Follow Us In Our Travels

11/28/2012, Wednesday:  Left Seviersville, TN after being there for 7 nights. It’s a nice campground, Cove Creek RV Resort. They’re relatively new, still adding concrete pads, etc. It’s out of Pigeon Forge about 8 miles, so you don’t have the busy roads and traffic. We are working our way to Nashville.

Got to Cove Creek RV Resort Wednesday afternoon, November 21^st.  Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg are definitely a tourist trap. There are amusement parks, gift shops, restaurants, etc, etc. I didn’t expect it to be busy at Thanksgiving, but I guess it’s a popular place at this time. After Sunday things did slow down. We decided not to fight traffic on Thursday, so grilled a turkey breast and washed clothes, baked cookies and bread. Friday we went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, thinking everyone would be shopping on Black Friday; but everyone who didn’t go shopping must have thought the same thing! There was so much traffic at the visitor’s center and going through the mountains, we couldn’t believe it. Any of the scenic outlooks or trail heads were full of cars. It started raining and was real foggy, so we decided not to do any trails, but went up to Clingman’s Dome, which is paved all the way. Little did I know that it is a ½ mile trail, practically straight up the mountain. High altitude didn’t help either. It's 6,643 feet, the  highest point in the Park. I wasn’t the only one stopping for breathers on the way up. My shins hurt so bad the next couple of days. And, once we got up to the top, it was so foggy that we couldn’t see much farther than the dome area itself anyway. (:  So, we decided to sit around over the weekend and not see anybody or any traffic. We didn't do much on Monday or Tuesday either. We had gotten mail and had to send some out, so found the post office and drove around town for a while and did some caching and got a smashed penny. It was really nice not doing anything. Curt was researching stuff on the internet and I added my Kindle books to Goodreads.com book shelves. I am embarrassed to say that I have over 700 books! Some I had gotten before the iPad, and was able to read them on my computer. I've probably only paid for maybe 4-5 books I'd say, the rest were all free. I've got a variety; from mystery to classics to Christmas, cookbooks, kids books, pets, memoirs.  Maybe I need to start reading more and quit finding more! (And yes, it took more than one day to enter them in.) 

11/18: Got in to Tennessee, with hills and mountains and rock. Stopped at Norris Dam and did some geocaching There was a grist mill and museum there, but the museum was closed. It was a nice area to cache in. Working our way to Knoxville, to a Walmart on the outskirts. The only problem with outskirts of a city, is that it still is a busy part of town. It was busier than Curt would have liked, but finding a place was not easy to do.  We went in to Knoxville, to a visitor center downtown. They had a radio music show going in there at the time we were there. We walked a little around downtown, and I took some pictures in a sculpture garden as I figured they’d be waymarks. Curt wasn’t too impressed. We went to find the Sunsphere Park, which is where Knoxville had the World’s Fair at one time. We rode up to the 3^rd floor, I believe it was and then walked around the dome to see outside. We went to see a small fort area, which was closed. Across the street from that was the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. Got some pictures of that and a cache at that site.

11/16: Blue Heron Campground, in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Kentucky. Another area of hills and trees and rock and natural arches. It’s a smaller campground with electricity and water for only $17/night (federal).  Bear signs again, but all we saw was wild turkeys. We drove to a small mining camp which you could pay to go 300 feet into a mine and see some of the buildings that they’ve recreated. Decided not to do that. Then we found an area that is free, that showed the basics of a mine camp (no actual buildings, but the shapes) and the railroad cars, etc. There was an information center and some trails there too. It was an interesting place. It is through the National Park Service. We went to Cumberland Falls, which is tagged as the Niagara Falls of the south. Definitely not Niagara Falls, but it was nice.  

Pics to come later - I have a lot to go through and since I'm using Curt's camera most of the time now, I have to make them smaller to load better.