PIGEON FORGE, Tenn. — Today I hiked 9 miles out and back on the Appalachian Trail to Charlies Bunion, a rock outcropping to the north of the Newfound Gap parking area in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Even with the recent snow and cold, the skies were clear blue and the temperature warmed up enough that I soon pealed away two of my five layers.
When I asked the staff at the Sugarland Visitors Center yesterday about hiking the trail I was advised to have clamp-on cleats on my boots because much of the trail is icy and snow packed. We stopped by the new REI store in Pigeon Forge last night to get a pair and I’m grateful we did. As you’ll see from the photos, parts of the trail were like a bobsled run. But with the spikes on my boots, I had no trouble walking across sheer ice.
The views from Charlies Bunion were sublime. To the left as I’m standing on the rock you can see Mount LaConte, one of the highest and most climbed peaks in the park. I’ll add another photo showing the peak from an earlier spot on the trail. Elizabeth and Emily and I climbed the peak from another direction in June 2019, where we enjoyed hot chocolate at the LaConte Lodge. My good and late friend Don Grove would hike the peak every year with his wife Barbara.
Since we arrived in Pigeon Forge TN on Friday we’ve been enjoying the colorful sites of this tourist magnet and home of Dollywood. It’s like a small Las Vegas without gambling. We recommend Pigeon Island and the Old Mill for shopping. At a previous visit we toured the excellent Titanic Museum, where I learned a lot about the 1912 disaster. Despite Covid-19 and winter, the place is humming with tourists. I saw multiple signs that businesses are hiring.
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On Thursday, in Ashville NC, we toured the Biltmore Estate, the largest private home in America. It was built by George W. Vanderbilt, grandson of the railroad entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt, and completed in 1895 after six years of construction. It sits on 125,000 acres of mostly undeveloped wooded mountains.
The place is an American Downton Abbey! It has a grand dining hall and 40 some bedrooms and 30 bathrooms. It was built with such cutting-edge conveniences for the late 19th century as electricity, an indoor swimming pool and bowling alley, and walk-in refrigerated storage rooms for food. My favorite rooms were the billiard room and the library, which contained 10,000 books. We also admired the wide variety of plants and flowers growing in the Conservatory.
Some might dismiss the Vanderbilts as “robber barons,” but I don’t. Cornelius used $100 from his mother to first fund a ferry service in New York, and then he built a railroad network to serve an expanding nation that turned that initial $100 into $100 million (which would be a lot more in today’s dollars). His grandson used a small share of that wealth to build a beautiful home that gave pleasure to hosts and guests alike for decades, and now gives pleasure to thousands of visitors, like us! The estate also pioneered modern forestry and has preserved tens of thousands of acres of trees and open space. I’m glad I live in a country were Biltmore Estates are possible.
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In an earlier post, I mentioned that our Keystone Hideout RV is 30 feet long, which is about as long a trailer as I would want to pull. But as we stay in more RV parks, we realize that our unit is on the smaller side. We’ve parked alongside some monster motor homes and fifth-wheels, as well as travel trailers that look to be 35 feet or longer.
Our informal survey may be a bit misleading. In the colder months, RV parks are probably overweighted with full-time RVers, who lean towards bigger rigs. The weekend campers with their smaller units are busy at home right now waiting for better weather and summer vacation.
At the Asheville campground, we met a young full-time RV couple, Christian and Jenny, who’ve been living in their 40-foot fifth-wheel for two years. Jenny is a “travel nurse,” so they move to locations where she can work at health-care facilities that need her temporarily. In their off time they hike and do other activities that are probably a lot like what we’re doing. They’re also checking out places where they may buy land and settle one day.
We first met them when they were walking their two dogs not long after we had settled into our campsite on Wednesday. Christian asked me if we were towing a new trailer. I asked him how he knew, and he told me he could see the trailer’s license plate had just been registered and that we still had the “3 Year Warranty” sticker on the door! On Friday before we hit the road, I removed the sticker.
Dashboard:
Days on the road: 13; Miles towing the RV: 827; RV parks stayed at: 5; National parks visited: 1
The road ahead (Lord willing): Graceland, Hot Springs N.P.
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