6/1-3/13, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, June 1-3: These are the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, and I'm agog at how beautiful they are. Driving from Nashville toward the Smokies, I was astonished at how impressive these mountains seem. I'd expected they'd look like rolling hills, but they're much more like the front range of the San Gabriels. Wow, something breaks this flat, flat landscape at last!

   But first….

   The manager at the Pigeon Forge KOA put me in a site immediately backing onto Patriot Park, where there was some kind of country music festival going on…and on…and on….At least until midnight, when I gave up waiting for them to SHUT THE F--- UP, took a sleeping pill, and stuck in the earplugs. Rest at last!

   If I thought Pigeon Forge was tacky, Gatlinburg was tacky cubed. And crowded? You could hardly see the storefronts for the mobs of people. But the minute I passed into the national park, where I still am now, the crowds vanished and a deep green peace settled over the landscape. Yes, there was a bit of a crowd at the Sugarlands Visitor Center, where I stopped for information, but it was of a different quality. The visitor center had a wonderful film about the Great Smokies that left me dabbing a tear away. Dan Haun, my acupuncturist, is right: here, people say, "AppaLATCHian."

   I begin to understand more of the park's organization, with only one major road going through it, U.S.  Hwy. 441, and a number of subordinate roads penetrating it from the edges, the one to Cade's Cove going the farthest it. I40 skirts the northeast edge of the park but doesn't enter it.

   Exhausted as I was, I didn't pause at Newfound Gap, the road's high point and apparently on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. I was delighted to find a pleasant spot in Smokemont Campground, except that it is, alas, not level. I used one of the leveling bricks, but I think I need two. Should I leave well enough alone?

   Sunday I slept nearly all day long. In fact, Saturday, having set up (no hookups), I set up my chair and table on the tent pad and tried to read, but I kept falling asleep. I gave up a little before 6 PM, lay down under Cammy's yellow popcorn blanket, and slept till nearly 11 PM! By 2 AM, I was more than ready to crawl back in bed, and I slept till about noon on Sunday. Eventually, I hauled myself up and dressed enough to open the doors at sit reading in the captain's chair till bedtime again, around 10:30 PM. My excuse, if one is necessary: It had rained, often very hard, from about midnight Saturday-Sunday and all through Sunday till 4:30 PM. Shades of San Antonio! Lots of people bailed out of the campground, and those who remained were pretty soggy!

   Today, I'm finally up and out. It's intermittently sunny and hot and then clouded over. The rich, decaying and growing smell of this Appalachian spring is intoxicating! A tiny red mite has developed a fondness for exploring my Good Sam RV Travel Guide; it's too fast for me to catch and explain to it that its quest is fruitless.

   This afternoon, I'll hike the Smokemont Nature Trail and all through the campground for my exercise. I must be the luckiest person in the world!

   Later: The Smokemont Nature Trail was great! I enjoyed it enormously. There is some kind of spindly, low tree with big, puffy clusters of 5-petaled (largely joined), dotted white blossoms with a little spur near the base of each petal. Must find out what they are; sorry I didn't buy the tree-identifying book, as trees are much more dominant here, and there are so many different kinds, all of which are strange to me, almost all broadleaf species, with one evergreen, possibly a spruce.

   Can't get over how beautiful this all is!

   My time here is up; it's Tuesday, and I'm ready to move again. My deep-cycle battery appears to be kaput. No cell signal, much less wireless signal, here. It's been ever so peaceful, though everything cloth and paper seems to have that thick, damp feel to it. Asheville, NC, KOA tonight?