Tryon, North Carolina is a quaint little town right on the border of North and South Carolina. There are a dozen little towns like this all over the area and today, we are going to visit some of them with Frank and Debbie.
We decided to stay an extra night here at Wilson’s Riverfront RV Park so we could spend another day in Asheville yesterday. Our intention during this trip is to stay longer at every place but it just hasn’t really worked out that way. On the flip side of it, we have been really blessed to have met and gotten to know a lot more people than we anticipated. If and when the social engagements start to dissipate, we will try to focus more of our time at the destinations.
I never thought I would be waking up next to a french broad in my lifetime but never say never. Good morning, French Broad River! What a view. And I am going to pretend that the campground is 100% perfect just like this view. What pile of trash and used mattress? I don’t see that sitting behind one of the full timing RVs across the street from us. The bathrooms are locked up for the season? I can’t hear you. The river is too loud. Haha.
For the last couple of months, we have been keeping in touch with some new friends we met at Alumafandango who are also traveling around the country. We had planned to meet up with them again when we got to Asheville. They had returned from their 4-month trip a bit earlier and came up to visit up at the campground today.
We made the decision to not drive all the way to Asheville last night so we can enjoy a leisurely drive through the Smokey Mountains today. It was such a beautiful drive during our last visit here and we didn’t want to do it in the dark. We woke up at the Walmart parking lot in Newport, Tennessee and headed east into North Carolina.
Today was a sad day for us all. We were going to have to say good-bye to our good friends. No more reminiscing about ice cream in Croatia. No more late night talks about sailing across the seven seas. No more jam sessions with a splash of wine. No more cupcake baking with an extra cup of flour thanks to Mila. No more bouncing travel ideas off of each other.
Tonight will be our third and last night of courtesy parking at Nathan and Leah’s house. It has been a great reunion for us and finally gave us a bit of an insight what life is like in eastern Tennessee. I have said in numerous occasions that if I was to move somewhere, it would be in middle or eastern Tennessee. Some place where I can buy some land and build a little homestead. I am hoping that when we eventually get cured of the traveling bug, we will be able to settle in a place like this.
This trip has really taken on a life of its own since we left over 3 months ago. We had a pretty good idea what it was like to work and live on the road, after all, we’ve done it before. What is totally new to us is how many people we have met through the blog and how gracious people have been in opening the doors to their homes to us.
We spent last night at the AirstreamFever.com world headquarters just minutes away from downtown Nashville. Since we got here a little late in the day, we opted to just park on the street for the night.
Our stay at the Nashville KOA has come to an end. We are glad we came here instead of skipping it even though we are pretty ready for some warmer weather. Today, we are actually not quite leaving Nashville. We have a lot of online friends who are from this area or are very familiar with it so we have a couple of places we need to check out after we hitch up and drive off.
There is a certain guilt I feel when I am revisiting a town that I have previously been to. It seems that we should be trying harder to see new places during these trips but we just can’t help ourselves but to retrace our steps to try to relive something in our memory. We have done a pretty good job of visiting new places and starting today, we are going to indulge ourselves and find our way back to some of the best spots from our last trip.
We had a dilemma to work out last night. We had initially planned on going to Crossville, Tennessee to visit a friend and skipping Nashville on this trip altogether. We had visited Nashville our last time here but it was just after the 2010 flood and a lot of places were in disrepair. We eventually decided that we needed to make another trip through Music City so we won’t regret it later.
