Friday, July 12
Still in Tennessee, from Montgomery Bell State Park to Douglas Headwaters TVA Campground.
It was supposed to be a long drive day (3:40 or so), an it turned out to be VERY long and very painful. Getting to the interstate was easy, but there were innumerable slowdowns before Nashville and rough driving. We planned to stop at a rest area on the east side of Nashville, but it was the tiniest rest area we ever saw and the truck parking was completely full. We pulled off and had to pull right back on again.
A little further down the road there was a truck parking area created where a weigh station had been closed. It sucked but served the purpose just fine for a quick dog walk, sprite and cigarette stop. I ate my own lunch on the road.
Driving through Nashville on I-40 is always a pain, because in order to stay on the road you have to go left, then right, then left, then right...or is that right, then left? You'd think that you could go through a city on a major Interstate Highway without changing lanes repeatedly, but not this city. Nowadays, they've mostly improved driving through big cities by marking the lanes with paint on the ground telling which ones were which roads, but that wasn't enough to fix this mess.
We got through without incident but then there was more traffic and hills, lots of hills. Hills slow us down, a lot. And then--oh, stupid of stupid--I let google take us on one of its stupid shortcuts through a neighborhood when the main road, the one suitable for RVs, only went a mile further around. that was scary and sucky and I am very, very angry that I missed what it was doing. Blah!
We made it, and the place, Douglas Headwaters Camp by the TVA, was very nice. It looked and felt almost exactly like a Corp. Of Engineers camp except no big chunky wooden covered picnic tables. The spacing of campsites was good but could have been better. They were very flat and open, and we had a decent view of the lake even though I didn't choose one of the lakeside sites. I think they were all booked up.
No view from our campsite, but at the boat ramp you could see the Smoky Mountains in the distance.
Across the road there was a one-mile wooded trail that Molly and I took both on Friday and on Saturday. No birds but lots of squirrels. About as boring as a trail could be except, of course, it was a trail. In the woods. (Which is never boring)
It was awfully hot that day. We also took a walk on the road past the "Danger do not enter!" barricade on the road, you could walk down to a nice view of the dam. So we did it, twice.
There were robins galore and a lot of the usual birds but nothing exciting. Eastern Kingbirds all over. Lots of vultures on the dam.
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