Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Great Smoky Mountains.

Timewise, today was a wash. We gained an hour with the change-over to standard time. We lost that hour when we crossed over to the Eastern time zone on our way to the Smoky Mountains.

The 195 mile trip took us a whopping 4 3/4 hours. We lost 45 minutes on a detour that we were compelled to take. As we neared our new campground, Elkmont National Campground, the road got narrower and twistier as it clawed its way into the mountains. Suddenly, just 8 miles from our target, we discover a sign that said, “no trucks, RV, campers, or trailers allowed. Do not follow your GPS.”

Huh? The sign looked legit. The sign looked ominous. And, as the sign foresaw, we were blindly following Google Maps. The road was too narrow to turn around, especially with a camper in tow. Yikes!

Fortunately, a long driveway to the left seemed to offer a possible escape route. We took it. The driveway snuck around a blind curve, and to our relief, led to a small parking lot at some kind of church retreat resort. A couple of guys were conversing and I asked them for help with directions.

Yes, the road is impassable with anything but a sub-compact car. There is one extremely tight narrow 180º turn that is notorious for giving heartburn to drivers of even the smallest of vehicles.

They showed me on my Tennessee Gazateer, which they marveled over, a backway of reaching Elkmont Campground. It required a backtrack, and looping around to the West.

I had noticed that the mountain roads were clogged with traffic. When I mentioned to the two guys that we chose November to visit the Smokys because it was supposed to be less crowded, they roared with laughter. “You have to wait until January for the crowds to thin,” was their reply.

The campground is beautiful. Our reservation was all in order. The campground was nearly empty. Many of the sites had rough and unlevel driveways. Not our site, A26. It was perfectly flat with a smooth level cement drive. It afforded us lots of elbow room. However, there was a rather obvious blue and white “Handicap” sign mounted on the camp post. Again, Yikes!

I walked back to the registration booth and explained to the lady that when I booked the site I had no idea that it was a handicapped site. She just chuckled and, thankfully, said it was fine. Whew.

We set up in the Elkmont National Campground. There are no amenities, but after Cedars we love all the extra room.

We had just enough light left for one 3-mile hike. On the drive in, I noticed a trail a few miles from camp that led to a waterfalls. Time to stretch our legs. The parking lot was full. Cars were lined along the road side for a mile. We found a vacated spot about a half-mile away from the trailhead.

All this sounds kind of wearisome, but the trail, the mountains, the forest, the waterfalls, the bright colorama of the turning leaves, the warm sun….. made it all worth it. So far, the Smokys are breathtaking.

The Laurel Falls trail is a 2.6 mile round trip from the trailhead. Unfortunately, we had to park over a half mile from the trailhead.

The trail was beyond words.

These plants are Laurels.

Laurel Falls.

Looking over the top of the falls.

The trailhead was only 6.2 miles from Gatlinburg, so after our hike, we drove through it for a quick look-see. Jeez, what a tourist trap. I thought the Wisconsin Dells, a tourist trap back in Wisconsin, was bad. This was the Dells on steroids. I’m not sure we will return, except we got 5 bars of 5G in town. We have zero bars of zero G at the campground. Hmmm.

Back at camp, we finally polished off the final bit of the chili. It was just as good on day four as day one. We are boondocking for a week. I hope we have enough LP for the cold nights. I hope we get enough sun for our solar panels. If not? So be it. I wonder how the Packers did with Jordan Love today?

Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum.

Dave and Wanda

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