Exploring our first national park

We left the Oh! Kentucky Campground on Monday after a 12 day stay. We highly enjoyed the Berea area and the campground. Even though the spaces were fairly tight together and not much was happening at the campground itself, we met some great people there. The campground is convenient to the interstate so many just stopped for a night. Lucky for us, our next door neighbors, Gerry and Mari, were staying for 2 weeks and have been full time for 2 years. They gave us some great tips on apps to use as well some places to visit. We highly enjoyed meeting them and becoming friends. We plan to stay connected via RVillage and are sure we will catch them on the road again in the future.

Our next stop brought us to Pigeon Forge, TN to visit The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We are staying 2 weeks in this area with plans to drive through the park well as do some hiking. I am very glad that we decided to drive up the mountain to Clingman’s Dome on our first full day. It was a beautiful warm sunny day for driving through the mountain roads to see the views and the fall colors.

I don’t have pictures yet from Clingman’s Dome. We hit very slow traffic as we approached the area so we didn’t actually park the truck. I took Tim’s camera and hopped out as we entered the parking area. I walked along and snapped a few pictures as he sat in traffic through the lot. I met him at the end of the lot and hopped back in. We got back to the camper and realized that we didn’t have a compact flash reader to use on our older iMac computer. I should have taken my phone with me. When we can get those pictures onto the computer, I will put a few in a future blog post.

Fall colors on the lower elevations

Mountain views at Newfound Gap

I guess we are visiting both Tennessee and North Carolina while in the park

The next two days were very rainy and windy, so many leaves came down. I had taken this picture of a pretty tree in the campground on our first day and after the storms, most of these leaves were gone.

There were high winds in the area, but luckily we were fine in the campground. We kept our awning in but did not have to bring in the slides. We spent those two days indoors and relaxed with some movies. I found that we had the Hallmark channel so the best course of action was binging on Hallmark Christmas movies while it rained outside. Tim will say he didn’t enjoy that part but I think he just doesn’t want to admit that he did. I went to bed on Wednesday night after watching 2 movies and he stayed up until 1 AM watching another one!

The rain and winds brought in cold weather so I dug out the wool coat for Friday morning and we headed out for a drive. We decided to go to Gatlinburg and drive through the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. There was still frost on the trees and the fall leaves mixed with evergreen trees all tipped in white frost was absolutely beautiful. We saw two black bears at the beginning of the drive but there were so many cars pulled over on the narrow road that we didn’t stop to get a picture. We didn’t see any other wildlife except a few squirrels. The drive takes you through the lower part of the mountain and along a stream cascading down over huge boulders. What an enjoyable drive. The only draw back was that it was a narrow road with some steep drop offs as you climbed into the mountains which Tim did not like, especially driving such a big vehicle.

A cabin in the woods along the drive

Frost on the trees added a unique perspective

The drive back down follows the stream.

We definitely see why they call it Roaring Run

It was good that we drove up the mountain on our first day. Some neighbors at the campground said the road to Newfound Gap was closed after the storms. After our drive, we stopped in Gatlinburg and wandered through town and some of the shops. Way too many tourist trap places there for us, but we found a few that we liked, especially where we stopped for lunch. We were parked across the street from Ole Red so decided to go there for lunch after our walk to warm up. The food was terrific and there was a nice surprise. They had entertainment starting at noon so we stayed for a while listening to the first act. Definitely an enjoyable end to our day trip into Gatlinburg.

Interesting decor - a tractor suspended upside down from the ceiling.

Our lunch - those are tater tots as the side.

The stage set up for the entertainment.