Discoveries

Morganton Point Campground – Continued

A young, attractive blonde sat alone on a small, lake-side rock holding a hardcover book, watching the marvelous sunset unfold in front of us. A digital SLR camera was slung over her shoulder. Every once in a while she would put the book down and take a snapshot of the dramatic sunset, then pick up the book and continue reading in the fading evening light. With the chronic drought of the southeastern United States, the waterline has receded far from the edge of the campground and she was in the middle of a forty foot, barren beach. As darkness finally fell, she retired to a small canvas tent in the primitive camp site area of Morganton Point Campground.

What are the odds of two German girls being the only people here

We met her again the next morning while walking Taz, our golden retriever, and found out she is German, on vacation, and disappointed the rental office for stand-up paddleboards was closed except for weekends. With five weeks vacation, she had flown into Nashville from Los Angeles, rented a car, and was touring the Great Smoky Mountains. She was sleeping in a small, canvas tent with no power or lights. I have no idea what her impression of the campground was, but she was full of enthusiasm for future adventures in Asheville and Pigeon Forge.

The tent campsites – A through F – have the best views of the lake in my opinion, and the young German girl, who looked like she stepped out of a fashion magazine ad, was camped at F, right on the point. While she had the most scenic view, we could not see the lake from site 24, but it was just a short walk to the lake. I would not have picked any campsite beyond us although the next two sites could reach a small cove. They were downhill to back into, though, making unhooking from the trailer hitch a real chore. The sites beyond 31 are first come-first served and have no services. They are located on the one-lane road to nowhere we explored when we first arrived.

"Bunk Beds" in the tent camping area

Morganton Point has 37 sites if you count the last six on the single-lane road. Several other sites, 11 and 14, have no water, while site 16 has water, electricity and even a sewer hookup. The paradox is the central toilet and shower facilities: they are among the best we have ever encountered in campground, even exceeding the few private campgrounds we’ve stayed at! Spacious, spotlessly clean, and with plenty of room! Five stars for the new bathhouse and the redesigned loop for the dump station. Now, guys and girls from the Forestry Service, take a look at the gravel pads that are a stinker to back into, and the deteriorating state of some of the pavement in the park.

We walked the short path to the beach every morning just to get some exercise, but we didn’t find any other trails in the area. For serious hikers or even just dedicated walkers, we recommend Lake Powhatan in Asheville, North Carolina, where outdoor activities are paramount to the area. The path at Morganton Point is simply a shortcut to the beach. It’s a pretty good beach, but it would help if the water were high enough to actually reach the safety rope.

We spent our first Monday just catching up and relaxing, not planning on going anywhere. But, not having cellphone coverage or Internet proved our undoing and we ended up at the Blue Ridge Walmart, sharing the Subway special of the day just to alleviate our craving for connectivity to the outside world. Not that it means much, though. Facebook has proved to be a self-induced narcotic that is easily dispensed with. E-mails have proven to be 99% nonsense, and most of the remaining 1% are not worth reading.

Tuesday was a stay at home day to relax, but Wednesday was one of those days when curiosity had its reward. Well, to me, anyway. Ilse was a good sport and tagged along dutifully as I went searching for a meeting I saw mentioned in a local newspaper article.

Wednesdays, and only on Wednesdays, from around 10:00 am until whoever has the keys gets hungry and leaves for lunch, the Tri-State Model Railroaders have a work day on their 22 foot wide by 37 foot long HO model train layout at nearby Mineral Bluff. The layout is in the oldest building in Fannin County, Georgia, appropriately enough, the original Mineral Bluff’s Louisville and Nashville railroad depot. We were graciously given an in-depth tour of the detailed layout by Thomas Roskelly, a former U.S. Army Special Forces member turned model train enthusiast. The layout models the L&N railroad that serviced the area, and the detail on the layout is just astonishing. They have an official open house for the general public every 3rd Saturday.

There is a short video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9gGFxDEmPk

We then toodled - ie: drove slowly enjoying the countryside - up the road from there to the nearby McCaysville, GA/Coppertown, TN, the current terminus of the Blue Ridge Scenic Railroad, the railroad the HO Layout is modeled after. We returned to Blue Ridge on an alternate route, stopping by the entrepreneurial, renowned Mercier Orchards. This facility rivals many tourist attractions in Florida – well, except for Disney and its peers, perhaps, - for consumer consumption of country images and home-spun illusion. Tourists from Atlanta and points south dominated the parking areas. This place is a Cracker Barrel on steroids, without the restaurant.

One thing that we thought was odd, they’re are far fewer Florida license plates than the last time we were here. We noticed the same phenomena in Asheville. We saw very few Florida license plates the two weeks we spent there, while years ago they were everywhere. Where are they? Did they all go to Hiawassee or Murphy? Just an observation before we headed back to our tranquil little corner of Lake Blue Ridge.

Our German friend had checked out by the time we returned to the campground, headed for the Smoky Mountain National Park. I seriously doubt she was looking for a model railroad layout.

Next: Back to Vogel – Is it what we remembered? at:

http://sleepstwo.blogspot.com/2016/09/return-to-vogel-state-park.html

More information on the Tri-State Model Railroaders may be found at www.tsmri.org

Morganton Point Campground

US Forest Service

Located on the westernmost of the three Tennessee Valley Authority Lakes in Northern Georgia, Lake Blue Ridge, the Morganton Point campground was our first stop headed south from Lake Powhatan in Asheville. Run by the Cradle of Forestry in America Interpretive Association, the relatively unknown campground was different from what we expected in more ways than one.

I made the reservations three months prior to our trip, and using the online descriptions, picked a site that appeared to be close to the shower facilities and easy to back our twenty foot travel trailer into. Unfortunately, none of the waterfront sites were available for the whole week we were to be there so I went with what I thought was the best alternative. [Lakefront site 5 is the one we would pick now that we’ve seen the campground.] There are caution notes on several of the sites because of drop or rise of the camp sites from the access road, but the note and the photo of site 24 looked OK.

We originally wanted to head for Blairsville, Georgia, about thirty miles east, and stay at the nearby Vogel State Park, one of our favorites. Blairsville is in the center of the three TVA lakes, just south of Lake Nottely and about twenty five miles west of the famous Lake Chatuge which boasts the Florida refugee center of Hiawassee. Vogel has its own little, unassuming Lake Trahlyta, but it isn’t one of the major boating and water sports lakes in area unless you want to rent a paddle boat or a kayak. It does have a neat foot path around it, about a mile in length, that we walked every day with our dog.

Scheduling wasn’t on our side, however, as the fourteen day stay limit would have us leaving Vogel before the Labor Day Weekend, so we bumped our arrival at Vogel back by a week by adding a week beforehand at Morganton Point. We’ve spent time in the area around nearby Blue Ridge before and looked forward to a week exploring the area. We’ve ridden the Blue Ridge Train along the beautiful Toccoa river from Blue Ridge to McCaysville, but never seen the lake that feeds the river, Lake Blue Ridge. It would be great to actually camp by the lake.

The trip down from Asheville, only one hundred thirty miles away, was an easy, mainly downhill tow. Even the mildly twisty section through the pretty Nantahala gorge wasn’t difficult, even in a driving rain storm. Too bad we didn’t get to check out the recreation areas, but since the kayak and raft paddlers in the adjacent, fast-flowing river were in full wet-weather gear, we weren’t inclined to stop and take a closer look.

As with many Federal parks and campgrounds, you begin to question your GPS as you tow through narrow streets that appear to be in mainly residential neighborhoods blindly following instructions, when, viola, there’s the main gate. Same thing at a strange intersection on highway 60 known as the town of Morganton, which appears to have moved and not told anybody. The last right turn to the campground is a real indicator of narrow confines as the corner of the roof on the right hand building hangs in disrepair from being hit by turning vehicles. I assume most were either class “A” RV motor coaches or big fifth wheel trailers, but even my small twenty footer came awfully close to the splintered, dangling overhanging roof. Or the remains of it, anyway.

The entrance to the campground is another half-mile or so – after a left turn off of Lake Drive – and is another surprise; there is no gatehouse, just a stop sign and an afterthought speed-bump in the middle of the road. The residence of the Camp Host is on the right. Shades of when Ilse and I blew through a border crossing in Belgium back in our younger days. Was I supposed to stop there? At least this time I didn’t have to back up and beg forgiveness.

We chatted with Warren, the host, and got our paper work in order. Then he asked me if I’d like to change sites. That’s an ominous warning if I’ve ever heard one. We looked at site 24, it proved to be an uphill, back-in site that required an almost 45 degree turn at the top. A challenge to say the least. We decided to drive through the campground to see what else was available and promptly found ourselves squeezing past oncoming traffic on an access road that turns into a one-lane, bidirectional piece of poorly maintained asphalt without any warning. Luckily, it had a turnaround loop at the end allowing us to head back to our original site. We decided we liked the privacy and the nearness of the facilities of the original site and after two, tire spinning test tries, we took a running start – in reverse – and backed up the loose gravel incline, putting the trailer on the flat pad within feet of the water and electrical hookup monuments. We looked like we knew what we’re doing.

In less than an hour, we were unhooked and level, walking around the edge of the very pretty lake. As with all lakes in the southeast, water levels are dangerously low. I don’t know how many million or even billion gallons of water it will take to bring the reservoirs back to normal levels, or if it is even possible, but it is a sad sight to see. I can only imagine what these lakes will look like in ten or twenty years. Waterfront property will be a misnomer.

That, however, didn’t stop us from witnessing the most incredible sunset we have seen in years. We walked back to the camper, awed by the sunset, and looking forward to a week exploring the area.
George

Next: Contradictions – Morganton Point Campground

Next: Morganton Point Campground - Contradictions, at:

http://sleepstwo.blogspot.com/2016/09/contradictions.html