Desination

 We’re here.

“Here” is the Cove, or the Billy Graham Training Center. 1200 acres of mountainous wooded land just outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  This is a beautiful campus nestled under the Blue Ridge Mountains containing conference center buildings, a chapel, lodges, and miles of trails through the woods connecting the various buildings.

We are parked on a full-hookup campsite reserved for camper volunteers, one of four campsites next to their maintenance facility.  Two other couples will be working with us, Mike and Bonnie, and Steve and Brenda.  We arrived last, and backed our little RV in next to the others’ 5th-wheel campers.  We’re definitely the smaller rig of the bunch.

Still not really sure what we will be doing; we’ll find that out soon.  We have a meeting tomorrow at 10:00 with the gang.

We are the newbies; the others have been at this for a couple years and six years.  So they know what to expect.  We’re sort-of clueless.

This morning we took another small detour and drove through Smoky Mountain National Park since we were pretty close anyway.  The route in brought us through Pigeon Forge, which was just like I remembered it from many years ago: a super wide road with three lanes of traffic in either direction flanked by every imaginable form of entertainment.  Only now it’s considerably amped up.  A dozen miles or so of constant traffic and touristy attractions.  The cheap hotels from many years ago have given way to a high rise building with King Kong clinging to the side of it, grasping an airplane.  Across the street sits the Titanic.  Next to that is a large three-story building, complete with stately Corinthian columns, built upside down, including the fake landscaping.  A whole block dedicated to the family feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.  And on and on.

Fortunately, there is a bypass around Gatlinburg, which is Pigeon Forge compressed into two lanes with the same amount of traffic.  We gratefully took the bypass and stopped at the Sugarlands Visitor Center to pick up a trail map.  9:30 in the morning and this place is already getting busy.  I can’t imagine what this is like in the busy season.

Several of the popular destinations were still closed for the winter, so we drove up to Newfound Gap to hike the Appalatian Trail for a ways.  Parking lot here was already filling up and it appeared that most of the people were taking a hike north on the trail, or just stopping to take a picture.

We hiked south.  The only people on this section of the trail were the thru-hikers with full packs on.  This section of the trail was challenging, as it either ascended steeply or descended steeply at times, and had lots of roots to scramble over.  It was hard enough to navigate this while lightly loaded.  Add a 50-pound pack and you would have to choose your steps pretty carefully.

Air temperature up here at 5100 feet was 33 degrees, but the wind sweeping over the ridge made it feel colder.  There was even a little snow greeting us along the trail in the shadows.

We hiked a little over a mile and a half of the trail before turning around.  1.5 miles down, 2000 to go.  Probably won’t finish this summer.

The parking lot was quite full when we got back to the RV, including many cars that just parked in the RV spaces.  While eating lunch, I saw several cars drive up, a few people get out, those same people get back in, and leave.  Total time parked: about three minutes.  Some of the passengers didn’t even get out of the car and I observed one passenger just spend the entire time on her phone as this was one of the few places with any cell service.

On the way down the mountain through Cherokee, Deb did her usual sudden “Stop There!” trick, pointing to a roadside stand.  I think I did a rather admirable job of taking five tons of hurtling mass down from 60 miles per hour to near zero in a short amount of space, just enough to hit the gravel pot holes in the driveway.  No damage, though, and we pulled up in front of the stand that advertised boiled peanuts.

This was our unique snack for the day, something I’ve never had.  Deb said they were a bit mushier than she remembered from years ago, and I was still trying to wrap my brain around peanuts that didn’t crunch.

We arrived in Asheville late afternoon and stopped to pick up some items to fix the RV: an aerator for the sink and a bolt for our broken step. We were hoping this section of town was bike-able but found out that it doesn’t appear at all bike-friendly, so we’ll have to take the RV on grocery runs.

Then on to the Cove.  The entrance gate here is manned 20 hours a day by a county sheriff deputy, so I guess you can say we are camping in a gated community.

We set up, made dinner, and then took a walk on some of the trails.  Very nicely laid out trail system, some following the creek that runs through the property, others connecting the various buildings.  We stopped to read the plaques placed periodically along the trails, plaques with Bible verses on them.  Great reminders of God’s care for us and provision for us.

I imagine this place is quite spectacular in the fall when the leaves are turning color.  Right now some of the trees are just starting to bud out, there are trilliums starting to bloom, and some of the landscaping around here is just starting to come to life.  We saw one grouping of tulips that was just starting to bloom.

On RVing

No story would be complete without something to fix, and here I am, fixing the broken step.  Fortunately it was just a screw that came out of a linkage.  Unfortunately, the one I bought at Lowe's in Asheville was too short, so that will involve a second trip at some point.  Fortunately, it's an easy fix.