Day 253, Saturday, April 14, 2018 - Cades Cove Campground, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, TN, Day 7

Saturday, April 14, 2018 - Cades Cove Campground, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, TN, Day 7 - 0 Miles, 6,982.6 Towing Miles For the Trip

A little cooler today - good sleeping weather overnight. There was lots of wind this morning. I have neighbors that look to be a biking club or group, some of which are sleeping in hammocks. They put a fly over the hammock, and it is flapping in the breeze.

At 7:00 sharp the garbage truck came & emptied the dumpster one site down from mine. An interesting truck. Unlike most I've seen that drive forward into the dumpster, grab it & dump it over the cab into the back of the truck, this one does it from the side. It has to since there is no room on the narrow roads to approach the dumpsters from the front.

I do wonder how it is possible that every garbage truck at every campground (and I'm speaking from the experience of over 300 campgrounds in the last few years) arrives at the dumpsters between 6:00AM & 8:00AM. What do they do for the rest of the day? I've never seen one at 4:00... Anyway, this one wasn't as loud as most, and I was doing my morning eye drops, so it wasn't a problem. It might have been an unpleasant surprise for the guy in the hammock in the next site.

After breakfast and a walk around the campground loop, I did some reading, and watched people pack up. Storms are predicted for tonight, and some people are leaving today, even though they have reservations through the weekend. At $10.50 with a discount pass, or even the full $21.00, it is an inexpensive campground, so leaving early isn't as bad as it would be at some of the private campgrounds in the area. It may be because it is early in the season, and the lack of a heavy ranger presence, but the usual rules for Nation Park campgrounds don't seem to apply here. A few sites have their dogs running loose (with the owners yelling at them to come back to the site when ever they wander away), kids riding on skateboards (no allowed according to the campground rules), and trash deposited in the bathroom trash baskets rather than in the dumpsters just a few sites away. There is also someone running a (quiet) generator here in the no generator section, and another running their tow vehicle to recharge the trailer batteries. Enough complaining!

The wind continued throughout the day. While there were quite a few clouds, there was also lots of sunshine between them. I even got a bit of sunburn sitting outside. The wind was strong enough that the clouds didn't hang around long. So far (at 3:30) no rain, but it is still predicted for tonight.

Dinner was a pork chop and the rest of the succotash.

Until Tomorrow -