Plans are made to be broken

We left the Tallman's house this morning and headed toward Gatlinburg and Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee with news that we might encounter heavy rain. We stopped for gas about 40 miles from the park and Phill noticed that his wallet seemed a little smaller than normal. He realized that he had left his driver's license in the pocket of his motorcycle jacket at his parents' house in New York. So, we spent some time making some phone calls and figuring out where it was and how to get it to us. We finally decided that the best bet was to have it overnighted to the Faulkner's house in Hopkinsville, KY since that would be the last place that we would be at a residence for quite some time. However, our original plan had been to stay the night with them on Sunday and take off Monday morning, but the license couldn't be shipped until Monday morning. So, we decided to stay two nights at Smoky Mountain National Park instead. We figured we'd get to relax and camp and see more of the park anyhow.

Since Phill was without his license, I drove the remainder of the distance through Gatlinburg and into the park. The roads were terribly curvy with steep edges and no guard rail. I can't say that I was in love with it, but what are you going to do? Gatlinburg is the small, tourist town just outside the park. We were shocked at how busy and commercialized it was. Some of the shops reminded me of what you might find on Duvall Street in Key West, complete with Ripley's Believe It Or Not and a wax museum. They even had some amusement rides for children. It looked like a pretty happening place, but it just wasn't quite what we were looking for. We just wanted to get settled into our campsite, so we pretty much did the drive-by and that's about all we experienced of Gatlinburg. We heard later that there was a huge Coleman camping store. That might have been dangerous...

Right before we got into the park, I pulled off into a hotel parking lot to get a view of the mountains. We understand why these are called the Smoky Mountains now. The clouds sit right on top of them and into the valley and they're real whispy clouds. They look just like they're smoking. The fog gets real settled into them.

We finally got to our campsite around 8pm. The Elkmont campsite where we stayed had a great river view. We picked one that was on the river, but it was the very very tail end of the river, so it wasn't as great of a view as we might have hoped, but still beautiful. We set up our tent and ate what we could find in the small amount left in our cooler – hot dogs with cold english muffins as buns and chicken pot pie soup. However, we didn't have a pot to heat up the soup, so we used our coffee percolator, ha! It did the trick I guess, though it wasn't quite heated through right. I can't say tonight was our best night of eating.

They're threatening rain and thunderstorms tonight, so we have our rain fly up, but so far nothing but a little drizzle here and there.