NC Mountains 2014 - Days 19 & 20

Day 19 - Tuesday  8/26/14 This morning we had to wear a light jacket when we did our walk as the temperature was 57 degrees. Some of the trees have some fall color in them and the thoughts are it is going to be an early Fall in the Smokies.

We went to Bakersville NC about 18 miles from the campground to The Dellinger Grist Mill on Cane Creek. A music group called The Dellinger Gang sang and played music from 2-5PM. We decided to go early to have time to look around the mill before the crowd got there. We arrived at 10:30AM and was the first visitors to arrive. The current owner Jack Dellinger was there setting up things so we got to talk to him. He is a fourth generation miller. After retiring from IBM he returned to the mountains and restored the mill that had sat idle for more than 40 years. He spent 3 years getting it operating again. Now he grinds corn meal, grits and polenta using the same equipment that his father, grandfather and great-grandfather used. When he worked at IBM he was a Electrical Engineer doing computer programming work on the NASA Saturn/Apollo Space Program which placed the astronauts on the moon.

The drummer for the group, Eddie Graham, was the drummer for Elvis Presley for a few years. I could see why Elvis hired him - he was very good. He also has played for many other big name entertainers plus heading up his own bands.

We really enjoyed the day. Great entertainment and the price was right - free but for the first time in the 6 years they have done this, the mill owner passed around a bucket to collect money for the band members plus all water sales went to the band.

Day 20 - Wednesday 8/27/14 Well Happy Birthday to me. We did our normal morning walk followed by breakfast then drove South on the Blue Ridge Parkway to an area called Little Switzerland for lunch at the Little Switzerland Café. We ate here a couple of years ago and they had really good sandwiches. They didn’t disappoint us today either - very good. Then we went next door to a book/coffee shop and had a latte and cappuccino.

From there we drove back North on the parkway and stopped at The Historic Altapass Orchard. We had heard there would be a music jam session going on there. The music was good. While we were waiting for the music to start Lena checked out the things for sale and found that their pint jars of honey sold for $18. We have bought three pint jars from our campground neighbor for $6 each which is about the going price for pure honey from the bee keepers in most places we have purchased it.

Then we returned to the campground and read to almost dark. We packed up all the outside stuff in preparation for leaving here tomorrow. We will be going to Doughton Park near milepost 240 on the parkway for 4 days so this might be the last post for a few days as we will probably not be able to get a cell phone signal there to allow us to get on the Internet.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 17 & 18

Day 17 - Sunday 8/24/14 We had just finished our morning walk when it began to drizzle rain. I cooked bacon on the grill again while Lena cooked blueberry pancake inside. At 10:30AM I attended church with about 30 other campers here in the campground at the pavilion. Harold the owner of the campground (along with his wife Fran) played the bass guitar, another man played the rhythm guitar and a lady played banjo and two ladies sang a few songs and then the group sang a couple before the preacher spoke.

It drizzled rain on and off about all day with a high temp of 70 degrees so we read most of the afternoon. One of the books I read (that Lena had already read) was Cruising Panama’s Canal by Sunny Lockwood. We have a desire to someday take a full transit cruise through the Panama Canal and this book made the desire even stronger. If you have never taken a cruise this book give a good insight to what it is like to take a cruise.

Day 18 - Monday  8/25/14 We did our morning walk in the 63 degree morning refreshing air then had breakfast. Later we drove to Spruce Pine to get a few groceries and we stopped at McDonald’s to use their WiFi and eat lunch. The campground WiFi is really slow - about the only negative for this campground.

Later in the day I built a campfire and cooked my “almost” famous Skillet Sausage and Potatoes. It consist of potatoes, onions, sausage, squash, zucchini and seasoning all cooked in a cast iron oven over a camp fire. Lena cooked some okra and sliced some of the homemade bread we got a few day ago. Wow that was good. After supper we did an evening walk and talked to some of the other campers and bought two more pints of the honey from the camper next door. This is really good honey. We found out he has cut back to only 12 hives but their son has 200 hives in Louisiana.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 15 & 16

Day 15 - Friday  8/21/14 After our morning walk we discovered we did not have any hot water flow from any faucets - have normal flow from the cold water side. I knew from reading about other Tiffin motor home owners having the same problem that we had a bad check valve on the hot water heater output water line. I had to borrow a socket from the campground owner to remove the drain plug to get the water out of the heater. I removed the check valve and removed the internal spring and re-installed the check valve and all was well. I will get a new one and install it later.

After lunch we drove to a local farm cheese shop to get some local home made cheese. Then we stopped at a couple of roadside produce stands to get some fresh fruit and produce. Also got some Amish made molasses. On the way we saw a sign for fresh baked sourdough bread so we stopped and they said it would be ready in 45 minutes. We left and got a few groceries and returned in 1 hour and they had just removed the bread from the oven - it was still warm when we got back to the campground. We poured some of the honey we bought from a neighbor here in the campground over a couple slices - mmmmm good.

The temps here are still in the 60’s at night and low 80’s mid day - sure is nice.

Day 16 - Saturday  8/23/14 After our morning walk I cooked bacon on the griddle on the grill. I hope this will help season the griddle so the food will not stick. This will be a quite and relaxing day. We had a shower of rain after breakfast but now the sky is clear and the sun is out. I worked on some of my pyrography crafts and Lena make a batch of homemade salsa. We like it better than the store bought salsa. The afternoon consisted of reading, napping and eating followed by watching the NASCAR race at Bristol TN which is not too far from where we are. Even with a lot of the weekend campers here this is still a really quite campground.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 13 &14

Day 13 - Wednesday 8/20/14 It was 63 degrees again this morning when we did our morning walk. Yesterday the temps only got to the upper 60’s unlike at home. Our son called and said it was 93 degrees there yesterday.

After breakfast we decided to do some more exploring the area. We drove through some beautiful mountain scenery and ended up at Roan Mountain State Park in Tennessee. We checked out their campground which has been renovated recently and was a really nice campground. One that we plan to come back to in the future to stay a week or so. We left the park and found a local café and got a really good and BIG mushroom swiss burger. On the way back to our campground we saw a sign for Elk River Falls so we drove down the back road to find it. It was at the very end of the road. The trail up to the falls was in very poor condition and kind of dangerous near the best view area so we didn’t get to see it from the best viewing point but didn’t want to risk a broken leg either so we took the best photos we could and left. We returned to our campground mid afternoon and relaxed and read the remainder of the day.

Day 14 - Thursday  8/20/14 This morning we walked a trail that goes up the hill behind the campground that the owners of the campground told us about. The land is part of their property. At the end of the trail it overlooks the North Toe River that runs beside the campground.

We decided to not do any exploring today. I worked on some of my woodworking crafts. I don’t bring any of my lathes but do on occasion bring some of my pyrography work or other small things I can bring with me. Lena did some reading and played games on her kindle. I cooked our supper on the grill. Then I tried my luck at fishing in the pond in the campground but the fish must have already ate supper because no one was catching anything.

When we were sitting outside in the evening we talked about how we understand why people come here and stay all summer. The campground is really nice, grounds are very well cared for and the scenery is really nice surrounding the grounds and the sounds of the North Toe River on one side of the campground is soothing. The people that spend the season here are very friendly and the gently cool breezes are the icing on the cake. It is really quite but probably will be a little busier this weekend.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 11 & 12

Day 11 - Monday 8/18/14   It rained during the night and was still raining when we got up but it stopped after breakfast and we walked around the campground. Then we got the camera and drove to Linville Falls and walked up the trail to view the falls. The trail is rated as moderate but the morning rain made the rocks slippery so we had to be careful. The falls were beautiful unlike any we had seen. At one point all the water rushed through a fairly narrow break in the massive rocks. The trail was about 2 miles round trip. Then we did some more exploring in the area and checked out two  privately owned campgrounds in the area plus the Linville Falls National Park campground. We didn’t like either of the private campground Linville Falls Trailer Lodge and Campground and Bear Den Campground. Linville Falls National Park Campground would be nice if the Parks service had the budget to improve it. But like all the National Parks campgrounds along the Blue Ridge Parkway they were build many years ago before people started using large travel trailers, 5th wheel campers and large motor homes. Therefore they are mostly vacant because the sites are so small. We could get our 40’ motor home in two of the sites at Linville Falls if we were careful.

We returned to our campground and relaxed for awhile before I grilled some pork chops for supper. The camper next to us has honey for sale so Lena purchased a pint from them. We like to purchase our honey directly from the beekeeper since it is not watered down like some of the commercial honey found in grocery stores.

Day 12 - Tuesday 8/19/14  Today was a relaxing day. We did our morning walk, then I cooked country ham and eggs on the griddle on our Weber grill for breakfast. We recently sold the Weber 200 grill we had and purchased the smaller Weber 1000 grill that had a split grate. We also bought the griddle that fits on one side of the grill after removing one half of the grate. This will allow us to cook more meals outside on the grill.

The remainder of the day was relaxing, reading and talked to some of the other campers in the campground and taking an afternoon walk. One of the other campers told us about the flood in 2004 that totally washed out the campground. The North Toe River flows down one side of the campground and it overflowed its banks and destroyed the campground but the owners rebuilt it.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 9 & 10

Day 9 - Saturday 8/16/14 After our morning walk we walked up to TJ’s Café to get a country ham and egg breakfast. The slice of ham was not a big as Thursday’s but still good.

Today’s entertainers were: Cody Shuler & Pine Mountain Railroad, Tony Holt & The Wildwood Valley Boys, The Little Roy & Lizzy Show, The Moron Brothers, Jimmy Fortune (of the famed - now retired Statler Brothers) and Daley & Vincent. Little Roy is Little Roy Lewis of the famous gospel singing family The Lewis Family. He is a very good musician and a cutup on stage. Jimmy Fortune performed then Daley & Vincent and then Jimmy Fortune joined Daley & Vincent and put on a fantastic performance. Barbara Fairchild was in the audience and came onstage for a song with Jimmy Fortune and Darrin Vincent.

After watching the entertainers for three days I believe they enjoy performing as much as the audience does listening to them. They all seems so happy onstage as they sang and played their music.

Day 10 - Sunday 8/17/14 We did our morning walk, ate our Blueberry Pancakes and bacon breakfast and packed up and departed about 11AM for a 30 mile drive to our next stop, Secluded Valley Campground near Newland NC. About 5 miles of the drive up hwy 221 from Marion to just past the Blue Ridge Parkway is a climb of over 1000’ but we didn’t have any problem. We did this climb two years ago but it didn’t seem as bad today - I guess we are getting accustomed to it. The campground is at about 2700’ elevation so temperature is a little cooler - about 77 when we arrived about 12 noon. We set up in site #2. The CG is nice - 60 sites around a nice pond that is stocked with fish. One side of the CG backs up to the North Toe River. The CG is owned by a man and wife team and they keep it really clean. Several of the sites are seasonal - meaning they are rented for several months at a time. We usually don’t stay at a CG that has lots of seasonal sites because they are normally junky looking but this one is not. We talked to one of the people that has a seasonal site after we arrived. He said that this was a nice quite CG, very family oriented and everyone looked out for each other.

I cooked a rack of ribs in the Dutch Oven for supper, while Lena fixed corn on the cob and butterbeans. Mumm good. Tomorrow we will explore the area.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 7 & 8

Day 7 - Thursday 8/14/14 We did our morning walk and decided to eat breakfast at TJ’s café. I got a country ham and egg biscuit. The slice of ham was almost twice the size of the biscuit and about 1/8” thick, Nothing like what you get at McDonalds and it was only $2.50 with free coffee.

I forgot to mention that the owner of the RV lot that we had rented but canceled, called Tuesday and he is refunding out $100 deposit. We did not expect a refund but are glad to get it.

Today is the first day of the 40th North Carolina Bluegrass Festival. The entertainers today are: Joe Mullins & The Radio Ramblers, The Marksmen, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Russell Moore & Third Time Out, Rhonda Vincent & The Rage and Gene Watson & The Farewell Party Band. It started at 12 noon and ended about 11PM. All the groups sang bluegrass and gospel with the exception of Gene Watson who is primarily a country singer with some gospel mixed in. He and Rhonda Vincent sang several songs together.

Day 8 - Friday 8/15/14 We did our walk and had breakfast, then Lena drove back into town to get some more of the great breakfast sausage that we mentioned earlier. We want to stock up before we leave her Sunday and today will be our last chance since it is usually gone by Saturday.

Tonight’s entertainers are: Appalachian Express, The Primitive Quarter, Goldwing Express, The Gibson Brothers, The Seldom Scene and Nothin’ Fancy. We enjoy all the entertainers but Goldwing Express is a little different. They are made up of the father and his three sons which are ½ Creek Indian. Their mother was Creek Indian and died 15 years ago from cancer. They put on a good show and the father has a lot of corny jokes he works into their show. He is also an ordained minister. At the end of their show they always pay a tribute to all the military and have all the military present to come down to aisle while everyone sing God Bless America. This year they have a 12 boy with them that plays a mean mandolin and also plays fiddle. Last year he played a couple of songs with them but this year he played the whole show.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 5 & 6

Day 5 - Tuesday 8/12/14 We were able to do our morning walk today as the weather was clear for a change. After breakfast we decided to go to the Blue Ridge Parkway and “play tourist”. We visited the Folk Art Center just outside Asheville. If you have never visited the center you owe it to yourself to visit it. There is all kinds of hand made products from craft people in the Smokey Mountain area. As I walked in I saw a man that I was familiar with. He is a full time wood turner that has visited/demonstrated at the woodturning club that I am a member of. He was demonstrating at the center to the people visiting there. I talked to him a few minutes before he had to go to lunch. He had some beautiful woodturnings on display. We departed the center and slowly drove North on the parkway. After a few miles we departed the parkway and drove to Weaverville to find a wood supplier I had been told about. We spotted a café in town called Creperie and Café and decide to check it out. We ordered the Chocolate Tropics Crepe. It had whipped crème, strawberries and orange slices and of course chocolate. Yummy!! I told the waitress the story about a waiter in France criticizing me on how I pronounced the word Crepe. After leaving the café we found the wood supplier and I purchased a few pieces of wood. Then we returned to the parkway and continued on up to the milepost 340 area and checked out a couple of campgrounds near Burnsville before returning to the campground.

Chocolate Tropics Crepe

Day 6 - Wednesday 8/13/14 After our morning walk and breakfast we mostly relaxed and read the remainder of the day, except for checking our a couple of the stores nearby. Our area of the campground has 65 of the 66 sites occupied  and the area near the pavilion that has about 400 sites is almost full. After supper I rode my bicycle around the  campground and stopped at several of the campsites that were having jam sessions. Some of the amateur musicians were very good.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 3 & 4

Day 3 - Sunday 8/10/14 It rained most of the prior evening and night but as of 10AM it is not raining at the moment. We are glad we have a site with a concrete parking pad and patio so we don’t have mud around us. Lena cooked blueberry pancakes for breakfast and we use the sourwood honey on them. Very good. We drove to Lowe’s and Big Lots to pick up a couple of items as it began to mist rain again.

At 4PM I went to the Pavilion to get our wrist bands for the festival. The promoters are trying something new this year with the seating. You bring your own seat and in prior years you could put it out when you arrived at the campground. This year I had to get in one line and sign my name and the number of chairs beside the next number on a legal pad. Then get in another line and get the wristbands and then stand around as the promoter read down the list and gave out a little card with your number on it. Then tomorrow at 10AM everyone comes back with your chairs and your number card and when your number is called you put your chair in the available position of your choice. This is a dumb procedure in my opinion. My recommendation would be to assign your number when you purchase your tickets and when you pick up your wrist band you also get the pre-assigned number. Most people purchase their tickets online so the numbers should be assigned in the order the tickets were purchased. We purchased our tickets 11/25/13 for this years festival.

It continued to drizzle rain the remainder of the day.

Day 4 - Monday 8/11/14 It was not raining when we got up for a change. About 9:30AM a lady that writes interview articles for Roughing It Smoothly magazine came up to our site and asked if she could interview us for the magazine. After the interview her husband came and photographed us in front of the MH with our “toad”. The magazine is for Tiffin Motor Home owners and it is a quarterly magazine. She had just taken over the interviewing job from a lady that is retiring. The January 2015 issue is supposed to have our interview - we will see.

Then we went to the pavilion to put our chairs in place when our number (#137) was called. This process could use some major tweaking also. Then it was off to Wal-Mart for some groceries followed by a stop at MoonDoggy’s Diner and Soda Fountain. This is a ‘50s style diner in Marion that we have ate at before. They have very good food and the place is decorated with lots of 50s memorabilia.

Mid afternoon I got a call from the service center office that UPS had delivered a package for us. It was a Shade-Pro awning drop that we had ordered. It attaches to our main awning and comes down to about 2 feet from the ground and blocks the hot sun rays but you can still see through it and get a breeze through it. The bottom 7 feet zips off before the awning is rolled up for travel. We quickly installed it and it looks nice and will keep us cooler when setting outside while the sun is out.

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 1 & 2

Day 1 - Friday 8/8/14      We departed at 6:24AM for our much anticipated annual trip to the N.C. Mountains. Our first stop is Tom Johnson’s RV Center and campground in Marion N.C. to attend the N.C. Bluegrass/Gospel Festival that will start next Thursday 8/14/14 and run three days. We arrived at 1PM and checked in. I had called a few days ago about getting a N.C. state inspection on the motor home when we arrived and before we set up in our site. While they were doing the inspection we ate lunch at TJ’s Café in the service center. They always have a good fish plate on Fridays for $6.00. They finished the inspection just as we were finishing up our lunch. Then we set up in our reserved site #35. We had this site in 2013 and booked it last year for 2014 when we were here. As long as we book it before October 1st of the year we can get this site for the festival the following year. This will be the 4th year we have attended the festival.

It had rained a slow drizzle for the last 2 hours of our drive. I had cleaned the motor home and car (“toad”) and they were nice and shiny when we left home but the rain fixed that. But if that is all the problems we have on a trip I won’t complain.

We drove into the town of Marion to a local (non-chain) grocery store to purchase some of their breakfast sausage. We discovered this store 3 years ago after eating breakfast at a local restaurant. We liked the sausage they served and asked the waitress where they got it, so she gave us directions to the grocery store. We found out today that it is made on Wednesday in the store and is sold out by Saturday each week. We purchased three 1 lb packages.

The rain had stopped by the time we returned to the campground so we set outside until about dark.

Day 2 - Saturday 8/9/14 After a morning walk and breakfast we drove to the Linville area to check out the RV site we had rented for 7 days after we leave here on the 17th. The site is located in Land Harbor, an area with lots of mountain vacation cottages, etc. The owner has three sites set up for Rvs. After checking out the site we decided to cancel our reservations. The streets up to the site had several low hanging small limbs that would have hit the top of our MH and then the narrow street to the RV site had a very sharp curve to the left just as we would have had to turn right into the site which was slightly uphill. I just did not feel comfortable that I could get the MH into the site without some possible problems/damage and I have put it into some fairly tight sites but nothing like this one. We will forfeit our $100 deposit but that might be cheaper than fixing possible damage. I have had a gut feeling ever since I reserved this site that something was not quite right - so my gut was right. Then we checked out another regular campground in the area as a possible replacement.

Afterwards we drove for several miles South on the Blue Ridge Parkway and then went to Black Mountain to checkout their Sourwood Festival. The temperature was 66 degrees on the parkway and in several places the fog was really bad. At the festival we listen to some of the entertainment and watched the cloggers and checked out some of the craft booths and bought some local sourwood honey before heading back to our CG just before the sky opened up again with rain and more rain.