars.

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I’ll try to get an earlier start tomorrow and target a trail in an area of the park that I don’t have to go through the heavy traffic to reach the trail head. It may not make difference. Judging by this campground the number of people in the area on the weekend my have quadrupled. This campground wasn’t very full during the week. Starting shortly after the breakfast hour today, RVs have been arriving at a steady rate. The campground has also been busy moving trailers out of storage onto sites so the owners can spend the weekend. One got placed on the site beside me and the owners arrived from Georgia this afternoon. I can only imagine what the traffic is going to be like tomorrow.

Wildflower of the day.

Thursday July 12th 2018

The temperature peaked around 90 degrees today. The added high humidity made it feel more like the high 90s, but it was full sunshine with no rain.

View of the mountains south of the Sugrarlands Visitor Center.

I drove through the Pigeon Forge tourist attractions to get to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park this morning. The traffic was heavy and I had to stop at every traffic light. It’s about twenty miles to the Sugarlands Visitors Center. The last part of the drive was in the National Park along a parkway and the Gatlinburg bypass.

The Sugarlands Visitors Center has all of the typical visitor center components. I wandered through the museum looking at the exhibits of the plants and wildlife in the park while I waited for the movie start time. The museum has pictures and plastic replicas of many of the plant species that grow in the park. Surrounding the plant life are replicas of the birds, reptiles and mammals that live in the park. Unlike other park visitors centers I’ve been in these exhibits were not in dioramas. They were just on display boards and cases.

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The movie is shown every half hour through the day and lasts about twenty minutes. It presents how the park land was formed and the history of the area, before focusing on the unique ecosystem within the park boundaries. I found this movie informative and well balanced. I’ve seen a few movies at other National Parks that have a bias or an agenda.

Behind the visitors center is a trail labeled “Nature Trail”. At other parks similarly named trails at visitors centers are usually well manicured and accessible trails that are easy to hike. Under that assumption, I didn’t read the trail information board until after I finished the trail. It turned out to be labeled “moderate” difficulty. I was only half prepared for the hike. I was wearing the right shoes and clothes, but didn’t have water. It was about a two mile trip out and back including a side trip to a waterfall. About half of the trail was narrow with exposed roots as you climbed up and down the side of a hill. Some of the stream crossings were on full scale bridges and other crossings were on split log foot paths. While not what I expected, it was an enjoyable and informative hike. Many of the trees and plants had identification signs to read.

Cataract Falls.

There were a lot of people at the visitors center, on the trails and on the roads leading to the park. It is not surprising that the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park in the country.

Blossom of the day.

Wednesday July 11th 2018

The real heat and humidity returned just in time for another hot travel day. It was back to the low 90s with high humidity today.

For some reason I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I was up early. It would have been a better use of my time to sleep in, because I didn’t have a lot of packing to do for my short travel day. Even taking the preparations slow, I was ready to leave a little after ten. With only one hundred miles to travel, that would have me arriving far to early. For once the change in time zone worked in my favor. About ten minutes into my travels the clock jumped by an hour. I arrived at my destination between 12:30 and 1PM.

Site 48 at the Riverside RV Park and Resort.

The drive wasn’t long, but it was not easy driving. I had to cross the Knoxville metropolitan area from west to east. It was three and four lanes of full speed traffic on road surfaces that show the signs of heavy use. There were also enough trucks on the road to make staying out of their way difficult.

A little over two months ago I passed through Knoxville from south to north. Today I complete a loop that included part of the Midwest. I covered many miles to satisfy stops in southwest Michigan and mid Missouri. I’ve passed through a lot of new territory, but have cut a fairly narrow path. There are still many things to see and places to visit it the area I’ve passed through so far this summer.

I’m staying at the Riverside RV Park and Resort in Sevierville TN until Monday. The sites in this campground have the normal tight spacing of a commercial campground, but the utilities are good and I have a view of the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River. This campground is about fifteen miles from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Unfortunately, to get there you have to drive through the amusement and entertainment area of Pigeon Forge. I was in this area in the fall about twelve or thirteen years ago. It will be interesting to see it again.

The view of the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River from my site.

Tuesday July 10th 2018

It was a sunny day with a comfortable humidity level. The altitude here on the Cumberland Plateau is over 1700 feet which helped keep the high temperature in the mid 80s. Overall it was a nice weather day.

Clouds in the sky to the east this morning.

This area of Tennessee is on the eastern side of the central time zone. The next county east is in the eastern time zone. The local TV stations are all out of Knoxville in the eastern time zone which is the source of my morning annoyance. All of the morning TV programs were an hour early. I turned on the TV when I woke up and Good Morning America was ending, so I thought I’d slept late and it was 9AM. When I actually looked at the clock it was only 8AM, but my day had already started in confusion. I never really got in sync with the day.

Other than a run for groceries, I didn’t do much today. The campground emptied out quickly this morning and filled up again this afternoon. All of the arrivals pass in front of my site. Watching them get situated can be amusing. One motor home a little bigger than mine towing a car on a dolly seemed to have a Goldilocks problem. There was something wrong with the first site they were assigned. They drove around the park going the wrong way on one way roads trying other sites. Nothing seem to be just right. They pulled into the pull through site beside me backwards then the right way, but it still wasn’t right. I suspect they wanted to find a site that was level without having to do any leveling with their jacks. After about half an hour of wandering around, they ended up on a gravel site in the back of the campground. It wasn’t my idea of a good location, but I guess they were happy.

This was only a two night stop. I’m moving on to the east tomorrow. I have a reservation for five nights in Sevierville TN. The campsite is well situated for touring Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Sunset tonight.