Park Entrance
Got here On Sunday and stayed 5 nights. The weather the first part of the week was almost summerish (almost 80 F, 26 C) and ended almost winterish...it was actually freezing rain, semi hail yesterday. YUCK! Isn’t that why we left the cold frigging NORTH??
We were so impressed this park, nice campsites...big and relatively private. Clean, heated bathrooms and showers...very important yesterday when it was freezing rain! Dennis....we even got tons of FREE, cut and split firewood, delivered via forklift by one of the park maintenance workers. See the picture in the album. Dave just had to gloat! :-)
In any given day we were actually in all three states depending on where we travelled. Even when we hiked, we crossed state lines. Daniel Boone blazed the first road through the gap. Anyone interested in more historical significance (there’s lots) of the area, take a look here.
On Tuesday (a very warm day) we did an almost 7 mile round trip hike (3 1/2 hours) hike up to see the skylight cave and we almost made it to what we thought was the Pinnacle. It’s an overlook (2,440 elevation) you can see all 3 states from but we actually ran out of time. Didn’t want to hike back in the mountains in the dark. It was a fairly challenging hike, pretty steep in places, sucked wind big time going up! Although we didn’t make it to the pinnacle that day, we did make it to a random overlook (probably same elevation), not far from it, where the views where incredible! Standing on the rock to take the pictures you’ll see in our album was totally out of my comfort zone!
The next day we did drive up to the Pinnacle on a road that was, to say the least scary as hell. It’s 4 miles long and felt like it was straight up. Linda & Wilf...if the switchbacks in New Zealand were anything like that....Holy crap! Not sure how you did it in your RV. We found out, only after we got down and I was reading some brochures later that night, that the road is closed to vehicles 20’ and longer. I’m sure our truck is longer than that which explains why we took up both lanes going around some corners, totally blind. Would have been nice to see that warning on sign before we went up! Views up there were great but the weather was hazier that day so not quite as impressive as seen from our little overlook the previous day.
Yesterday, Thursday we drove into Ewing, Virginia into this little Civic park (still part of the national park) to hike up to the White Rocks and the Sand Cave. It took us almost 4 1/2 hours to complete this one. The trail wasn’t as steep as the one up to the pinnacle but still challenging in lots of spots. The weather wasn’t ideal, pretty cold when we started (about 6 C) but at least we stayed comfortable going up since it was hard work.
Elevation at the White rock overlook was over 3,000 ft....and the last 200 ft were killer! Straight up thru a little tunnel of trees. As you’ll see from the pics in our album, we’ve got on just a few more layers of clothing than when we were on our previous hike. At that time, it was freezing rain. Since we already did the hard work to get to the top, we decided to go onto to the Sand Cave. It was worth the extra hike, something totally different, and unexpected in the mountains. See pics in the album...the one of Dave slogging through the sand is my personal fav....looks like he’s in a desert or on another planet!
We made the hike back down in what started as freezing drizzle at the top of the mountain and in the last hour, it was a steady, cold, miserable rain. By the time we got down, we were really cold. Hot tub would have felt so good but like I said at the beginning of this post, we were very grateful for the heated, hot showers (with no time limit!) at the campground.
When we left Cumberland Gap this morning, our destination was Harrison Bay State Park near Chattanooga Tennessee. But when we got there tonight, the only part of that park that was open was a big disappointment. Small pull thru on gravel lots, no privacy between sites whatsoever. Pouring rain didn’t help set the mood so we said, screw it, lets just go to a hotel tonight rather than unpack and set up in the rain. So tonight we’re in a Super 8 in Georgia. Good chance to catch up on email and figure out where we want to try next. Probably Alabama and further south where it’s WARMER!!!!
MORE PICTURES FROM THIS STAY - CHECK OUT THE ALBUM