Yesterday was our travel day. Our planned destination was Asheville, North Carolina. As we were doing research on where to stay, we realized there weren’t any RV parks in Asheville, and there weren’t any that looked particularly inviting nearby. As we were looking at maps and apps, we realized that we were quite near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We thought we were going to miss this park since we had decided not to go to Pigeon Forge and Dollywood on the Tennessee side of the park. We hadn’t realized it was so close to Asheville on the North Carolina side. So, we found a campground half way between the park and the city. It wasn’t a particularly long drive to our campground, but we were both tired and even though we got to our destination early afternoon, we didn’t do any site seeing. I made an easy dinner and we did our best to stay awake until 8:30!
After a good nights sleep, we were up early and raring to go. Well… maybe not raring, but we left the RV before 8:00. We were in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park just before the Visitors Center opened. We were greeted by the biggest elk I had ever seen… just walking through the parking lot past our truck. He even bugled for us several times! Of course there were a few idiotic visitors with giant camera lenses who tried to get up close and personal, but there were park employees there with orange vests and big sticks keeping them back.
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| I’m glad we got people in the background for scale |
While everyone was busy following the elk, I walked through the exhibit they had on mountain farming. It was really interesting. All of the buildings were original and had been moved to this location from various locations within the park. Included was a home, blacksmith shop, corn crib, apple house, barn, sorghum press, etc. As I walked the property, there was a chicken that felt compelled to tag along. There were two more elk in the field as well as a young doe or buck who jumped across the creek. It wasn’t hard to imagine what this all looked like in the 1700 and 1800s.
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| My walking buddy |
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| It was amazing how much smell just two pigs could make! |
From there, we drove up the park road and turned where we could visit Clingman’s Dome which I think might be the highest viewpoint in the park. We didn’t hike to the top as we weren’t dressed for the cooler weather, but the views from the parking area were spectacular. The low lying clouds in the valleys were beautiful. I had really hoped we’d see the ‘smoky’ look and we weren’t disappointed.
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We then headed back down the mountain and dropped Maggie off at the RV. From there we drove into Asheville, another 30 minutes or so east. We found one of the over 40 breweries in this city and enjoyed a drink on their third floor patio. They had the usual pub games, and something else I hadn’t seen before… a table of rocks. People had made small cairns and designs with them. I gave it a go and was shocked when I was able to balance one on top of another!
We were getting hungry, so decided to head back towards the RV park and stop for dinner at a bbq place next to the campground. Its name was inviting… how could you just drive past?
Our goal for this evening is to make a plan for the next few days. We’ve changed our itinerary several times as we’ve moved along and are doing it again. We plan to skip our next spot and head towards a National Park we hadn’t heard of and know nothing about in South Carolina. Congaree National Park anyone?