Smoky Mountain National Park, North Carolina

April 28, 2024

After a harrowing exit from a campground that was clearly not designed for trailers of our lengthy-ness, (and where fears of having our home get stuck in a ditch were not entirely unfounded), we were on our way. Rick even skipped making our customary visit to the dump station, so intent was he on having the campground in the rearview mirror sooner rather than later. That's not to say that we didn't enjoy our stay, but the coming and going were definitely not our favorite parts of the experience.

Beautiful sunny skies and a relatively short drive soon induced amnesia of the morning's events, and we arrived at the very attractive Smokemont Campground within the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountain National Park without further incident.

Beautiful North Georgia countryside

What a gorgeous spring day!

Cherokee, North Carolina

Very soon after entering the national park, wildlife took center stage

Our pleasant campsite--with good sun for our solar (when it wasn't raining)

The Bradley Fork River, directly across from our campsite

Since we didn't have usable cell service at the campsite, we drove a few miles to the nearby visitor center for our Monday night cards and family chat with Rick's mom and our kids. Elk and turkeys entertained us until the sun went down.

The next day was a gorgeous sunny day, and we hiked a trail right off the campground to an attractive set of rapids.

We shared the trail with horses --had to watch where we stepped!

Chasteen Creek Rapids

The weather flip-flopped on us a lot--sunny one day, rainy/moody another. We mostly had a relaxing stay, walking around the campground and riding our bikes in the area when it was nice, and cozying up with tea and computer puzzle games when it was rainy.

Gotta love ebikes on those steep hills!

A historic church

Back at our campground--so pretty!

Turkey sighting in the campground

A wild geranium growing in the crook of a tree

Cute little campers

The elk are not shy here

Pretty forest behind our campsite

A few years ago when Audrey and Alan were moving out of the Cincinnati house and into an apartment in St. Paul, Julie was aggressively pawning off onto them as many home furnishings as possible. Some of the items they did not want. One item in particular was a fairly large and bulbous ceramic chicken that had sat on Alan's piano in the living room. It used to live in the kitchen, but Alan thought it looked good sitting on the piano. Well, somehow that chicken ended up getting packed in with some lampshades and sealed into a box and loaded into the van that Audrey and Alan had rented for the interstate move.

Fast forward a few years to the hour of payback, where a smaller, but similarly bulbous ceramic chicken with slightly deranged eyes was found hidden amidst our blankets, suspiciously soon after Audrey and Alan had visited us recently in Savannah.

Welcome to the family!

On Saturday, we took a drive along part of the Blue Ridge Parkway for some moody-weather scenery.

The higher we drove, the earlier in spring it became

???

A beautiful setting for St. Margaret of Scotland Church

Kitschy roadside attraction

Yes, I own the road here

On Sunday, the weather flipped to sunny once again, and we visited the park's farm museum and Mingus Mill.

Several historic farm buildings have been moved to this scenic meadow

Mingus Mill has an interesting history

On Sunday afternoon, Rick helped our next door neighbor with his solar setup, resulting in the neighbor having more available solar power than he first thought. A win! 

Here are the technical details, if you are interested. If not, feel free to skip ahead!

• Turns our some other random stranger in a campground incorrectly told him that he can't have his 500 watts of roof mounted solar hooked up to his batteries AND use the 100 watts of portable solar at the same time!  He had been unhooking his 500 watts when in shady sites to hook up his portable 100 watts in a patch of sun.  So sad . . . . I assured him that he could keep his 500 watts hooked up AND use the portable panels. I demonstrated where to safely hook it up and showed him on his energy meter how it was all really working together.

• Looking at his setup, it became apparent that the negative wire of his 500 watt roof mounted solar controller was hooked to the wrong location!  It was hooked directly to the batteries instead of after his smart meter shunt.  This meant that his power gage for battery percentage would only measure the power he was using (lowering his battery percentage), but the solar being put into his batteries from the solar was not measured.  When I looked at his system, the solar controller had brought his batteries almost to full, but his power meter was saying his batteries were much lower.  Because of this, he had been running his generator almost every day to top his batteries up (unnecessarily). He did say that it was odd that when he turned on his generator, it would often not have to run very long because his battery monitor would jump from 75% to 100% all at once  (because his batteries were actually full).   So, all he has to do is move that wire, and life will be good!

Afterward, we took a stroll along the campground nature trail that had fun rustic bridges crafted out of giant logs.

We were quite impressed with the campground, as it had a lot of interesting scenery and things to do very close by. We loved the mountain stream, and it would be great to come back in the summertime when the nights weren't so cold (one night this week got down to 33F) so that we could leave the windows open and hear the rushing water.

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