The East Coast

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Well, we've been camping for the past several days and haven't had internet access. So, consequently we haven't been able to make blog updates. However, the campground we're in today and tomorrow has wi-fi, and we're right behind the main building, so we've got a good signal. So here's the low-down on where we've been...


We drove from the Nashville area to Great Smoky Mountain NP, where we camped overnight. The camping in this park was slightly more rustic then some other national parks we'd been in (there were no showers available), but overall the site was fine. There are black bears in the park, so we had to take precautions in closing up for the night. But this is to be expected.
We took a hike on a trail around the camping area, but it didn't go far and didn't have any sort of views of the mountains. So drove out to some of the overlook areas.

Overall, I'd say that (from what we saw) this park is on par with Yosemite, but certainly wasn't as spectacular as the Grand Canyon. But that's a pretty high bar to reach for.


The park straddles the state line between TN & NC, and one of the overlook points was actually on the line. The camping area that we were in was actually a little below the state line, so we were actually camping in North Carolina. The road through the park was long and windy, and of course full of tourists that were constantly overheating their brakes on the grades. It was almost 25 miles from the entrance to the camping area, all of it on slow roads.

We went into town for dinner and were somwhat surprised to find that Gaitlinburg (which is right on the north entrance to the park) was a jumping little town, with all sorts of stores, restaurants, attractions, and people all over the place. We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, walked through a shopping mall and various shops on the main street, played miniature golf (I won 😊 and got ice cream at a Ben & Jerry's store. Then it was back to the camping area for the night.

The next day we got up fairly early, packed up, and headed north and east. We arrived in Virginia Beach mid afternoon, were we camped at First Landing State Park. Aside from frequent naval flight operations nearby (the F-18s were constantly flying around), the park was pretty nice. It had nice bathrooms and clean, spacious showers, which we took advantage of after setting up the tents and before going to look for dinner. The park was literally right on the beach as well, so it was pretty obvious why the park camp sites filled up on the weekends. We had dinner at a nice on-the-beach seafood place (I wish I could recall the name of it). Parking was an issue, so we actually had DarkStar valet parked. I'm not sure what the guy must have thought when he got in it and found it full of...a lot of crap... But I didn't ask either...


The next day, we went to a pancake house for breakfast, then went to a nearby aquarium. It wasn't as big as the Monterey Sea Aquarium, but they had rays, skates, sea turtles, sharks, otters, etc. It was still pretty neat.



After leaving the aquarium, we went to the beach. The place was packed, but built a sand castle, played in the water, lost a pair of sunglasses, etc. It was all good fun. Then it was time to head out. I wanted to stay two nights at First Landing, but was unable to get a site for two nights. So we crossed the Bay Bridge-Tunnel and went to another state park on the north side of the mouth of the bay. We got there just as it started to rain (the weather had been so nice earlier!), so we held off on setting up the tents for moment. Rather, we drove north a little bit looking for a place to get dinner. We found a small restaurant in Cape Charles, which had pretty good crab raviolis. Anyway, when we finally made it back to the campground, the rain had largely stopped. So we set up the tents in the dark, went far a walk along the beach, and got ready for bed.

That brings us up to this morning. We packed up and left by around 10:00, then drove north up the penninsula. We crossed over into Maryland, then across the north part of the bay and finally made it to a campground outside of Washington DC, out toward Annapolis. This place is a KOA, so its more expensive then the national and state parks were. On the other hand, it has wi-fi. We'll be here for two nights. Tomorrow morning we're going to take a Metro train into the city and do touristy things. Hopefully we'll have an extensive update then...

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