“Your timing is perfect,” said the Townsend/Great Smokies KOA campground staff person as she checked us in. “The leaves are turning late this year and are reaching peak colors this weekend.”
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| Townsend/Great Smokies KOA Campground |
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| The KOA Office |
Fall colors were simply a bonus when we booked this campground. We were trying to come up with something to replace our scheduled trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast after our reservations were canceled in the wake of Hurricane Michael.
We wanted a river site, but the park was sold out for the weekend and we ended up with an interior site. We knew we would miss the sound of running water.
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| River behind the campground |
Most KOA campgrounds have someone in a golf cart who escorts visitors to their sites. This person also attempts to help campers back into their sites.
Our escort brought us to our site facing the wrong direction. After we discussed the perils of making a 130 degree turn while backing into a site, our escort led us on a tour of the campground to get us facing the proper way to back into our site.
The campground sent reinforcements over to see what the problem was with us getting in our site. The other campground escort said that the person who attempted to help us was new and still learning how to park trailers. We would have been fine parking on our own.
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| Rosie in the campground |
Once parked, we noticed an unpleasant smell and saw a sewage truck pumping out a septic tank. I asked one of the park staffers about the smell and learned that Townsend doesn’t have a sewer system. That was one of the reasons the community hasn’t grown in relation to others near the Smokies. Every business and resident in Townsend must have septic systems. This was a decision made by the community help keep it from becoming another tourist town on the edges of th National Park.
I asked how often we should expect to smell the sewage truck. His response was that the truck shows up monthly in season and every two or three months during the off season. I guess we were lucky to park there at the same time the sewage truck arrived.
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| Sign at the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park |
We think someone must have blabbed the news about the leaves being at peak colors because the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was full of people taking in the sights. It wasn’t too bad on Friday when we drove along the Little River Gorge Road. Things were very different on Saturday and Sunday when we toured Cade’s Cove and drove to Newfound Gap. Cars were bumper-to-bumper. We were surprised to see some snow on the side of the road as we drove up to Newfound Gap.
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| Snow along the road near Newfound Gap |
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| The colors of fall |
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| Smoky Mountains National Park |
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| A tunnel |
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| Peak color! |
We were amazed at how fast the leaves changed colors then dropped. We were also amazed at how fast the campground cleared out on Sunday. We were the only trailer in our row on Monday morning.
The reason people were abandoning the campground became clearer when the weather alarms on our iPhones woke us up around 4 a.m. the next morning. We were in a severe thunderstorm area, had a high wind advisory and under a tornado watch. We could hear the heavy rain pelt Rosie and we also heard the winds.
The campground looked like a battlefield when we looked outside that morning with tree branches and leaves everywhere. As we were getting ready to leave, several KOA employees were picking up the branches and blowing the leaves away from the roads and sites. Chances are good that the park looked spic-n-span by the time the new visitors arrived that afternoon.
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| Rosie alone on our row |
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- Our site was a back-in
- Our site was gravel and level
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- Our site had water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection
- Our site had a cable TV connection that delivered 40+ analog signals. That was good because we couldn’t find any over-the-air TV signals
- The park had Wi-Fi service. It worked better than the WiFi services at most campgrounds
- AT&T placed a marginal one to two bars of 4G voice and data service over our site
- The restrooms in this campground were clean and in good shape
- The showers in this campground lacked ventilation and heat. That was an issue since the weather dipped into the 30s during our visit there.
This is one of the best KOA Campgrounds we have ever camped in. We emptied one of propane gas tanks while there and asked at the office where we could get it filled. They quickly sent one of their staffers to our site. He took our tank in his golf cart and returned it filled about 10 minutes later. There was no charge for pickup and delivery service.
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| Working with the LP gas tanks |
The Smokies hold a special place in our hearts. This was a favorite vacation spot when our children were growing up and a family favorite when I was a child. Our drives through the Smokies were full of great memories of our children climbing the rocks along the creeks and taking hikes to the waterfalls, the Chimney Tops and Mount LaConte. I also could not help but think of my visits to the the Smokies with my parents.
There is lots to love about the Smokies. This was our first late Fall visit and we enjoyed the mountains and this campground.
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