October 29, 2022
Leaving Nashville behind with a promise we will be back in a week to spend more time here and see some old friends and explore our old stomping ground.
10/23 – We said good-bye to our beautiful campground in Nashville this morning. Before heading out I mentioned to Frank that I thought we should add some water to our water tank. When we are in campgrounds we use mainly the local water that comes in through a hose. Since we stay in campgrounds every night and have done little dry camping we try to normally keep our water holding tank not too full so we don’t add any extra weight to our trip. But for some reason I really felt we needed to add water this morning so, we did. We were glad we did fill our tank when we got to our campsite that evening and found they were having problems with their well and they didn’t have any running water, so we would have to survive with what was in our tank. It would have been a rough night without the full tank of water for flushing toilets and washing hands.
Our site in Nashville was pretty small so there was very little room to park the Jeep. Once we park are RV we level our RV with jacks and put out the slides. That is what we did and then we pulled the Jeep into the slot pretty close to the RV. This morning as we got ready to leave I slid the slides in and took the jacks off. Once the jacks came off it lowered the RV enough that the RV hit the Jeep’s bumper and gave my Jeep an owie. The damage was just a few scraps to the bumper and my son told me to tell everyone it was trail damage from when we go off-roading. So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
As we were driving through Tennessee toward North Carolina we saw a sign for Oak Ridge which is the sister site to the Livermore Lab where Frank worked for many years. It was just 10 miles off the freeway and we thought it would be a great stop for our lunch break. https://www.ornl.gov/
We spent about an hour exploring The American Museum of Science and Energy. It had information on the original reason for Oak Ridge which was the making of the nuclear bomb on down to what they do there today. We ate lunch and got back on the road toward Asheville, North Carolina. https://amse.org/
We knew it was going to be only a couple hour drive from where we were and we looked forward to getting in early and relaxing. Instead we were on the road for just a half hour when traffic came to a total standstill in Knoxville, Tennessee. Apparently a little over a mile ahead there was a really bad accident. The freeway ended up being shut down for two hours when they extracted the victims from their vehicle, brought in a helicopter and life-flighted them to the hospital. We were glad we were in our motor home because we shut off the motor, got up and walked around, used the bathroom and got snacks all while we waited. By the time we were able to get going again and with the time changing from Central Time to Eastern Time we didn’t arrive to our campground, KOA Ashville West until 7 pm.
As we drove toward our campsite the scenery was amazing. We drove near the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were coming through at the perfect time as the leaves were changing and the mountains were painted in an array of colors. I was hanging out the RV window taking pictures most of the way.
10/24- Frank worked all day then when he was done at 2 pm we went off to explore the beauty of the area surrounding us. We looked at going to Biltmore Estates but the cost was over $100 a person and there was so much else to see for free. So we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway a bit before heading to Chimney Rock State Park. The drive there was so beautiful through a winding tree-lined road. Chimney Rock is a 315 foot mountain formation in which you can either hike the 491 steps up the mountain to the top for the view or you can find the secret 26 story elevator that was built into the inside of the mountain and take that up. We opted for the elevator with our bad knees. Once we got up in the elevator there are still more steps up to a peak called Exclamation Point. It is named that because the views are so breathtaking from there. We could see 75 miles of Blue Ridge beauty. The landscape we saw was in the film The Last of the Mohicans. https://www.chimneyrockpark.com/
After spending time exploring the area we headed off to the nearby town of Chimney Rock. It was another beautiful place to check out as we hiked along the Rocky Broad River that runs between the Granite Mountains of Chimney Rock and Round Top. Then we explored the shops in town and got an ice cream before heading back to our campsite. The campground still had no water so we were glad we had plenty of our own water. https://www.visitncsmalltowns.com/things-to-do/outdoor-activities/trails/rocky-broad-river-walk/
10/25- We knew we had a busy day as we completed our trip to Raleigh so we got up early and headed out. When we were looking at where to stay near Raleigh we found there wasn’t a lot close by so we ended up picking a campsite about an hour West of Raleigh in the town of Mebane, NC. The campground we were are leaving our RV at, Jones Station is very pretty and I look forward in spending a few days there. https://www.jonesstationrvpark.com/
We dropped the RV off and got it hooked up at about 1:30 pm then headed the rest of the way into Raleigh where Frank’s company is putting us up at The Embassy Suites. We already missed our RV as the hotel is a bit noisy and our bed isn’t that comfortable compared to the one in the RV. But we got settled in our room and then went across the street to The Crabtree Valley Mall which is huge at over a million square feet. We wandered around there and ended up eating dinner in the food court. Frank got Japanese food and I got East Indian food. There were so many choices between the food court and multiple restaurants connected to the mall it was hard to decide where to eat. After we got back to the hotel we decided to go swimming in their indoor pool. We did a few laps but the water was cooler than we like and the room the pool was in wasn’t very warm either so we headed off to bed.
10/26- Frank had meetings all day in a conference room at the hotel. While he was in his meeting this morning I headed down the road to get my nails done and do a little exploring. When he had his lunch break we headed to Chick Fil A for lunch. Then he went back to his meetings and I got a workout in before packing up and getting ready for the group dinner this evening. We had decided that instead of spending another night in the hotel we would head back to the RV for the night after the dinner. We had dinner at Seasons 52 at the mall and it was nice to get to meet Frank’s coworkers and put faces with names. The food was wonderful at Seasons 52 and they had so many gluten free options for me.
10/27- Frank was busy all day with an install and when he was done we headed off to the local laundromat to get our wash done before exploring the town. They had an outlet mall where I was able to get a couple more pairs of warm pants. We had dinner out before heading back to the campground.
10/28- After Frank worked we headed out of North Carolina and back to Tennessee. We are starting our journey home to Houston for the holidays. We had a long drive today as we wanted to make it to Nashville tomorrow. We were driving for 6 hours straight which is much longer than we prefer. We like to keep most of our drives at about 2 to 3 hours with a break and then another 2 to 3 hours. We did stop for a short time at a rest stop to eat lunch. The leaves on the trees there were amazing and I walked around and took pictures while Frank took a quick rest.
Many of the leaves we saw on the way out of North Carolina and back toward Tennessee had fallen and the mountains are starting to take on a smokey look as the gray branches of the bare trees show among the trees with leaves still on them. It was hard not to keep hanging out the RV window trying to get a picture that would show that smokey look.
It appears that Knoxville freeways are always a mess, so due to a warning by our GPS we ended up getting off the main freeway and taking some backroads around Knoxville to avoid sitting in traffic there again. We made it into Soaring Eagle Campground in Lenoir City, Tennessee. It was built in the 1980’s just West of Knoxville for the World Fair. It is a nice campground with a lake. We walked down and admired the Fall colors reflecting off the lake. https://www.campatsoaringeagle.com/
10/29- We only had a couple hour trip into Nashville so we took our time heading out this morning. We didn’t leave our campsite until almost noon. With the time change back to Central time we arrived at our campground at 1 pm. We are once again staying on Percy Priest Lake, but at Nashville Shores Lakeside Resort. https://www.campatsoaringeagle.com/ This campground is on the other side of the lake from where we stayed last time and less expensive. It is close to a waterpark and a treetop adventure park which I imagine are pretty busy in the summer time. But they are closed up tight for winter which makes our campground a nice quiet place to stay. Frank had to work this evening on a customer issue so other than exploring the campground when we got in we stayed close to the RV the rest of the day.
We are looking forward to spending the next several days exploring where we lived for 6 years and seeing old friends
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