AirstreamTour: Tennessee countryside

It’s now mid-May and we spent the past three weeks tucked away in the Tennessee hills, two weeks in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and one at the Watauga Dam. It has been a period of relaxation, hiking, fishing, reading, and photography, no Internet access, no cell phone connectivity, no television, just the sweet sound of birds and babbling brooks.

The Great Smoky Mountain National Park was created in 1934 and is the most popular national park in the country with more than 9 million visitors annually. We were there at a great time, before school lets out for the summer. During the week, the park was busy, but not jammed. Starting on Friday afternoon traffic started increasing, the camping areas filled up, and the hiking trails became crowded. By mid-day on Sunday most of the traffic was headed back out of the park.

We camped at Cades Cove Campground on the northwest side of the park. The campground has 159 spots for tents/RVs and no hook-ups - it is on the edge of Cades Cove. A “cove” in Smoky Mountain vernacular is a relative flat valley between mountain ridges. The Cove was originally settled in the 1820’s and by the 1850’s there were 132 families living in the valley. When the park was established in 1934 residents were bought out and moved out of the Cove. The homesteads they left behind were left as they were. There is now an eleven-mile auto tour through the cove that is popular with hikers, bikers, and automobile drivers that takes you past several of the old homesteads.

Henry Whitehead Place

Cantilevered barn at the LeQuire Place

Dan Lawson Place

In addition to the homesteads, there are several churches and a still functioning water-powered gristmill in the cove. The mill was built in about 1870. The churches all date from the early 1830’s.

Cable Mill

Inside the Missionary Baptist Church, circa 1832

Steeple of the Cades Cove Methodist Church, circa 1838

As I mentioned in our last blog entry, Heinz spent time out fly-fishing. Unfortunately he was unsuccessful - he says it as more like "fly throwing (and losing) than fly fishing". He did try blaming me and my bright blue shirt and white hat when I went out with him one evening. So I promptly took my cameras and tripod and wandered away for the rest of the evening. Yep, you guessed it, nary a nibble. But I got some great photographs that evening.

Hey, you're spooking the fish!

Purple Trillium

Centipede

Falls along the Tremont

We took a day and traveled over the mountains to the south side of the park via Clingman's Dome, at 6,643 feet, the highest point in the park. There we stopped and hiked up to the observation deck from which you can see up to 100 miles on a clear day. On the way back down from the deck we took a slight detour and hiked about a mile of the Appalachian Trail. I never really knew what the trail was like despite having heard of it all my life. I somehow had always pictured it as a two or three person wide trail, fairly smooth, that wandered it's way down from the north to the south. Wow, was I wrong! Yes, it does wander down - from Maine, 2200 miles south to Georgia. It is barely one person wide in places and is far from smooth! I certainly understand now why they saw it takes 4-5 months to hike the entire length and why everyone we saw along the way looked well-worn and exhausted.

Clingman's Dome Observation Deck

Appalachian Trail

After reaching our camping limit of 14 days in the Smokies we packed up and headed to a little park in northeast Tennessee that someone told Heinz about . The Watauga Dam Tailwater Campground is a small park, 28 spaces, owned by the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and is located between the Wilbur Dam, built in 1912, and the Watauga Dam, built in 1940. The two dams are used to generate electricity for the area. Heinz once again headed out to fly-fish, but unfortunately on the first day he caught his rod in the window and broke the tip. Never fear though, where there's a place to fish there's either a fly-fishing or a bait shop. In this case, the Misty Rivers Bait Shop came to his rescue with a rod and reel. He proceeded to fish unsuccessfully for two days until he met up with a couple of locals who taught how it was done in those parts...3/4 oz weight, swivel, 3-4 foot leader, and a hook with a miniature marshmallow and white grubs. Go figure, he hooked 7 beautiful rainbow trout over the next two days at an average length of 12 inches.