Rain Rain Rain

As for our time in the park...it started raining around midnight on Saturday and didn't quit. Sometimes it was raining so hard that I couldn't get back to sleep because the pounding on the rain fly was so loud. It let up a little bit right when we got up so that we were able to stay dry for the most part while we cooked some breakfast and made some coffee. But then it picked right back up again. Most of the people that had camped the previous night had all packed up and left, so we had first choice of campsites that were remaining for our Sunday night stay. So, in the rain, we packed everything that we could into the truck wherever it would fit and left the tent all constructed. We picked it up by the poles and walked it down the road about six sites. I was cracking up the entire time. I can't imagine what we must have looked like jogging this 5-man tent that's all set up down the road. It saved the hassle once we got it there, but I'm sure we looked absolutely ridiculous!

We spent the next hour or so setting everything back up again and it was absolutely pouring on us the entire time. Who said camping was fun!?! This is a pain in the butt, we're filthy, soaked...are we having fun yet? We finally got everything put up and got in the truck and headed out to see the park. Of course, almost as soon as we got into the truck, the rain stopped. Go figure.

The Roaring Fork Nature Trail is a driving trail that you can get on from Gatlinburg. We figured that our best bet for the day would probably be a driving tour since the rain was kind of unpredictable and the weather station was talking about potential flooding. And the ranger that I talked to at the station thought that the view from the top would probably be too foggy to see much of anything. I'm sure it would have been beautiful! It's hard to describe what the park was like other than to say that it was very green! I imagine that it must rain there a lot because there are all sorts of waterfalls and everything is just covered in moss. There was one point on the way back down the trail that there was a really old mill on the edge of a river. We pulled over to take a better look at it. It was an old wood building with a water chute going down below the mill house in order to turn the wheel. We thought that the wheel had since been replaced just for looks because it didn't actually turn and it seemed too small to do much of anything. But we think the chute was mostly the original thing. Phill noticed that there was a removable piece of wood that served as a type of dam mechanism. When he pulled it out, the water really started churning out. We got out at one other spot to take a look at a river and to take some pictures. Of course, it started raining as soon as we got out of the car. But we hopped around on the rocks a little bit and played in the river until we started getting too wet from the rain. We had thought about doing a hike, but we were really hungry and tired of being drenched.

Once we came out of the trail, we drove into Pigeon Forge to get a few groceries before heading back to the campsite. On our way back, we spotted a black bear on the side of the road trying to get into a soda bottle. Although it was neat to see him, I was glad we didn't see any others on the way to our site. The only other wildlife we saw was a whole bunch of wild turkeys. One was a male that was really fluffing himself up a lot to impress a hen that was nearby. She didn't seem to notice he was even there.

Got back to our campsite and cooked hobo meals and had our first real camp dinner. It was delicious! Sat around by the fire for a bit until it started raining again and we retired to the tent. It rained all night long. Since we were so close to the river, I woke up several times throughout the night to make sure we weren't going to float away in the river.

Packed all of our stuff away soaked and headed toward Kentucky.