Back in the USA – Part II

Post by Cynthia; Photos by Bobby

The end of our high-end living, staying in KOAs and whatnot, began after we left Charlottesville.

We wanted to get some time in on the TransAmerica Trail – the TAT. Per Wiki, the TAT is roughly 5,000 miles of roads that provide a way to cross the US using a minimum of paved roads. It’s used primarily by motorcycles and off-road vehicles (which we technically are). In the East, often the roads are forest service roads. The TAT was originally created running from East Tennessee to Western Oregon, but was informally expanded from the east coast, and we picked it up in Virginia.

Maps for the TAT can be obtained, but sometimes they aren’t always the most accurate. We definitely had some starts, stops and turnarounds along the way. And signs that were sometimes ominious…

And one put up by someone with a rather odd sense of humor …

But the views were well worth it as we meandered through some little dirt country roads.

But sometimes it was a little less worth it, such as when we viewed this mud puddle.

We wound up having to put the truck into 4-wheel drive to get out of this one, and once we did we wound up going another mile down the road only to discover … a dead end. Map Failure. So we turned around and as we went through it from the other side there was a loud crunch.

And that’s the story of how we ended up getting real under armor on the truck instead of the little plastic covering the manufacturer put on.

We eventually wound up passing through Burke’s Garden, Virginia, the highest valley in the state, renowned for its fertility. We thought it was beautiful. We aren’t really scouting for places to settle down someday, but I will admit that we did look up some real estate listings in the area.

Back on the trail, we continued our scenic drive.

We camped at the Hungry Mother State Park, so named for a rather horrifying story of a mother and daughter who escaped a Native American raid and wandered until the mother collapsed. When the child was rescued the only words she could say were, “Hungry Mother.” They found her mother dead and named the mountain and creek after her.

Despite that fun fact, there were lovely wild flowers to see, none of which we have researched the identity of for you, so all I can offer are some pictures.

We took a walk around the lake and enjoyed seeing some ducks.

And this black duck, significantly larger than the rest, seemed to stay on shore and watch over everyone. We think he is an American Black Duck mix – they seem to regularly interbreed with mallards.

We then planned to stay at the Unaka Mountain Overlook campground (a former campground on top of a mountain) near Erwin, Tennessee in the Cherokee National Forest. We wound our way up the mountain, set up camp and went back down into town for a meal.

We had some great BBQ at Hawg-n-Dawg (which we just learned closed, which is a shame). The owner – a former Nashvillian – looked at us a little funny when we told him where we camped and said to be careful, there was some weather coming in. But we felt like pros at this camping thing and didn’t give it a second thought.

We go back to our camper and as night falls, the wind started rocking us pretty good. We knew we were technically ok – the camper can withstand much heavier gusts than we were expecting. But it felt like a hurricane from inside. And we quickly realized I wasn’t going to get a lick of sleep.

So we packed it up (in record time) in the middle of the pouring rain and got off that mountain. We made it to a hotel in Asheville and the following day headed to Harrah’s in Cherokee for a little bit of gaming time before ending up back in Nashville in time for Halloween!