The most scenic route to take
from Gatlinburg to North Carolina is SH 441 south through the Smoky Mountains
to Cherokee. The road looks very windy
and tight on CoPilot but we google reviews and it seems reasonably RV friendly
so that is the way we decide to go. It is very
pretty, lush green with a breathtaking backdrop of mountains. We climbed a ways up to 4,512 feet. We crossed the state line into North Carolina
near the top but there was no ‘welcome to’ sign up there.
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| Lovely drive through the Smokes National Park |
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| One of these must surely be Old Smoky, didn't see any runaway meatballs though! |
Before we get right into Cherokee
we have the option of taking the Blue Ridge Highway but mindful of the low
hanging trees we had to dodge on a previous foray into this musical highway, decided we would forego any futher desert pinstriping and give that a miss
today.
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| Cherokee NC |
We take the lesser and more
scenic Hwy 19/23 for a ways east, through Maggie Valley before joining the I40
to get around the large city of Ashville.
We are still pretty high, 4,280 feet and the decline was much
more dramatic - 9%, I think that is one of the steepest if not the steepest we
have done. All trucks were ordered to
leave the highway to read the hazard warnings before getting back on the
road. There were many truck runoff
areas - sand shaped into little hillocks. Didn’t see any tire tracks
so assume all trucks recently have not suffered brake failure.
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| Truck Run off |
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| Perfectly shaped sand wedges, obviously made by a master sandcastle builder |
We had a slight delay, only a few
minutes, while we skirted a very recent accident between two cars, I am sure they should not be parked that way, someone should tell them it's not safe!
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| Luckily looks like nobody hurt |
We have been on the road for
nearly five hours today, including a stop for groceries, so it’s been a big day
for us.
We get to Green Mountain Park
Resort (sounds nice doesn’t it), near Lenoir, one of our Thousand Trails sites
which we are still staying at for no cost as we are working through our
30 days free. We have booked in here for
four days but it is really disappointing!
Mostly scungy old permanent campers, in fact they were finding it
difficult to find us a site at all. The
property is very steep and the roads are falling apart, the bathrooms and pool
area is miles away up a monstrous hill and the facilities are old and scummy,
there is no fire pit, no grill, we don’t even have a patio as our site (87) is
a handicap friendly site. We are on the
main camp road so everybody passes in front of us and the
road out is up a steep hill right behind us so we hear them grunting up the
hill too. The traffic is mostly
cars, trucks and golf carts as most campers are here permanently and drive in and out each day, or only come at the weekends. There is no WIFI. Plus, the maintenance man accused us off
running over the brick edging on the site opposite us, knocking over some
bricks, I don’t think we did, but if we did do this heinous crime he didn’t
need to be so freakin' nasty about it! So
tomorrow we will suck up the loss of the remaining three free days we’ve booked and find somewhere
nicer. Weather is nice though, sunny and
about 30C and we do have shade and 50 amp.
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