Tennessee: Roan Highlands, Part One

March 25th to March 26th:

As soon as we arrived home from Door County, Julia took off for an Easter Egg Hunt that she has organized for many years.  I jumped in the Nissan truck and started driving south on my tenting/hiking trip.  I stayed overnight at a cheap Red Roof motel in Louisville, Kentucky and then continued on the next morning for another six hours before arriving at Roan Mountain State Park during the early afternoon. 

I wasn’t really sure what the campground would be like, so I was pleasantly surprised to find my tent site about six big steps from a beautiful creek on the side of the mountain.  That’s my truck and tent across the creek.

Add a picnic table, fire ring, on-site water spigot, tent pad, heated bathrooms, and hot showers–for $15/night, and sign me up again.  While the rv section of the campground was about half-full, I was the only one tent camping this early in the season.  A somewhat negative surprise  was that no alcoholic beverages were allowed in the campground. For someone used to camping in Wisconsin, that seemed almost anti-patriotic.  Fortunately, I didn’t learn about that prohibition until the day before I left, so I figured that I was “grandfathered,” more or less.  I imbibed in moderation. No harm, no foul.

On the afternoon of my arrival, I set up camp and hiked a couple of trails inside the campground that were on the other side of the creek and went up the mountain.  After stretching my legs for four or five miles, I ate a light dinner and turned in early.  By the time darkness arrived around 8 pm, the temperature dropped off quite a bit.  During the night, I pulled on a fleece sweater and put on my knit hat.  I won’t lie; I still got cold.  My twenty degree sleeping bag was not up to the task on the first night.  I tossed and turned a bit, knowing that I was returning to the Appalachian Trail in the morning and would be going up into the balds.