Kentucky To North Carolina and Big RED's Performance In The Smoky Mountains

Waynesville, NC.

56 deg partly cloudy, no wind.
Forecast = Mostly cloudy early with scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High around 75F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.


To get to the CG in North Carolina that Jim had made reservations at, would require us to travel over 200 miles yesterday, so we left Berea, KY about 9:50 and continued South on I-75. We had some construction, but nothing that delayed us much, so we made good time all the way down to Knoxville, TN. where we turned NE on the I-640 by-pass and took it around to the NE side of the city.

From there, we headed East on I-40 until it turned SE and took us into the Great Smoky Mountains. The road through the mountains was good and in spite of 50 mph speed limit for trucks, (that Jim maintained), and the 45 mph curves, we made good time, pulling into the Creekwood Farm RV Park  at 1:30, just 3 hours 40 minutes and 224 miles after we left Berea.

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A side note here.   This is the first time that Big RED has pulled Nora in the mountains. These mountains are no where near as big as the mountains out West, but Jim was quite impressed with Big RED's performance. He pulled Nora up almost all the grades in high gear, (in the "tow-haul mode" without needing to downshift), and because the transmission was in the "tow-haul mode" Jim only had to use the brakes sparingly down one steep downgrade.

Now, you need to know that Jim was not "pushing" Big RED to get to the top of the hill the fastest and didn't try to maintain a high speed going up the mountains.
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We've been to the Creekwood Farm RV Park before. It's a pretty nice park, located in a very scenic area. The folks running the park are supper nice and lead you to your site and help you get positioned. In the off season times, they give the Passport America discount but give a 10% GS discount all the time. (Jim didn't take any photos because right after getting Nora set up, it started raining, but he's planning on taking some today). The sites are kind of narrow, but the worst thing about this park is that all of the sites are at a right angle to the road, making it difficult for a large rig to make the turn into the pull-through sites or to back into one of the back-in sites.

If you go to the CG website and look at their map, you'll see what I mean.

We'll be staying here for 2 nights, so I'll post some photos of the park soon.

Did you know that Electric cars were introduced in 1896 and by the end of the century almost 50% of motorcars worldwide were electric? Yet, by 1905 80% of cars were petrol driven and by 1920 the electric car was, well, almost history.

Woof!!!