Springtime in the Smokies

We reached our destination in North Carolina on Thursday evening. We left the ‘rancho’ on Wednesday and stayed the night at ‘Wally World’ in Milledgeville, GA. We stopped during the day to check out a small county park that is always advertising for camp hosts. It is a nice 2 year old park with nice facilities and it would be a good ‘cooler weather’ job.

Thursday after a hearty breakfast we were off again. Along the way we stopped again at two more parks. First was Lake Russell, a US forest service campground in north GA. The campground has two loops, no hookups, but restrooms with hot showers, of coarse the ‘Host Sites’ have full hookups. The lake is a small 260 acre, electric motors only site. It is located on the back side of a mountain ridge and seems pretty quiet. The next stop was a GA State Park, Moccasin Creek. A nice remote park, even though it wasn’t far from the town of Clayton. Nice manicured park on Lake Burton. The campground is flanked by a state fish hatchery which volunteers may also be assigned to work at. The host sites are right at the park entrance and back up on the state highway, which kind of detracts from the location if the highway turns out to be busy. There is just one bathhouse and an office/store so the assignment can’t be too difficult. We are lookin’ at doin’ some work campin’ and we are just checkin’ out some parks that have openings. All of the parks we visited we have never been to before. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, we just have to weigh the options. We still have some other locations to checkout if we can before we make a commitment.

Arrivin’ at our ‘Mountain’ home’ we were greeted by Gary, our friend who preceded us up the road by a couple o’ days. After unloadin’ the “Lance’ we all went to dinner at Smackers in Maggie Valley. Twenty five cent wings is what draws us back time and again.

Friday we started cutting and trimming trees, Linda is a ‘Slave Driver’. Thanks to Gary we got a lot done. He decided to head for home on Saturday, he has things to take care of at home before he and his wife head back up here for two weeks.

Saturday Linda and I were back at it cuttin’, and burnin’, we succeeded in gettin’ a lot done again. Damn near killed us both. We’ve worked longer in the last two days than we have in a long time, gonna’ need some Advil tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re headed over to Standing Indian Mountain to see if we can find some ‘Ramps’, ‘Leeks’ to all the northern folks. Our neighbor gave me some insight on where to look.

Gotta go fer now I here the pillow callin’ me.

Hope to see ya down the road as we’re;

Dancin’ on the Wind.