Category: Great Smoky Mountains

  • Smoky Mountain Spring

    Smoky Mountain Spring

    You don’t know what you don’t know until you know. We thought 8 days in the Smokies would be plenty. We thought Smoky Mountain Spring would be snow-free. We learned. Three campgrounds are open year round – Smokemont in the southeast, Elkmont in the northmiddle and Cades Cove in the northwest. We thought we’d get…

  • Life on the road with waterfalls

    Life on the road with waterfalls

    We’re a bit early to experience Spring in the Smokies. Snowrain showers instead of wildflowers, closed roads and campgrounds, cold nights and warm-ish days make off-the-grid living a challenge when the sun is not quite ready to cooperate. Solar Required Boondocking in cold weather gets you thinking hard about energy usage. Propane does the heavy…

  • Clingmans Dome All Alone

    Clingmans Dome All Alone

    There’s no higher vista in Great Smoky Mountain National Park than Clingmans Dome.  6,643 feet.  Motorists make a 7 mile, 1,600 foot elevation climb on a paved and winding road to summit parking, then hike 330 feet higher for 360 above-the-treetop views.  Appalachian Trailers hike any number of miles through the woods to pop out…

  • Newton Bald-faced Lie

    Newton Bald-faced Lie

    Newton’s First Law of Motion states that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. If we have to be honest with ourselves, we binged a few too many streaming series over the past few months, sacked out in our recliners, eating dessert. We were at…