RV Rally – Maggie Valley, NC – Days 3&4

This is a continuation of our RV rally trip from the previous post - warning lots of pics.

Like many smaller mountain towns, Waynesville, NC has morphed itself into a tourist destination so after a heart healthy, camp cooked breakfast of biscuits & gravy, sausage, ham, and scrambled eggs, we headed into town for a little site seeing and shopping for our initial day-three activity.

RV Rally – Maggie Valley, NC – Days 1&2

I’ve posted before that we are members of the Tennessee Travelers Chapter of FMCA and we recently participated in an RV rally at the Pride RV Resort & Campground in Maggie Valley, NC, located in the Piedmont area of the eastern United States.  The campground is laid out such that a creek runs along the back which is sided by a large gassy area and our sites were in the first two rows facing that direction.  Our coach is on the right in the last shot.

Pasta And Cupcakes – Some Good Grub

The daughter of a good friend (also a good friend) recently received her PhD from Purdue and while home for a break, Bev invited her down to do one of her favorite things – make pasta.  They made it using the same recipe and method as a couple of years ago and once again, it turned out very well.

2016 Western Trip – Wrap-Up

The primary reason I wanted to make this summer trip was to go into Rocky Mountain high country for some relief from the east Tennessee summer heat and humidity and as it turned out it was above 90 degrees nearly every day while we were gone.  We ended up spending from Aug 10 through Sep 19 in areas where the temps would occasionally creep above 80 and it was between 45-55 at night and as a bonus the humidity was also low.

On the way to the high country we got to visit with friends in Kansas City and Denver which is always a highlight of our trips.  

2016 Western Trip – Days 65-68 Oklahoma City To Home

From Amarillo, we continued on I-40 to Oklahoma City and I was surprised as I thought the drive would be through a pretty brown county side but if I didn’t know better, I would have believed we were in the non-mountainous areas of east Tennessee.  We past several wind farms along the way but one to the west of Amarillo ran for 34 miles.

Based upon a recommendation from a fellow camper and good reviews, we opted to stay on the NE side of town at Twin Fountains RV Park.  It was a pretty nice park and I can see it being a destination place.  Some of the sites were pretty tight and I never could get the wi-fi to work.  Twin Fountains is an RV Park on it’s way to becoming a resort.

2016 Western Trip – Days 63-64 Campgrounds and Big Texan

We left Santa Fe on Tuesday starting our trip home but first I’ll discuss Santa Fe Skies RV Park.  We really liked the park and would consider it the high end of the mid range between a campground and a resort.  Here are some shots of the park and our nice site – we liked that we had a patio on both side with the drivers side facing west for sunset watching.

2016 Western Trip – Days 61-62 – Loretto Chapel

We didn’t do much on Sunday making the decision to wait until Monday for a trolley tour around town rather than fight the weekend crowd.  So we headed down to the Loretto Chapel area only to find that apparently everyone else had done the same thing and the noon and 12:30 tours were sold out but we could buy tickets for the 2pm tour.

Since the Chapel was on my list, we went in for a visit – the engineer in me wanted to see the famous staircase.  As the story goes: when  the chapel was completed in 1878 there was no access to the choir loft 22 feet above the rear of the building and carpenters called to look at the problem concluded that a ladder would be the best solution.