Although we have been Thousand Trails members for four years, we encountered a new park entry procedure here that we have never encountered before. Upon our arrival, Peggy was shown a document with a listing of available spaces and asked to choose. Actual, eyes-on perusal of the RV space was not allowed so Peggy made her choice and, fortunately, we were placed into a nice, shady spot with full hookups and superb wifi. There is an ungrouted concrete block restroom across the road for dying in when the tornado comes.
There is a neighbor across the road that seems to be operating the Church of the Internal Combustion Engine with many worshipers that arrive and depart at odd hours. The pastor has, as his flock, not less than two golf carts with gas engines and defective mufflers, a four-person sand rail with a Volkswagen engine but no muffler whatsoever, a couple of cars and two pickup trucks with aftermarket exhaust components intended to piss off the elderly. The last visitor departed from his place last night at 12:30 AM, a bit after the park’s shut up time of 11:00. The departing visitor also had exhaust system components apparently purchased at the same place. There are also some Harley guys nearby with nothing other than straight, short tailpipes that rev their bikes a lot but never seem to leave. However, the trees around our campsite are beautiful.
Yesterday we woke up late, moved slowly and were all-around loafers. We took a short walk to the scummy pond they euphemistically refer to as a “lake” and found some nice seating at the shoreline. From our vantage point we spotted many exotic and happy shoreline plants, pollywogs, lots of birds and many varieties of unidentifiable insects dining and having sex. The dragonflies seemed particularly randy.
Today we were a bit more mobile and we took a drive through nearby Lexington and surrounding communities. There must be a shitload of Bible-thumper types in Lexington because the place is lousy with big churches about two blocks on-center. Other than the handsome churches, most of the remainder of the buildings in town are less than two stories but there are many grand old residences lining the streets. The downtown area screens two abandoned factories and one partially burned manufacturing complex that look like the jobs left town some time ago. We spotted some fiberglass or gelcoat hogs with strange decorations in the center of town, one standing and the other seated. Strangely, one of them was directly in front of the courthouse.
After getting an eyefull of great residential architecture, we took off northeast for a while before turning off on some back roads to check out the sights. There is an abundance of really handsome estates along the back roads in this part of the world. All the plants and trees along the way look very happy and about the only descriptor that comes to mind is “overgrown” since the only things that are not green are the sky, the road, some buildings and scattered recently-harvested fields of crops.
We eventually found our way back to Forest Lake Preserve only missing a couple of turns and performing a couple U-turns which is really quite good considering the layout of roads in this convoluted terrain. We found very few straight stretches on our drive today and none longer than about a half mile. Other than major highways, all the roads we drove today were quite narrow and our F-250 barely fit between the double yellow line on the left and the white fog line on the right. Most of the trip I could look in the right mirror and see the back right tire covering the white line and my driver’s side mirror over the yellow stripes. Passing oncoming traffic is exciting in these conditions. Sometimes we noted the oncoming drivers were on the phone which made us feel completely safe.
We got pictures of a satisfied squirrel, some nice houses, fiberglass pigs and a state-of-the-art North Carolina building foundation that you can see if you click here

Today was a travel day so we loaded up our stuff, stopped by the dump station and departed from Stone Mountain State Park. It is a gorgeous place.
We fiddled around on some skinny NC roads for a bit before getting on I-77 southbound for about 10 minutes. Our F-250 has a great air conditioning system and it was greatly appreciated today because the humidity was greater than 80% and merely moving one’s eyes generates blooms of stinky sweat from armpits and other even worse locations. Long before we got near Charlotte, we turned eastward and followed NC-601 and US-64 through beautiful green countryside until we got to Forest Lake Preserve, a Thousand Trails facility. We were here in 2015 but, due to my faltering geezer memory, it seemed all new.
This TT facility seems to be different than other TT sites because here we encountered a pudgy curmudgeon at the gate who’s function was to make everybody wait in line and sweat. When we initially arrived, there was nobody at the kiosk. After a few minutes, the little turd arrived and started taking care of the RV in front of us. After moving at glacial speeds filling out simple forms and getting license numbers that they don’t need, he disappeared in his golf cart to lead the folks ahead of us into the park. We have never encountered a kiosk troll before at a TT park and I can now suggest to Thousand Trails that trolls are unnecessary. We have never been led into a TT facility by a dedicated gatekeeper previously because that, too, is unnecessary. The little hobbit would not even speak to us until he had finished the business with the folks in the RV ahead of us in line and even then he was a grumpy midget.
After about 20 minutes of sweltering in the nearly underwater conditions, the gate Nazi took down our information in longhand despite all the information already being in the Thousand Trails data base. We were finally allowed access to our reserved spot in the facility but the insignificant squint deemed us bright enough to find our assigned space and his sloth-like efforts were, therefore, unnecessary when it came to leading us into a place plainly shown on a map. We have never had an assigned space in a TT facility previously but with an access guardian like they have here, someone has deemed it prudent, if misguided, and perhaps the creator of this plan and his lieutenant can be boiled and eaten by orcs.
I was dribbling from everywhere by the time we made it to our spot and after setting up the trailer utilities outside, my shirt looked like a well-used dish towel. Fortunately, we have a good 50-amp electrical hookup and we could run our air conditioning. Some time later after climbing into our trailer, I quit sweating copiously. There is no cable TV or satellite reception in our RV space but a fine wifi connection is available so I suppose we will be getting a lot of Amazon Prime and Netflix movies during our stay.

Today we returned to what I consider the finest road in the U.S.A. for scenery – the Blue Ridge Parkway. On our way up the 25 miles to the Parkway, we passed over roads bounded by emerald green scenery. We also passed by some box turtles malingering near the road, maybe in an attempt to get out of the abundant rain saturating everything else for the last few days.
We were on the Parkway from near Laurel Springs, N.C., to just over the Virginia border but were treated to abundant wildlife, outstanding views of North Carolina and numerous roadside waterfalls. It is stunning country. From one overlook on the Parkway, we could look a couple thousand feet down to Stone Mountain SP where we are currently set up with our Barbarian Invader. Stone Mountain itself looks puny from the Blue Ridge.
We left the Parkway near Mount Airy, the town that allegedly is the model for Mount Pilot, the neighboring town to Mayberry in the old Andy Griffith Show. This was so long ago, Ron Howard, who played Opie, was a little kid with all his hair. There are many stunning residences in Mount Airy and it is also the place where Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins, settled in the 1800’s after a great circus career. The historical sign for them indicates they farmed near here although it does seem tough for conjoined twins to multi-task seeing as they had two heads but only one set of legs. They were also married to two unconjoined women. I bet their lovemaking must have been interesting in a perverse way.
Got some pix. Click the word “here” at the end of this line here

We drove through Stone Mountain State Park using both paved and good gravel roads to start the day. The park is gorgeous and the roads mostly follow what starts out as a little creek but which gets additional flow from maybe 10 tributary creeks and ends up as a pretty good river by the time we ran out of road.
Once we ran out of park, we got on back roads to the town of Elkin about 20 miles or 30 minutes away. Elkin is a beautiful little town with a great assortment of spectacular old houses. We blocked many citizens engaged in their lawful business while we were gawking at these magnificent old structures.
We took a few house pictures and you can see them if you click here

The weather is acting up here, thanks to something called subtropical depression Alberto or tropical subdepression Alberto or outright heavy rains interspersed with dreadfully humid outbreaks in between. It seems the water is either falling on us or being sucked out of our old, corpulent bodies, sometimes at the same time.
I am also having a dispute with my intestines which makes for some interesting car trips, particularly those with bathrooms with a distance between them exceeding 5 miles. So we took it easy today and drove over near to Elkin, a nearby town, and bought groceries and used their dunny and then went to get a liquor re-supply at the local package store. Liquor sales in North Carolina only take place at state liquor stores, like in Oregon. Prices are high but not as outlandish as in Washington state. We got fuel and used the growler again before turning toward home.
After shopping, we returned to our camp spot at Stone Mountain SP and took the remainder of the day off.

Today was a travel day and, unfortunately, we had to leave Rocky Top RV Park even though it wasn’t in Rocky Top, if there is one. Rocky Top RV is the nicest park we can recall from our four years on the road. We have been in Tennessee for about a month and it was time to move on. It was cloudy and very humid when we left and I had worked up a full sweat doing some simple departure functions in preparation for departure.
We initially got onto I-81 headed northeast and pretty quickly we were in Virginia. As in Tennessee, the terrain was mountainous with an abundance of hardwood forest and pasture land. It is quite pretty. About an hour into Virginia, we swung south on I-77 toward North Carolina. In a half hour or so, we crossed into N.C. and light rain. An hour later, we got off at Zephyr onto some of the skinniest roads in the northern hemisphere for about a 20 mile to Stone Mountain State Park.
We stayed at Stone Mountain for a few days when we passed this way in 2015. That is a primary reason for our return to the obscure but beautiful place. The campground is very nice with water and electrical hookups but no sewer, wifi, phone or data. Our satellite dish works very well from our camping spot. The scenery is outstanding. There is really not much to do around here other than check out a mother turkey and her rambunctious offspring that linger near our campsite and Stone Mountain itself which is a massive monolith of rock that periodically sheds huge slabs of itself that crash down into the pasture below. It is fortunate this only happens rarely because the slabs are gigantic. They break into chunks about the size of a three bedroom house when they hit the valley floor.
Since communication with the outside world is impossible from here, we can lay low and maybe do a little grocery shopping mixed in with our explorations of the nearby treasures, if any. It will be nice to take a rest. And sleep. And drink. And watch the turkeys devour insects.
Pix? Click here

When we told folks we were going to Rocky Top, many Tennesseans grinned and indicated we were headed for a gorgeous part of the world. We are currently set up in a facility called Rocky Top RV Park. As it turns out, we were unable to find any town called Rocky Top near where we are staying. Further investigation revealed that there really isn’t a town called Rocky Top except for a municipality formerly named something obscure, then Lake City and pretty recently changed to Rocky Top to take advantage of a song by the same name. When changing the name to Rocky Top, the municipality was forbidden from benefiting commercially from the name so they immediately went into the shot glass, bumper sticker and T-shirt business. Now the town has drawn the wrath of some legal authorities. In any event, the former Lake City and current temporary Rocky Top is over by Knoxville and nowhere around here. We found we are actually in Blountville.
Our trip today was from Blountville over to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park. It is about 80 miles, as the crow flies, from our current RV location but the scenery here in this part of Tennessee is gorgeous so the drives each way didn’t seem too bad. The park itself encompasses the actual Gap and a lot of mountainous terrain, huge limestone rock formations jutting from the tops of big mesas and verdant foliage. Apparently, lots of folks knew about this gap through the steep mountains because they have found artifacts from prehistoric folks along with settler types from the late 1600’s. This was the smart man’s path if leaving east coast states headed for the frontier, which at that time was in Kentucky. The Gap itself sits almost directly on the intersection of the borders of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
After making an obligatory stop at the visitor center, we took a spin up to the Pinnacle Overlook on a road that was designed to be driven by the brave because the corners are tight and the road is steep. However, those getting to the Pinnacle Overlook are treated to a stunning view over the corners of three states and the towns of Middlesboro, Shawanee and Harrowgate a thousand or more feet below. The Pinnacle Overlook is a bad place to step over the hand rail unless you are a BASE jumper.
There are lots of trails and caves also within the park but we didn’t see them because we ran out of time. As it worked out, we made it back to the trailer in time for me to see the NASCAR race on our park’s cable feed. Rocky Top RV Park, despite being nowhere near the alleged town of Rocky Top, is still a gorgeous park, probably the most beautiful we have stayed in during our 4 years of full-time RVing. The owners, Gary and Debbie, have planted an amazing variety of exotic plants in the tiny park and it is very pretty. Their facilities are also very good. I can heartily recommend this place.
We got a few pix. Click here

Last night starting at about 2:00 AM it started raining and it was open for business. The downpours made it sound like we were inside a snare drum in the trailer. This morning it did not let up. We slugged it out in the trailer, taking long showers and watching movies. Maybe it will dry out tomorrow. The day after that we depart and we hope the weather cooperates because the skinny roads around here may become even more treacherous when wet.

Now that we have made it to the remote corner of Tennessee called Rocky Top and all our necessary chores are complete, we could go exploring today. We started with a trip into nearby Blountville for breakfast at a place called Dolly’s Diner. There were a bunch of cars parked in the lot and that is always a good sign. In this case, however, it was not an indicator of superb food. The food was pretty ordinary but the prices were great. A bacon and cheese omelet served with biscuits and gravy is less than $6 and it was tasty enough. Dolly’s would seem a great place to dine if you were in a hurry.
We continued on very serpentine and hilly single-lane roads over to Elizabethton, a beautiful town with a 1900’s main street and a gorgeous downtown city park that occupies both sides of the river running through it. There is an old covered bridge and a very contented group of ducks and geese hanging out near the bridge. There were lots of baby ducks and goslings following their folks during grazing operations. There are also a bunch of beautiful old houses and municipal buildings scattered around the city that warranted some exotic U-turns to get better looks.
From here we started some random explorations and soon ended up in some state parks near Elizabethton including one with a place called the Doodle White Overlook which offers a great view of a reservoir and the Appalachians.
Getting around in this part of the state must be nearly impossible for anybody without a good GPS wayfinding system. The roads point in all directions except the one you wish to take. On one eight mile trip, we had to take at least ten different roads because in this sort of mountainous terrain there are no straight runs. The roads hug the hills and sneak along creek bottoms. Lots of gorgeous houses are built in the bottom lands with many structures built on the opposite side of the creek than the road. Residents have built small bridges crossing the creeks whose architectural flair is only surpassed by the bridge’s flimsiness. We found a few ravines (hollows, pronounced “hollers”) where residents live in small Dogpatch-like communities of illiteracy and toothlessness but most of the places were quite pretty. All the scenery is great.
On our way back to our trailer in the afternoon, we tried US-421 because we anticipated using this road when we leave Tennessee and go into North Carolina. We no longer consider this a good road to use because it is loaded with tight switchbacks, steep climbs, brake-heating descents and ubiquitous opportunities to plunge over steep precipices into oblivion. While driving this road, we passed through a spectacular mountain pasture with a town called Shady Valley plopped down in the middle.
While admiring the stunning views, we spotted some black smoke rising not far from our location and decided to go take a look. There was a local cop leaving the area as we arrived and we thought surely the fire department was not far behind. We hung out a bit, watching some hillbilly’s shed burn until there was an impressive explosion which brought the cop whistling back to take a closer look. By the time we left, the former still or meth lab was fully involved and emanating evil-looking dark clouds of smoke.
On the way home, we drove by the town of Bristol which is split in half by the Tennessee/Virginia border running through the center of town. Nearby is a famous NASCAR track which I always thought was a rustic little arena in the middle of some pasture based on what I could ascertain from the TV. There is still lots of pasture but the actual seating around the track is quite impressive. I guess it has to be in order to get 160,000 people around a half-mile track. We finished off the day with a trip to a barbecue restaurant in Kingsport called Pratt’s. The food was very good and reasonably ($15 a head) priced. Strangely, they have a big (20 feet tall?) statue of an Indian built out front but where his head should be was a blue plastic tarp.
We took a few pictures along the way and you can see them if you click here

Today was laundry day and we had a big pile since the last time we did the laundry was in Natchez Trace Thousand Trails. We were getting pretty short on clothes that are appropriate for high temperatures and oppressive humidity. As usual, Peggy handled most of the activity and I merely provided the simple duties like packing clothes to and from the laundry room. I am severely handicapped with the clothes washing duties, maybe because I still don’t know what “colorfast” means. I have never seen colors move, much less be fast.
The Rocky Top RV Park, where we are currently holed up, is a gorgeous park. The facility only has about 35 spaces in a small area but, due to the way the park is configured, each RV spot has ample room and privacy. The wifi is great. There are lots of birds making nests and feuding over the numerous bird feeders installed around the site. There are also some big deer who are quite chubby due to being fed corn at some deer feeders they have here. It is like camping in an oriental garden, thanks to Gary, the owner. He has been busy mowing, weeding, running the string trimmer and blower. Gary says he came originally from Pennsylvania. When we asked him how he got to Tennessee, he blamed his wife.