Camping in the Smoky Mt. (pt 2)

Great, the campsite was closed.  Now what are we going to do?  When in doubt, pull out the handy dandy map.  We decided to travel about 10 miles down Hwy 32 to another campground.  All the primitive sites were going to be too far for one of my friends to hike out in the morning because she needed to get to work.  We sucked it up and headed for a normal campground.  The map doesn't do Hwy 32 justice.  That's a really curvy road.  My arms were getting a workout for those 10 miles.  Towards the beginning of the road we passed the painting truck laying fresh yellow paint on the center lines.  Apparently the truck driving told my friend in the car ahead of me to not touch the yellow lines.  I thought he was just telling her to slow down.  She grew up driving mountain roads, so she tends to go a bit faster than me.

I quickly figured out not to touch the yellow lines.  Let's just say the road has my tire marks painted on it, and I have splashed yellow paint on the bottom of my truck.  Farther down the road we found evidence of someone who was having too much fun crossing over the lines.  There were tire marks all over the place.

When we arrived at the campground I went to register a site.  One of my friends ran into the park rangers.  They informed us 1) to set up camp and then register and 2) to keep all food items (including toothpaste) in our cars.  They had a bear sighting earlier that day.  The primitive camp (#37), who's trailhead started at the campground, was also closed because of bears.  Even though it was a regular campground, it was rather small.  It only had nine campsites.  A river ran right next to it.

The next morning we tore down camp and tried to figure out if we were all going to be able to hike to the Moose Creek waterfall.  Unfortunately, it wasn't going to work.  My friend of TN left us to get back to work and we went in search of the Moose Creek trailhead.  It was an easy hike.  The waterfall was only two miles in.  Again, because of the rain two days earlier, the waterfall and creek were moving fast.

After the hike we hoped in the car and headed back to Raleigh. It was a fun birthday weekend.