When traveling with a 5th wheel trailer many things can cause your heart to race. We were on our way to our next RV campground in Rock Island Tennessee when we saw the two road signs that make you think, not good “Road work ahead” and “Narrow bridge” as we came around the corner we saw the narrow bridge which we knew we would fit on, but we also notice that half of the narrow lane on the bridge was 8″ – 10″ lower than the other half so we held our breath and slowly made our way across the bridge successful. We arrived at the road for the campground and turned right onto the road and the road just disappeared, the road is to narrow to turn around so we slowly continue forward wondering what happen to the road and than we saw it, around a fairly sharp right hand turn and down about 12 feet at 8 percent grade hill. We made it down the hill (still no place to turn around) the road is a wonderful mix of dirt and gravel and narrow. Our next obstacle was a sharp left hand turn followed by a hill that is 25 or 30 feet long, with an 8 percent grade, we took a deep breath and started around the corner and up the hill we get about 1/3 of the way up and the tires on the truck start losing traction but we get to the top and realize we are on one of the roads where whats ahead is worse than what you just went through. One more steep down hill followed by a steep up hill and we arrived at the campground and than it hits us we have to do this again to get out of here.

The reviews on this campground were good but nobody mentioned the road into the campground. We did make it out ok and now I know what it feels like to have a 10,000 pound trailer push our truck down a steep hill into a sharp right-hand turn.

Creekside Campground where we’re staying. Nice place we have a creek behind our site.

American Celebration on Parade.

We stopped in to a little second-hand shop and the lady inside told us about American Celebration and the place across the street called Yellow Barn. American Celebration is different parade floats on display. Yellow Barn is random displays of the old days. It was a fun different way to spend the day.

Since we’ve been traveling with our 5th wheel we have always done a pre-trip inspection. We do a walk around to make sure nothing is loose, we make sure the tire pressures are at 80psi, and we check the fluid levels and that there are no fluid puddles under the truck. We stayed the night at Cabelas in Hamburg Massachusetts and in the morning before leaving we did our pre-trip inspection and noticed that there was a small puddle of oil under the truck. It turned out that the oil drain plug had loosen and was dripping oil. We tighten the drain plug and topped off the oil, problem solved. A saving of thousands of dollars to replace the motor. We noticed that one of the trailer tires had a air bubble where the tread meets the sidewall. We called our roadside service Coach-net and they were able to direct us to a tire shop so we could replace the tire. We ended up having to replace 2 tires because of broken belts in the tires due to pot hole and just bad roads we’ve been driving on in the East. When tires come a part at 60 mph it generally does some kind of damage to the trailer which can cost a lot of money to fix. We’re glad that we have developed this habit of pre-trip inspections.

Where are they now?

We are currently in Edinburg Virginia, we’ll leave tomorrow morning and head to the Cabelas in Bristol Virginia to lay over for the Labor Day weekend. From there we’re heading to the Great Smokey Mountains for 4-7 days, and than on to see the Grand kids in McMinnville  Tennessee.

We had heard about a reversing waterfall and some cobblestone bridges located around the carriage roads in Acadia National Park. We knew it was a long shot trying to find a waterfall feed by run-off so late in the summer but we thought it would be a great hike. We did find the waterfall but it was only a trickle. Here are some photos from the hike.