Heading for the Natchez Trace


We were up and at it this morning by 5:30 am…or maybe I should say that ‘I’ was up.  We wanted to beat the mass exodus from the KOA and from the Cherokee area.  We succeeded to a point.  Highway 441 was busy but nothing like it probably would have been later in the day.  Today was to be a day of driving and that is pretty much what it turned out to be.

We climbed for about 16 miles up through Great Smokey Mountain National Park to Newfound Gap.  We then descended for 16 miles where we were spit out into the city of Pigeon Forge.  What an experience this town was.  It is ‘theme park’ personified.  The entertainment ‘strip’ was at least 5 miles long.  It was non-stop ‘tacky’ entertainment from rides of all kinds, to cheap retail shops, to hotels and motels, to fast food places.  It made the strip in Niagara Falls seem small and ‘cultured’.  I realize that growing up close to a summer resort town has tainted my view of these places but this one was on a scale like we have never experienced before.

The rest of the day was spent on rural roads travelling through some of Tennessee’s farmland.  Lots of hay was being cut, raked, and baled.  Funny though, we saw very few cattle.

We are camping in Fall Creek Falls State Park halfway between Great Smokey Mountain National Park and Nashville.

Distance Traveled = 317 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Cardinal, Grey Squirrel, Red Squirrel, Flicker, Wild Turkeys, Chickadee, Cedar Waxwing, Elk.

P.S.  Today while borrowing the Wi-Fi at a McDonalds, we saw an outfit on a guy that would even make Bruce County boys take a second look.  The guy came in wearing American ‘Stars and Stripes’ shorts with cowboy boots and spurs!!!


Setting sun lights up the clouds above our campsite

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