Warriors Path State Park

We just spent a few days at Warriors Path State Park to wrap up our Tennessee adventure.  This was a pretty amazing state park - it's the only one we've been to in Tennessee, so I don't know if they're all up to this caliber, but this one was awesome.  The only downside...I think we had the worst campsite in the whole park.  Most sites had a pretty large and private area for the picnic table, fire ring, and grill, but ours was one of the smallest and our grill was closer to our neighbor's RV than to ours - so much so that we didn't want to use it as the smoke would have gone right in their windows.  So, don't pick site 49 if you stay here!

Our campsite at Warriors Path State Park.  Aaron did an amazing
job of not capturing either of our neighbors in the photo

The park was so nice that we spent most of our time right there, with only a few excursions.  We hiked the lakeshore trail as well as an 'overlook' trail whose overlook was a little underwhelming.  These were both typical natural trails in the woods.

Lakeshore trail

Our favorite trail though - which, looking back, it seems I didn't get a picture of - was around Duck Island.  The park had paved a 0.6 mile trail around the edge of the island, with great water views all the way around.  Once we discovered this trail, we returned multiple times a day.  It was just a great simple walk (or bike ride!) we could do any time during the day.

In addition to this awesome trail, if you're considering this state park in the future...they also had a marina, golf course, disc golf course, multiple playgrounds, mountain bike trails, tennis courts, basketball courts, volleyball courts, horse trails and stable, a swimming pool (currently closed due to COVID), and lots of pavilions.  Perhaps the most unique thing we discovered though was the hammock campground, which looked fairly new - this had posts to hook hammocks up along with fire rings and picnic tables - cool!

The hammock camping area

We did make two excursions during our stay at the state park.  The first was to the Hook and Ladder Distillery in nearby Kingsport.  We did a small tasting here, quite tasty, and they had some unique flavors like honey!  The cool thing about this spot though is that everyone who works for the distillery is an active or retired fireman.  It seemed like a good business to support!

Decorations on the wall of the distillery

Our second excursion was to Bays Mountain.  This is part zoo, part nature center, part hiking area.  I suppose the vast majority of the grounds are covered in a massive network of hiking trails, but we spent most of our time in the zoo area.  We attended a wolf presentation wherein the speaker howled with the wolves - quite entertaining.  We did do a little bit of hiking across a dam at the lake and alongside a cliff.

Standing on the dam

The cliffside trail wasn't actually this close to the cliff...
apparently we had split off on a fake path, but Aaron was 
determined to risk life and limb to stay on the wrong path!

Wolf!

Bays Mountain was remarkably affordable and I'd highly recommend it to anyone.  They have several nature programs kids would enjoy as well.  The Planetarium is currently closed due to COVID but would make a nice addition to an afternoon at this park!

We were very happy with our last stop on our Tennessee trip!  Warriors' Path State Park is so convenient to I-81 and we so enjoyed the park that I imagine we'll return in the future.

At this point we'll be returning the RV to its parking spot on the farm in West Virginia while we spend several weeks visiting with all sorts of family in various locations.  We'll have a week or so in the midst of all that to try and get some last repairs done before heading out again in August or September (exact date yet to be determined).  Stay tuned!

Back at Pigeon Forge

As we continue our loop around Tennessee, we returned to Pigeon Forge for 10 days.  Gotta get our money's worth out of those Dollywood season passes!!  We returned to Walden's Creek RV Park as its price really can't be beat for Passport America members (though we did take a look at some other, more expensive, RV parks while we were there...just in case).  Our experience this time was much better than last time - I was able to catch up with our host the day after we arrived, and by not plugging in the car we avoided any unexpected charges.

Our second campsite at Walden's Creek - in the back of the
park this time

Our first order of business was to head to Dollywood to see Rebecca St. James, who was there as part of the Flower and Food Festival.  Aaron and I listened to her CDs a lot in college, so it was exciting to see her live at Dollywood!  

Rebecca St. James - live!

Out and about in the area we discovered that it was a LOT busier this trip than our first time through in May.  We did go on one hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park - Laurel Falls - but it was so busy (and hard to park) that it discouraged us from attempting any other hikes in the national park.

Laurel Falls

Aaron out on a rock in the middle of the falls

Unfortunately later that day Aaron's phone got splashed on a water ride at Dollywood and died - despite Apple's claim that that model could withstand being submerged under 3ft of water for 30 minutes without damage - so we lost his better photos of the falls.  So, PSA for you: don't trust Apple's water resistance rating!

Having not completely learned our lesson, we attempted to go back to the national park again - this time for the Cades Cove driving trail - we figured it was so far from Pigeon Forge and didn't require parking, so it would be ok...wrong!!  We went mostly to enjoy the drive and view all the old buildings on the route, but it seems that several people were there only to find black bears, and those people backed everyone up on the driving trail going ~1mph (slow enough it didn't register on the speedometer) around the 11 mile trail.  We gave up around 2/3 through and took the escape road out, and only stopped at one building because the traffic was so frustrating and we just wanted to get out of it.  We weren't the only ones with this problem...one of our favorite RV podcasts experienced the same thing in April...seems that with everyone vaccinated and schools out everything everywhere is just packed.  So, this time we did learn our lesson and didn't attempt to go back to the national park for any reason.

We stopped at this first log cabin on the trail

Cool thing I learned here - some log cabins
cut the logs at angles as you see here to 
route rainwater away from the structure

Fortunately we had reservations (read: guaranteed entry and limited crowds) for a couple of shows in Pigeon Forge.  We returned to our all-time favorite dinner show, Dolly Parton's Stampede, which we thoroughly enjoyed.  We tried out the Comedy Barn for the first time, and though it was fun, it wasn't to the same caliber as the dinner shows in Pigeon Forge, so we probably won't return.

Before the show at the Stampede

The patriotic end of show

Pre-show at Comedy Barn

Patriotic end-of-show at Comedy Barn

We discovered a couple of remote outside areas to visit away from the national park to fill our remaining 'nice days' time.  We drove up a narrow and winding road to the Bluff Mountain fire tower...I found this on Google Maps and it was well rated, and it was quite a baffling experience.  The fire tower was behind a wide open gate at a cluster of cell towers.  It was clearly commonly frequented based on all the graffiti, but there was basically NOTHING in the way of safety precautions on the rickety-feeling tower.  Aaron made it to the top but I chickened out halfway up.  You were supposed to be able to see for miles, but it was so foggy and cloudy (it rained most of the week) that we couldn't see beyond the mountain top.

Aaron at the top, unconcerned about the
risk as always. 

We also entered the Little Valley Mountain Resort to hike a nicely maintained, pretty, and relatively short Headrick Top Trail to a small waterfall.  The trail wasn't busy at all and we enjoyed the quiet and serene setting - and the beautiful resort that we drove through on the way.

At the small waterfall

And to close this out...just a handful of Dollywood pictures!

AMAZING cinnamon bread - classic
Dollywood eats!

One of the bald eagles living at Dollywood

This was a less fulfilling week at Pigeon Forge due to the rainy weather and extreme crowds, but we still really enjoyed our time there.  One more stop to go on our Tennessee trip!

Lookout Mountain and Other Things

We just finished up a lovely stay near Chattanooga.  We camped at Marion County Park, a nice little place on a peninsula in Nickajack Lake.  Being on a peninsula, at least half of the campsites (including ours) were on the lake.  Aaron was a bit sad that we didn't get a site further down the peninsula where we could see the lake from all angles inside the RV, but I thought our site was lovely.

Our campsite at Marion County Park

The park was located in a pretty rural area and we had about a 20 minute drive into Chattanooga.  The drive dipped into Georgia and crossed the time zone boundary - this last part took me a bit by surprise and I ended up rescheduling our Chattanooga activities near the last minute to be comfortably reachable for being based in the central time zone (Chattanooga itself is in the eastern time zone).

We only had one really nice day here and we spent the whole day doing various things on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.  We started the day at Ruby Falls, in a cavern underneath the mountain.  At the falls themselves you're 1000ft below the mountain peak!  Based on the 1930s-style advertising I was thinking Ruby Falls would be kind of cheesy...I couldn't be more wrong.  This cave had the most money poured into its improvements of any we've ever seen, with actual signs labeling formations, sound systems throughout, and even wifi hot spots!  Of course, the most incredible part was the underground waterfall itself.  Words (and pictures) cannot describe how awe-inspiring it was to stand at the base of the underground waterfall.  It didn't hurt of course that they had a sound and light show hooked up in the room to trigger your emotions.  But still...145 feet of underground waterfall (the tallest underground waterfall open to the public in the US) is beautiful, and the massively huge underground room the waterfall carved is awe-inspiring.  One of the most amazing things about this place is that it was discovered completely by accident.  They haven't found a natural entrance to the cave - it was only discovered because they were trying to build a new entrance to the already-known Lookout Mountain Caverns, and in drilling an elevator shaft to those caverns they accidentally drilled into the Ruby Falls caverns.  A few feet difference in drilling and this amazing site never would have been discovered!!

Outside the entrance to the caverns

Looking out at the Tennessee River and Chattanooga from the 
Ruby Falls tower.  The tower was constructed from the rock
blasted out to create the elevator shaft to the caverns 

The underground waterfall!  The photo does not
do it justice, this room is massively huge

After the falls, we took the Incline Railway to the top of Lookout Mountain.  The views from the mountaintop were amazing, and we walked the short distance to Point Park, part of the Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park.  The appearance of Point Park reflects its earlier management by the Corps of Engineers, who constructed the entrance to look like their logo.

Looking out the bottom of the rail car

Crazy steep incline railway!  Note the cables visible in the right
track that haul the cars up and down

View from Lookout Mountain

Point Park - the structure is not historic at all, but was built
by the Corps of Engineers after it became a memorial park

Obligatory Aaron + cannon picture at a military park :-)

Risking his life on rocks at an overlook
in Point Park

We spent the rest of our trip in the central time zone, which was much easier to keep track of!  We explored all sorts of places near-ish to our campground.   First up: the corner where Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia meet.  Unsurprisingly, this was kind of a random point in the woods.  We parked at a cemetery (the nearest road) and followed a trail back to the point.  Unfortunately some very determined vandal had removed the marker from its concrete home, but fortunately a nearby resort had erected an arch so we knew we were in the right place.

Tri-State Corner - I'm standing where
the marker should have been

Next we stopped by the Nickajack Cave Wildlife Refuge, which had a well-maintained path out to an overlook of the cave on Nickajack Lake.  We finished up our tour of random small things near our campground with a trip to the Nickajack Dam.  This last stop was particularly fascinating because of the massive number of birds hanging out near the dam outfall, where the water was very turbulent.  I wouldn't have thought many fish would be in the area - what with the turbulent water - but the birds proved me very wrong, as we saw them catch several fish in the short time we were there.  We saw large numbers of black vultures, great blue herons, cormorants, and some kind of small songbird-looking bird.  We've never seen so many herons and cormorants in one place.

The overlook of Nickajack Cave

This black vulture posed very nicely for me.
The black vultures had basically no fear of us

This is kind of hard to see, but all the little black heads are cormorants 
in kind of a little whirlpool, in which they seemed to enjoy hanging out
perhaps because it didn't push them downstream so fast?  On the rocks
you can see a couple of the about 10 herons that were present before
we walked up close - it seems that herons are quite timid!

All the herons fled up to the railing on the dam when we came 
close.  Less obvious are the line of black vultures on the roof 
of the dam

After all of our fun little side trips, we headed farther out to the Russell Cave National Monument.  This cave was quite an archaeological find, with artifacts dating back over 10,000 years showing fairly continuous use of the cave.  They no longer let you walk through the cave, but it was neat to see all the same, and we got to get another stamp for our National Park Passport!

Close up of the upper cave, with a view of the archaeological
dig site.  This cave seems to have been more used, probably 
because it was less prone to flooding

Russell Cave, upper and lower sections

Our final day we went hiking at Foster Falls, a beautiful waterfall only a short (but steep!) hike from the parking lot in the South Cumberland State Park.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but the falls had carved out a massive basin in this tall and wide cliff.

The falls from the top - visible before you hike at all

A rather swingy bridge near the bottom

Foster Falls!

Aaron thought I looked funny climbing up 
the slick rocks on the steep path...

We had a lot of kind of unexpected fun in the Chattanooga area - I hadn't expected to find quite so many neat things to do!

Family in Tennessee

We stopped in Cookeville, Tennessee for a few days on our Tennessee loop to visit with Aaron's sister and her family.  We stayed at Twin Lakes Catfish Farm (actually in Baxter), which was an interesting experience!  The fishing ponds and restaurant are only open Thursday - Sunday, and thus that is the only time the campground is staffed.  When we arrived on Wednesday (with reservations), there was not a soul in sight and the after hours telephone's mailbox was full.  So we just picked a site and set up.  I left messages every way I could (the normal hours phone and email) and someone did call me back within a couple hours to confirm everything was ok, which made me feel much better!

Campsite a the Catfish Farm

I really enjoyed watching the black vultures at the farm - I'm not clear how (whether discarded by fishers, accidental flopping up from a crowded pond, or actual snatching by predators), but the fish ponds consistently had fresh dead fish around them, which attracted a TON of vultures.  I've never seen so many vultures in one place!

In the morning before the staff arrived to chase them off.  A fake
owl and hanging aluminum pans had no effect at all on the
vultures (to be fair, these were probably placed to keep the songbirds away,
who were also plentiful).  These were a small fraction of the black vultures 
across my whole field of view.

The ponds were well stocked and I could see several fish near the surface, including this guy who seemed to be coming to the surface to drink.

Catfish!

We had a great time visiting with my sister-in-law and her family.  We went to a local park where the kids played in the creek, brought them over to see our RV for the first time, and spent a bit of time hanging out at the house and playing in the backyard.

Aaron playing tag in the backyard

Playing at the creek (pictured: my sister-in-law's family of four plus me)

One of our nephews really enjoyed chasing the vultures at
our campground!

Smoky Mountain Adventures!

We just spent an amazing 8 days in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee!  We've been to Pigeon Forge many times, as it's a quick hop from Charlotte, but we'd only ever been for a long weekend before.  With a long weekend we would have time to hit the highlights (Dollywood, The Island, a dinner show or two), but nothing more.  This time, with over a week, we explored all sorts of new and wonderful things!!

So, first things first, we stayed at Walden's Creek RV Park right in the heart of Pigeon Forge.  This location was extremely convenient and the cheapest campground by far with our Passport America discount.  On the downside, it took several days to actually meet our hosts (despite me checking at the office every day during their posted office hours), and by the time we finally talked to them halfway through the trip we found out they had already charged us $5/day for plugging in our electric vehicle!!  This was VERY surprising - we've been plugging in our electric hybrid car at every campsite with 50amp power for the past 2 years and have NEVER been charged extra.  So the fact that not only did they charge us a rather ridiculous rate for the car but also did so without telling us or advertising the charge rubbed us quite wrong.  However, had I known that was the policy, we just wouldn't have plugged in the car (it is a hybrid after all) and then the rate would have been pleasantly low as expected, and really the location can't be beat and the campground is well kept.  So I'll post a review online to help any other unsuspecting electric vehicle drivers...

Our campsite at Walden's Creek RV Park

Walden's Creek at the campground

We got to add the Tennessee sticker to our map!

We started the next morning with breakfast at Frizzle Chicken.  This very fun restaurant had good down home food and singing animatronic chickens!!

Singing chickens at Frizzle Chicken!  Zoom in and check 
out the names!

Our first outing was to Dollywood - we love it so much, we bought season's passes, so we have to get our money's worth!  Dollywood was holding the Flower and Food Festival, which involved lots of neat shaped plants and a cool umbrella - shaded walk into the park.  These are the only photos I'm posting so as not to be ridiculous, but we went back multiple times during this trip.

I particularly enjoyed the mischievous raccoons

Fun umbrella

On our anniversary (the 20th) we started the day with a vigorous hike to Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains national park.  Fortunately for us, there's a road all but the last 1/2 mile of the elevation.  But that last 1/2 mile...it's a doozy!  Very steep, though flat and paved.  The view was incredible and well worth the hike and drive.  As you can guess from the photo, it was significantly colder up there than down in town.

The view off Clingman's Dome

We stopped a couple other places in the national park before heading back for our reservations at the Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud.  This is one of our favorite places to go in Pigeon Forge, and this time did not disappoint!  Dolly Parton had acquired the show since our last visit, and she made a couple of nice changes.  Overall our anniversary day was a refreshing change from our pandemic-clouded 20th last year!

One of the gimmicky displays outside
the dinner show

Our next outing was a drive on the Roaring Fork Motor Trail in Gatlinburg.  The highlight of this drive was a hike at Grotto Falls.  This trail is unique because it actually goes behind the waterfall.  It was quite a pleasant hike, much less strenuous than the ones we took earlier.  One of the coolest things we discovered here was Le Conte Lodge and the llamas that serve it.  We didn't make it all the way to the lodge, but we saw the llama trailer in the parking area.  I looked it up later and discovered that the lodge is only accessible on foot, and they use llamas to bring supplies up 3 days a week.  They used to use horses, but their hooves tore up the trail, so they switched to soft-footed llamas.  So cool!  It reminded me a bit of our trip to Phantom Ranch on mule back - supplies are carted down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule.  We're still debating whether a trip to Le Conte Lodge should be in our future.

Grotto Falls

Some friends from Charlotte and their kids came to join us on the weekend - they love the area as well!  We all went to Ober Gatlinburg together, where we rode the alpine slide and took the ski lift to the overlook.  Later we went to Paula Deen's Lumberjack Feud show - SO impressive!  There was one lumberjack who could run on floating logs like they were solid ground.  Absolutely amazing.

Ober Gatlinburg ski lift

Looking down the mountain on the ski lift

At the Lumberjack Feud

Our final incredible outing in Pigeon Forge was a UTV ride with Smoky Mountain Adventure Tours.  We had never done anything like this before, and it was such an incredible experience.  We drove up a narrow rutted dirt trail to one of the mountain tops in the Smoky Mountains - guided by someone who knew what he was doing of course.  We were going up and down scarily steep inclines with huge ruts - things we never would have attempted on our own, but where the guide goes, you follow!  I really can't express how much fun we both had with this!  Aaron drove most of the way of course, but I did do the last leg back to the shop.

Driving off the mountain top

One example of the crazy rutted roads.  It's really hard to
capture on camera

Taking a break on the mountain top.  If you look closely
you might see the dirt covering both of us, including a lovely
dusting all over my hair...

Our guide was kind enough to take a picture 'in action'

See, I really did drive!

That wraps up our week in Pigeon Forge!  We had a blast, it was so fun to be back on the road, in one of our favorite destinations, and finally spending enough time at that destination to explore so many things!  Spoiler alert: we'll be returning to Pigeon Forge later in the trip, but don't worry, we have even more adventures planned there!