Smokemont Campground (June 20-23)

This campground is in Great Smoky Mountain National Park and has Bradley Fork running thru it. If you are looking for a quiet secluded getaway, this is probably not what you're looking for, at least not while school is out. It is a popular spot for families and tubing on the river. We enjoyed fishing it, but had to hike and get away from the campground. We were not well prepared for the amount of water in the river, so our success was limited. John thinks we needed to have larger flies, which was pointed out by some locals we talked to. It was quite rainy, but that's not unusual for the Smokies. We were unable to fish at all on Thursday, so we hiked the Bradley Fork trail to the bridge and checked out places to get in and out of the river to fish for next time.

It is about 90 miles here from Trackrock, and just north of Cherokee, NC. There are no hookups in the park, but the MH worked great for dry camping. We ran the generator each day to recharge the house batteries. We also filled the fresh water tank for dish washing and to operate the toilet.

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Smoky Mt. Nat. Park (June 8)

We took off early and headed up Rt. 129 including the famous "Tail of the Dragon" which is a motor cycle challenge. This is not a route we would choose to drive the motorhome. We planned to fish the Little River near Elkmont Campground, but just as we started to fish, a storm came through and chased us off the water. We stopped at Sugarlands Visitor Center to wait out the storm, then headed back over Newfound Gap. We stopped at the spot on Walker Camp Prong, where we fished last week and Joan managed to catch two nice rainbows while all John could do is watch. We made it back to Trackrock about 9:00 PM after driving 250 miles. We love the Smokies, but will use the southern part more in the future.

Smoky Mt. National Park (June 1)

We joined our friend Steve from Trout Unlimited for a day of fly fishing in the park. We decided on Walker Camp creek north of Clingman's Dome on Rt 441. It was gorgeous here and we actually caught several nice, wild rainbows and brook trout. The fish here in the park are mostly small which makes Joan's nine inch brookie a near trophy trout. The weather was perfect and while the lower elevations were in the nineties, we enjoyed being in the seventies.

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Lake Chatuge (May 30)

Our neighbors here at Trackrock invited us to join them on their boat for some fishing and tubing with their seven beautiful children. We had a great day with them and appreciated being included.

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