Day 1 -- to Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Hello, and welcome to the Long Family Travel Blog. We’re glad you stopped by. This fourth volume in the series will (hopefully) see us through Great Smoky Mountains National Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Shenandoah NP in Virginia, then on to Colonial Williamsburg, Assateague Island, Md., and Washington, D.C., before heading home.

As is usually the case, Keith and I were swamped with last-minute planning and packing, as well as hosting Clare’s seventh birthday party yesterday. I had hoped for an early-morning departure today. But, naturally, we didn’t get on the road until almost noon. The trip hadn’t even started, and already we were off-schedule -- enough that we weren’t sure we were going to make it to GSMNP tonight.

(BTW, props to our friends in Lafayette, who spotted this sweet-looking jalopy on the road and mistook it for us. Close, Ryan, but not quite. We only WISH we could travel in so much style.)

Anyway, our map apps were telling us that it should only be an 8.5-hour trip to the Smoky Mountains, which sit along the Tennessee-North Carolina border. So, we hustled, eating in the car and stopping only to get gas and pee and thinking we could still make it by dusk. A major traffic snarl north of Knoxville slowed us down quite a bit, as did the traffic around -- what is that area south of Knoxville, just north of the entrance to the national park? Suburban Gatlinburg? With all those IHOPs, fantasy putt-putt courses, wax museums, and shark tanks/gifts emporia, it’s like the Wisconsin Dells threw up here. “Why sharks?” Natalie asked. Because. Didn’t you know the Great Smoky Mountains wilderness is known for its sharks?

We entered the park around 8:30, and drove another hour to our campground, which is on the North Carolina side. The park road winds up through the mountains and then back down again, and we were so focused on getting to our campsite with at least a shred of daylight left that we almost missed the awesome views that unfolded at each turn. We finally pulled off the road just long enough to see the sun slipping down into a hazy gray sea of serrated mountain tops on one side of the road. On the other side, the full, yellow moon hung just above the trees.

So, of course it was completely dark when we arrived at our campsite. Keith and I donned our headlamps, immediately set up the Teardrop, then got to work on the tent. And then: One of the poles snapped. Broke. In half. I won’t tell you which one of us is responsible for that mishap, but I will tell you that he feels quite sorry about what happened.

When it’s 10 p.m., you’re setting up a tent and the pole snaps in half, what do you do? Of course, you patch it up with medical tape from your First-Aid kit, and go on as if nothing happened. Keith and I were so amazingly, unusually nonchalant about this, that Charlie and Clare, who were looking on, must think this happens every day. I’m not sure the tent will hold up through the night, especially if we get the rain that’s forecast to hit after 2 a.m. But Charlie and Clare didn’t seem to think there’s any problem with a tent that’s held together with First-Aid tape, and they eagerly volunteered to sleep there tonight. With Keith.

I can’t tell much about this campsite by the light of my headlamp, but I can say that it’s quite spacious. There’s plenty of room for our newest piece of camping equipment: a 10x10 screen shelter.

Keith and I, being the savvy family campers that we are, researched screen shelters thoroughly before committing to purchasing this one, by Paha Que. And, not only that, in our smartest, most savvy-camper move ever, we left on our camping trip without ever actually attempting to set up our new screen shelter. In fact, we left without ever taking the screen shelter out of its package. So, what better opportunity to set it up for the first time, than at 11 p.m., after a day of driving, while the kids are crashing in the tent? Nevertheless, we did it.  We figured it out. We got it up. And then we toasted ourselves with Sierra Nevada.

This campsite is totally tricked out. If it really does rain tonight, our picnic table is going to be so freaking dry.