We left Ragland Bottom heading towards the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This park spans both Tennessee and North Carolina, but we’d gone horse camping in the North Carolina part of the park years and years ago, so we decided that this trip we would see the Tennessee side of the park. National forests surround the park, so we had initially planned to find a boondocking spot somewhere outside the park, but when we stopped in Kingston for lunch and a walk, we looked at the map and realized that most of the roads around the park are very windy and very hilly and getting into and out of the park would take up most of the day, and, with the gas we would use, it made sense to book at one of the campgrounds in the park. The Cades Cove Campground was our first choice, but they didn’t have any availability for that night, so we booked one night at Look Rock Campground, which was closer to where we were anyway, and the following two nights at Cades Cove.
After a walk along the lake in the city of Kingston, and a stop at the city park, we plugged Look Rock Campground into our TomTom Trucker GPS and got on our way. All was well until we looked at what the GPS was showing us for the final approach to the campground, and realized it was a series of very tight switchback turns - exactly what we had hoped to avoid by booking in the park. But, we slowly made our way up the hill, driving cautiously around every blind curve, and finally made it to the campground. We checked in and asked the camp hosts how they’d managed to get up that hill with their fifth wheel, and they explained that they’d come in over the Foothills Parkway, although a few other people had mentioned the windy road. We eventually figured out that our trucker GPS wouldn’t let us on the Foothills Parkway because it’s closed to commercial vehicles, and the trucker GPS doesn’t let us go where commercial vehicles can’t go, even though we’re not a commercial vehicle. We talked to a few people in the campground who had rigs much larger than ours, and they assured us that the Foothills Parkway was a much easier way to access Look Rock, which turned out to be true when we left that way in the morning.
With just one night at Look Rock, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the campground. The campground is pristine, and we discovered that it had only been opened for about a week before we got there, after nine years of being closed. That explained why so many spots were available, which I don’t think will remain the case for long when people discover how nice it is. They’re still working on adding more sites on another loop, and it’s the only campground in the park with electric hookups, and I expect by the end of the summer they’ll be rediscovered. In the morning, we hiked to the Look Rock Tower, where we had awesome views of the entire area. We weren’t able to take the dogs because dogs are strictly banned from all of the trails in the park due to bears, but they didn’t mind a rest in the camper.
After a walk along the lake in the city of Kingston, and a stop at the city park, we plugged Look Rock Campground into our TomTom Trucker GPS and got on our way. All was well until we looked at what the GPS was showing us for the final approach to the campground, and realized it was a series of very tight switchback turns - exactly what we had hoped to avoid by booking in the park. But, we slowly made our way up the hill, driving cautiously around every blind curve, and finally made it to the campground. We checked in and asked the camp hosts how they’d managed to get up that hill with their fifth wheel, and they explained that they’d come in over the Foothills Parkway, although a few other people had mentioned the windy road. We eventually figured out that our trucker GPS wouldn’t let us on the Foothills Parkway because it’s closed to commercial vehicles, and the trucker GPS doesn’t let us go where commercial vehicles can’t go, even though we’re not a commercial vehicle. We talked to a few people in the campground who had rigs much larger than ours, and they assured us that the Foothills Parkway was a much easier way to access Look Rock, which turned out to be true when we left that way in the morning.
With just one night at Look Rock, we spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the campground. The campground is pristine, and we discovered that it had only been opened for about a week before we got there, after nine years of being closed. That explained why so many spots were available, which I don’t think will remain the case for long when people discover how nice it is. They’re still working on adding more sites on another loop, and it’s the only campground in the park with electric hookups, and I expect by the end of the summer they’ll be rediscovered. In the morning, we hiked to the Look Rock Tower, where we had awesome views of the entire area. We weren’t able to take the dogs because dogs are strictly banned from all of the trails in the park due to bears, but they didn’t mind a rest in the camper.
After our walk to Look Rock, we headed for Cades Cove for the next two nights. Cades Cove was much busier than Look Rock, but the area is big enough that we didn’t feel like it was overrun with people. That afternoon we took a walk around the campground area on the horse trail and a nature trail, and didn’t even see anybody other than a few guides leading horse rides. We made plans to ride our e-bikes around the Cades Cove Loop Road, which goes to the original Cades Cove settlement the next day. We’d missed the day when they close the loop road to vehicles to allow bikes, so we were a little worried that we’d be in the way of cars, but that turned out to be a needless worry.
The bicycle ride around the Cades Cove Loop was a great way to see the park. After all the fuss about bears with the dogs, and garbage, and outside cooking, we really hoped we would see a bear…but we didn’t expect to see 12! We were barely on the loop when we would got stuck in a line of cars because somebody had pulled over to watch a mama bear and her three cubs, and had driven into the ditch and was blocking the road. With our bikes, we were able to scoot down the side of the road and see the bears, and we quickly realized that we were going to spend more time waiting behind cars than having to pull over to let cars pass. We rode the first half of the loop, stopping to look at all of the old buildings. We saw a few more bears, and some deer, and parked at the far end of the loop to do a hike to Abrams Falls, which was about 5 miles out and back. We saw a number of people on the trail, but we never felt like we were in a line of tourists like we had in Acadia. We were also really glad our bikes are e-bikes, because a five mile hike on top of an eleven mile ride might have been pushing it. As it was, the hike was beautiful, the falls were beautiful, and everything we saw along the trail was interesting.
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We got back from our Cades Cove Loop ride and loaded up the truck, ready to head towards Cumberland Gap the next day.