RVing In Western North Carolina

After our maiden five night RV trip to Sevierville, Tn about 60 miles from home, we headed off to the mountains of southwestern NC for 10 nights.  This trip was anchored around being at Lake Junaluska so son Eric could have a place to bunk during the Annual Meeting of the United Methodist Holsten Conference (separate post coming).

Since we wanted to make a longer trip, we decided to spend six nights at the remodeled “TheGreat Outdoors RV Resort” a few miles north of Franklin – Bev has wanted to come over for gem mining for several years - more later.  This is the entrance and registration/store/gift shop.

The resort is under new ownership by a businessman who seems committed to making it a first class place – he even stopped by our site the first night to welcome us and offer some beer from the Heinzelmännchen Brewery in Sylva.  Unfortunately I had a glass of wine going, but committed to myself to pay them a visit - this was our site and a shot up and down the hill from us - note Bev wrangling the dogs.

The grounds were well maintained and there are several on-site work-campers who do everything from registration to shrub pruning and trash pick-up.  This is a great way for full time RVers to afford living on the road and I might consider it if I didn’t get more than I wanted of this type work at home.  This is the well groomed heated pool area. 

While it varies at different places depending upon site rates, at this resort, they work 40 or so hours/month in trade for their camping site with a minimum two months commitment.  One fellow we talked with was planning to leave here in September and work his way south to the Mobile, AL area for the winter - sounded like a pretty good life to me.

We had rain many nights while there and it was often foggy in the morning - this is the smoke coming off of the Smokies above the clubhouse/shower rooms - taken while sitting at our site.

I dog-watched one day while the girls went shopping and as you can see it was a pretty rough job.

We found this to be a great place to stay with good sites, everything worked, and the staff was very friendly and helpful - I picked up lots of tips from the work campers as many were full time RVers.  If in the Franklin area again, I will definitely stay here and would recommend it to any RVer.

Photos best if enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

6/3/2013 – 6/9/2013 event date