Alaska 2015 - Day 77 - Kodak Tennessee - Cherokee North Carolina

Day 77 – 7-27-15 Monday We didn't have but 90 miles to drive today so we didn't leave Kodak Kentucky until about 10AM. We crossed the North Carolina border about an hour later and was glad to be back in our home state after 76 days on the road. We turned off I-40 at the Waynesville NC exit and followed US 19 to Happy Valley Campground in Cherokee NC, which is on the Cherokee Indian Reservation. I had forgot that US 19 is not a great route for a large RV but we made it okay. I should have taken US74 to Cherokee. We had made reservations for a week at this campground.

I checked in and was assigned site 227. When I got the motor home parked we decided we were not satisfied with the site. It was not quite long enough to get the front of the motor home out of the street as far as I wanted. We drove around the campground and found some suitable sites and went back to the office and had them reassign us to site 912, which was much better for us and we parked between two nice shade trees and on a nice new gravel parking pad.

Site 912

New "Retro" camper across the street

Since we are back in our home state and will be about 3 weeks before we get home I am going to call this the official end to our 2015 Alaska Trip. We had already scheduled a trip to the Smokey Mountains before we planned the Alaska trip so the route back down I40 worked out great for what we had already planned.

So to recap some statistics from out trip:

Departed May 12 - Returned to North Carolina July 27 (76 days)

Miles driven in Motor Home = 11,339

Miles driven in Jeep = 1,710

Gallons of diesel fuel = 1,481 for an average of 7.66 MPG - this would have been a little higher but we ran the generator 45 hours which also burns diesel fuel from the same tank on the motor home

Campground fees = $2,379.98 for an average of $31.17 @ night

We stayed at least one night in 14 different states and 3 Canadian Provinces

We took over 3,000 photographs

We got 6 rock chips in the windshield (all on good smooth roads in Canada – none in Alaska)

We were very blessed to not have any serious problems or damage to our motor home or Jeep, only a couple of minor inconveniences. We met a lot of nice people, saw a lot of wildlife and saw some really beautiful places.