What? Bob and Joyce went back to school? Yes, we did! We went to Camp Freightliner 1 to learn about Sol's chassis. Camp was great! Bob and I learned more than we thought we would and we thought we would learn quite a bit! The instructor, Mike Cody, prepared materials specific to each person's rig. There were 13 motor homes represented (2 rigs were no-shows).Some rigs had one person present, but most had a husband and wife team. While we were in class the first day, the technician took Sol and had her weighed doing a four corner weight. Now we know what the air pressure should be in each tire for optimum travel. The tech also aligned our wheels. Camp fed us lunch and dinner the first day and lunch again on the second day. Mike kept us in class until he was sure everyone understood what he was going over. In fact, the second day he kept us until almost seven p.m. to answer all the questions that arose. One of the things Mike covered was shifting in the mountains. As an example, he used the road we were going to travel on Wednesday! We followed Mike's directions and Sol got us to Cherokee without breaking a sweat! Not only did we learn a lot about the Freightliner chassis, we made new friends who also do a lot of traveling.
So on Wednesday we departed Gaffney, SC and made our way to Smokemont Campground in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. When Bob made our reservation, he found that the reservation site had excellent information about each site including length and solar conditions. Bob picked the longest site available with excellent solar. Once we found our site and realized that we had no cell reception (also no internet), no television reception, and no radio stations, we knew we would be doing a lot of sightseeing and then relaxing when we returned to the campground.
Once we got settled, we were off to the visitor center to find some hikes for our 6 night stay and also to get a weather update. It had been hot and it looked like it was going to stay that way. I also checked out which hiking sticks medallions I wanted to add to my collection--I couldn't purchase them until I had actually hiked the hikes. Knowing what was available helped us choose our hikes.
For our first full day in the park, we chose to drive to Bryson City, NC, to find Waterfall Loop Trail. Well, we made a wrong turn and ended up on Lakeview Drive, also in the park. Since there was a geocache located at the end of the drive, we continued on the drive to the tunnel where the road ends. We had to walk through the tunnel to find an answer to one of two questions to claim the virtual cache.
Yes, it was a lot farther through the tunnel than it first looked. In this picture, we are about halfway through the tunnel.
Once back to the car, we headed back toward town to find where we went wrong in trying to find Deep Creek. We finally found a road that would get us to our waterfall hike! The loop hike was to take us by three waterfalls. The first was Juney Whank.
Before we set off on our hike, I took a picture of the trail with the phone. We have found that some trails are just not marked very well.
This turned out to be one of them! We ended up walking a lot farther than what we thought we would. We took the red trail above Juney Whank and it turned into nothing! Well, where it turned into nothing, there was something--evidence of a thieving bear that had rummaged through a garbage sack. Thank heavens we had the GPS! Bob was able to get us back to the trail we wanted. As we continued on the big trail, we met another couple that was having trouble with the map and the trail signs. We got them going in the right direction and hoped that they would make their appointment on time. This is the first time we have had trouble with a trail in a national park. The signs on the trail did not match the names on the map which caused a lot of confusion.
The second waterfall along the trail wasn't very impressive and we didn't even stop to get a picture. However, the third one looked much better. We ate our lunch not far from Tom Branch Falls.
The trail from Tom Branch Falls led back to the parking area via a trail next to the river.
After our hike and lunch, we stopped at Nantahala Brewery in Bryson City to sample their product. It was pretty good, but we each only had one as the drive back was through the mountains.
The next day we drove to Clingman's Dome. From the walkway going UP to the dome, we had a view of a small portion of Fontana Lake in the distance.
The trail was quite steep, but the view at the top was worth the huffing and puffing.
This was one of the views from the top of the dome.
We drove a little bit further north to get to Newfound Gap. President F.D. Roosevelt stood on this spot at Newfound Gap to dedicate Smoky Mountain National Park.
The views were incredible from the overlook.
This is the trail from Newfound Gap that leads to Alum Cave and the Appalachian Trail.
We drove back toward the campground after visiting Newfound Gap. After lunch, we headed for another waterfall. This one was located outside the park on the Cherokee Nation Reservation. It was not a long hike, but there were many stairs involved in getting to the waterfall.
Mingo Falls is one of the tallest falls in the Appalachian area.
Not far from the falls, a geocache was hidden. We found it with no trouble and then headed back to the campground.
So far we have enjoyed our visit to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We are looking forward to hiking more hikes and visiting with some friends we haven't seen in at least 15 years!
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