We were on the road again today, leaving Dumplin Valley and continuing northeast toward Virginia. The lousy paving of I-40 was our partner for about 20 miles and then we got onto I-81 for about 90 minutes. We pulled off in a place called Rocky Top, Tennessee.
Soon, we were pulling into Rocky Top Campground, a small but beautiful RV park with full hookups, pretty spaces, wifi, cable TV and a good laundromat. I am suffering from a sneaky geezer disease that has stiffened up my knee so we just set up and climbed into the air conditioning for a nice nap. We love the lack of firm scheduling required for this lifestyle.
There are lots of birds and deer here.

We had to get the oil changed in the truck today so we thought the day was going to be miserable. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case. The guys at the oil change joint zipped through the work and we were soon on our way for some aimless wandering. We ate at the only chain restaurant we trust, Bojangles, and had good food. We stopped in at a liquor store because we will soon be in even more hillbillyish country near the town of Rocky Top and we don’t know if they have liquor there. We stopped in at a gorgeous state park called Panther Creek and scoped out the adjacent lake. Our tour took us by beautiful old mansions and hillbilly hollers filled with junk, mostly old broken-down automobiles. We drove in the most circuitous maze of roads I have ever traversed but Peggy ultimately got us home. The countryside was beautiful all the way.
On one narrow, single-lane back road, we spotted a pileated woodpecker. This type of woodpecker looks a lot like a pterodactyl except smaller. They are red and black and white and magnificent. This is the second time we have spotted a pileated in four years of hanging out in the woods.
There’s a few pictures. Click here

Our destination for today was Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We headed out from Dumplin Valley and took the 30 or 40 mile drive down to the park, which sits on the Tennessee/North Carolina state line. Approaching and leaving the park from or to Tennessee has the drawback of passing through Pigeon Forge, Sevierville or Gatlinburg. All three of these towns are unfettered tourist traps with a myriad of ways to separate tourists from their money. There are rides, dinner theaters featuring the Hatfields and McCoys, a Hard Rock Cafe, a Ripley’s Believe if You’re Gullible, a model of the front half of the Titanic, a King Kong likeness attached about 20 floors up on a schmaltzy hotel, numerous themed restaurants and an abundance of tourists dressed in everything from leisure suits to denim overalls. They were all white, as far as I could tell. These towns must be cracker Mecca. I heard they had terrible recent fires in the Gatlinburg area but, apparently, the wrong part burned.
We finally made it into the park and it is magnificent. We had only gone a few miles past the gate when we turned off onto a side road to a giant meadow called Cade’s Cove. If I had lived during the Civil War, I would have hid here. It is very remote and there is only one way in and out. Not only is the terrain and forest beautiful, we soon started spotting animals. We saw not less than six black bears and there are colorful birds everywhere in this gorgeous place. There are some buildings dating back to the early 1800’s and, while the National Park Service has done a commendable job maintaining them, they still sit on their original foundation members that are stacked, irregularly shaped rocks.
We drove into Cade’s Cove when we passed through this area in 2015 and we are delighted that we have now visited again. After heading back to the main park road, we turned and passed about another 40 miles through outstanding scenery and roadside waterfalls before exiting near the bustling tourist circle of Hell, Gatlinburg.
The park is great. Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited facility within the National Park inventory and it is easy to see why. I suggest entering from North Carolina because you can miss all the tourist crap.
There’s pix. Click here

Last night, Dumplin Valley RV Park, where we are currently staying, had a small crowd in for a bluegrass concert on site. There were many folks there that are moonshiners. Some was for sale. A big gulp can almost shut down your respiration.
Yesterday we arrived here thinking we were pretty close to Knoxville. It turns out that we are actually in Sevierville, Dolly Parton country. We found out just how far we are from Knoxville by driving into town today. It is around 35 miles. We hit the Costco and a Trader Joe’s, loading up on groceries. Last time we saw a Trader Joe’s was in Texas. Last time we saw a Costco was also in Texas.
We returned back to the trailer with our loot and, after getting our frozen stuff in the freezer, we hunkered down in the trailer with the air conditioning turned to high. It was around 90 degrees today and the last time I looked at our weather station the humidity was hovering around 88%. Strangely, at about 5:30 this afternoon Peggy felt compelled to go back outside and scrub some splattered insects off the front of the Barbarian Invader. She said she made some headway on the corpses but, between the dreadful environmental conditions and abundant flying, biting vermin, she soon returned to the comfort of our cozy trailer.

We pulled stakes and left Chattanooga today, headed northeast toward Knoxville. Although I cannot offer any good comments about the paving technology on the interstates, I can say the scenery alongside US-24, US-75 and US-40 was beautiful – forests of abundant green bushes and trees all the way. The road surfaces were shit. I am surprised the silverware in our trailer’s kitchen drawer wasn’t stuck in the ceiling. Potholes are ubiquitous here.
We stopped at a rest stop along US-75 and Peggy whipped up a tasty lunch before we continued up the road. After about 150 miles, we pulled into the Dumplin Valley RV Park just in time for a torrential downpour. By the time we were registered and in our space, the rain had quit and the sun had returned. The temperature was about 85 and so was the humidity. It was sweaty setting up but we soon climbed into our mobile housing and turned on the air conditioning so we could enjoy some cocktails.

A couple days ago we drove up to a place called Point Park atop Lookout Mountain which looms over Chattanooga. Our destination for today was the Incline Railway, a venerable funicular that runs between downtown next to the Tennessee River and the top of the mountain better than 1000 feet above. When I was a kid they had a funicular in Los Angeles called Angel’s Flight that used to go up maybe 150 feet to the level of the next block. Angel’s Flight cost 5 cents each way back in the Pleistocene, when I was young. It is not there anymore.
Chattanooga is an old city and it has many very low bridges and weird circuitous roads so our GPS took us by a route that it thought we should use with a 51 foot long, 12′-10” high RV so our access was not by the most direct route. Nevertheless, we ended up in the correct parking lot and got out our money to pay for the parking space. Next, we hobbled over to the ticket booth and found the Incline Railway costs 15 bucks a head, round trip. I love ancient engineering projects so we coughed up the tribute and got in line.
The floor of the rail car is not level and the seat make you believe you are almost lying down when the car is at the bottom of the hill. The ride starts out at about the same angle but soon there are some very steep pitches where the chairs you were lying in change angle with the track and soon are attempting to slide riders out into the leg space. The maximum angle is 78 degrees according to the narration blasted from the speakers. It is a good, if short, ride.
After perusing and rejecting all the trinkets in the gift shop, we climbed to and hung out at the observation deck at the upper station for a while, carefully staying in the shade because it was hotter than hell and about 90% humidity. My shirt looked like I just finished using it to wash a car. The views over the city were spectacular. We met some folks on the deck who were from Louisville, Kentucky, and were in town for an old guy softball league game. They told us they could barely bend at the waist because they had just come from Bea’s, a long-time Chattanooga restaurant. We got the address and then rode the rail car back to the bottom station.
Soon we found our way to Bea’s, which is a unique joint. They put lots of food on a lazy Susan in the middle of the table and then stock it with food. They stocked ours with fish, fried chicken, green beans, barbecued beans, mac & cheese, new potatoes in white sauce, potato salad, cole slaw, banana pudding, a variety of sauces and a pitcher each of water and iced tea. They brought over a dish of apple cobbler and ice cream for dessert. If anybody eats all of anything, they hustle in and get them more. It was great. It costs about $13 and I doubt I will need to eat again for a while.
We took a few photos you can see if you click here

The Tennessee River winds through the Chattanooga area and its surrounding massive limestone bluffs. We were hoping to get a boat ride while visiting here so we could check out the local gorges so we got onto the ‘net and started searching. The Chattanooga Aquarium used to run a boat called the Gorge Explorer that went into these gorges but they discontinued the tours in January. Drat! We fell back onto a riverboat called the Southern Belle which advertises great views of the area and takes off from the area near the aquarium.
Unfotunately, Chattanooga is hosting an ironman competition this Saturday and all the roads into the aquarium neighborhood were blocked. We ended up parking some distance away which certainly did nothing for my mood because the walk over to the boat passed through about 90 degree temperatures and 90 percent humidity. I was quite soggy by the time I made it to the boat. They told us to arrive an hour early and we almost did it but once we got there we found we could not board the boat for half an hour. They stored us in an adjacent overpriced gift shop with dreadful calliope music playing on an endless loop. Playing Chattanooga Choo Choo on a calliope is a loathsome concept and inappropriate for everyone except the stone deaf.
We finally got onto the boat but the listed departure time passed without the boat moving. Upon query, I was informed that we were going to be privileged to be accompanied by some 200 children who arrived late. About 20 minutes later and with most of the vermin aboard, we departed the dock but soon found we would be returning to the dock to pick up some particularly late straggling parents and their little unruly charges. The kids looked like they were between 10 and 12 years old and they were all at a particularly obnoxious phase in their young lives. They were either blocking the exits or staircases, fixated on their phones or screaming in an attempt to contact their compatriots at the opposite end of the boat. They were of a perfect size to toss over the railings into the river. The actual tour was shortened due to untimely rugrat arrivals and extra dock stops so our trip ended up being a slow trip about 4 miles down river and one mile upriver from the dock. No gorges were entered and by the time our $25 a head ride was over we had seen about the same as we could have seen from the dock. About the only really dramatic views were of Chattanooga’s beautiful riverside museum of modern art and aquarium, both perched on the limestone bluffs adjacent to the Tennessee River. I would not recommend this attraction. However, we did spot an advertisement for YeeHaw beer downtown. Never heard of this brand.
We elected to split from the riverfront and returned to Raccoon Mountain where the TVA has built a massive reservoir at the top. They use excess power (like at night) from their dams to pump water into the Raccoon Mountain Reservoir and then let it descend through penstocks to feed turbines when additional power is needed. We spotted several deer and some successfully fishing osprey along the way. The reservoir, hydro plant and pumping system were pretty good, too.
We got a few pix. Click here

Today we started our exploration of Chattanooga by driving up Lookout Mountain which looms over the city’s southwest corner. We wound up a skinny and circuitous path from close to the Tennessee River all the way to the ridge where we found Point Park, part of the National Park Service’s Chickamauga and Chattanooga Military Park that has preserved the battlefields where some pivotal battles happened in the Civil War.
Point Park is the only facility within park properties where a fee is collected to enter but we have a geezer pass that allowed us entry without cost. Regardless of cost, the views from this promontory of Chattanooga and the surrounding terrain are spectacular. There is a beautiful monument within the park that has both a Federal and a Confederate soldier at the top. That is enough to keep it from getting removed by some do-gooders. The serpentine Tennessee River can be seen winding through way far below Chattanooga and emerald green countryside. Looking south, we could see into Georgia. The Confederacy had 10 and 12 pound cannons perched on the edges of this promontory and that must have been rough on Federal troops as they approached Chattanooga. The Feds wanted this crucial city because the river and four rail lines converge in what used to be a manufacturing and transit crossroads in 1862. The Feds ultimately prevailed and it was the death knell for the south.
Leaving the park, we drove south down a long road called Scenic Drive into Georgia and their Cloudland Canyon State Park. It was a great drive through magnificent estates with great views and the park is gorgeous but we had a reality moment when we saw some poor bozo’s fifth wheel trailer which he took under a bridge lower than the trailer height. It was a catastrophic error. We have encountered numerous bridges in Tennessee that have clearances in their underpasses substantially less than the US DOT requirement of 13′-6”. Keep your eyes peeled around here if driving vehicles taller than Hobbits.
From above, Chattanooga looked beautiful, almost peaceful. However, once we drove into town reality set in and we were plunged into a confusing maze of streets, none of which went where we wanted to go. Since we are out of out-of-towners, it was more problematic for us to get around than it may be for locals but the streets seem to point in all directions with no ordinary intersections or reason.
We finally decided to head back toward our camping spot at Raccoon Mountain but on the way we spotted another wrecked RV, this time a motor home that was completely demolished above the tires from windshield all the way to the formerly attractive bathroom. Too many low bridges around here for sleepy drivers.
We took a few pictures along the way and you can see them if you click here

Our travels continued today with our departure from Winchester where we got on US-64 for a bit before transitioning onto I-24 toward Chattanooga. We have finally made it to the Appalachians! We could tell because our GPS unit, which also gives us elevation, indicated we were climbing. The substantial humps to the east of us might have been a clue, as well. Not long after we spotted the mountains we were in them, crossing a pass at 1919 feet before descending into Chattanooga.
Right before we got into town, we turned off and pulled our Barbarian Invader into the Raccoon Mountain RV Park. It is quite a nice park with cable TV, great wifi, full hookups, a pool, lots of nearby attractions and a steep price compared to most places we go. Since we get to stay in Thousand Trails campgrounds regularly and we stay in them for free, it seems possible I am being a crybaby about the price here. We’ll see.

We did not get a lot of exploring done today. We mostly acted like slugs with a couple of exceptions. We did the hour or two of work we normally do to prepare for travel. We also went to the local library in Winchester so Peggy could round up some legal documents off the internet since wifi at our campground is NFG.
Not far from the library, we found a restaurant called Holt’s Diner. They have daily specials and today’s special was chicken fried steak, a dish I have been known to devour from time to time. The kitchen served us up two plates of chicken fried steak with three side dishes for $6.95 plus $.80 per side. We had good cornbread, some tasty little spheres of corn wossname deep fried and mashed potatoes and gravy. Peggy was extravagant and got a fourth side of green beans. The chicken fried steaks were terrific and between us all the sides disappeared. We heartily suggest travelers passing through this part of the country stop and dine here. I give it an A+. They are closed Mondays and open at 11:00 AM the rest of the time. We finished off the day with a fuel stop and a stroll down to the lake next to our campground. They have a nice wooden swinging chair where we spent some very idle time gazing out over the lake. This is a tough existence.