Wednesday afternoon – October 13, 2021 (second post of this travelogue)
As I mentioned in the first post of this travelogue, we are on a rather extensive journey. I have a teaching assignment at Boeing in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. We are driving there in our truck and camp trailer. We are taking a route that we hope will be very scenic. Our current location is a the Happy Holiday Campground (Google Map)
{google_map}35.47136, -83.24546{/google_map}
Since leaving Corning, we have travelled about 1000 miles. We stopped in campgrounds in Boonville, MO; Benton, Il; Lebanon, TN and now here. The campgrounds have been anywhere from primitive (Boonville) to gorgeous (here). We have paid a bit over $30 in two locations and over $50 per night in Benton and here.
We have planned the trip so that our travel days are less than 300 miles. The first two days were uneventful, but the trip from Benton to Lebanon was extremely windy. The truck and trailer were a bit “twitchy” so I stopped and bought/installed a sway bar (had intended to do that before we left).
Our trip yesterday had the earmarks of the trip from hell mixed with some very beautiful driving. We decided to take the route from Lebanon through Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg – bad mistake. Both had traffic gridlock. The towns are tourist traps and driving a truck/trailer through the narrow streets was not fun. After leaving Gatlinburg, we drove through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and it was amazing.
Once we got to Cherokee the Google Maps demon kicked in and guided us into a private area with nowhere to turn around. It took us well over an hour to jockey the combo around in a person’s yard.
As I said, this is a beautiful campground and we are about 100 feet from a beautiful fast flowing stream. There is a good sized lake on the property with lots of ducks that want you to feed them. I have included a couple of photos.
More to come.