Since December, our summer trip has been a yellow sticky note on the fridge that says "Elkmont, June 15 to 20." I booked those five nights on Recreation.gov in the middle of December, six months out, at about $30 a night, before we knew how we'd get there or where we'd go afterward. This spring the sticky note finally grew into a route, and it isn't the one I first drew.
Why the Smokies, and why Elkmont
Some of it is nostalgia. In the summer of 1998, when I was 11, my parents drove us up from Gainesville and we camped at Elkmont along the Little River. I remember how cold the water was, the rain on the tent most afternoons and my dad frying bacon under a tarp while it drizzled. I've wanted to put my own kids next to that river for years.
The rest is weather. June in Florida is closed for tent camping in our house. Dana's 70 rule (if the forecast dew point is over 70, we don't tent camp) wipes out nearly every Florida weekend from late May until the first real front in the fall. The mountains are the obvious way around it: highs in the upper 70s to mid 80s, nights in the 50s and 60s, and cold running water to sit beside. Maya, who turns 9 this month, has already asked whether she'll need a sweatshirt. Nico, who is 5, asked whether there are sharks in the river.
The North Carolina half we dropped
My first sketch was a loop: into the park from Tennessee, over the mountains to Cherokee, up the Blue Ridge Parkway toward Asheville and home through the Carolinas. Then Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina last fall. When we checked again in April, parts of the Parkway on the North Carolina side were still closed for storm repairs, and several of the places I'd circled sat on roads I would have had to detour around.
Dana asked the question that settled it. Did we want to spend vacation mornings refreshing closure maps with two kids in the back seat? We did not. The towns up there are rebuilding, and I'd rather go back someday and give them a proper week than pass through on detours. So this year it's the Tennessee side only, with the Georgia coast on the way home.
The route as it stands
- Saturday, June 14: Miami to Ocala, about 4.5 hours. Ron and Linda's guest room, free, dinner included.
- Sunday, June 15: Ocala to Elkmont, about 8.5 hours. Yes, that's Father's Day. I picked it, and I'll be the one grumbling somewhere around Atlanta.
- June 15 to 20: Elkmont, five nights in the tent.
- June 20 to 22: a Vrbo cabin near Townsend, two nights, for showers and laundry.
- Sunday, June 22: Townsend to Savannah, one night at a Hampton Inn.
- June 23 to 25: Skidaway Island State Park, two nights in the tent.
- Wednesday, June 25: home, about seven hours.
That's 11 nights and about 2,400 miles. We'll come into the park through Townsend instead of Gatlinburg, the way my dad did it in 1998, because it still looks like the quieter door.
How we built it
We had rules before we had a route. No driving day over about 8.5 hours, and never two long days back to back. Ron and Linda's driveway is our halfway stop going north, the way it always is. And no more than five nights without a real shower, because Elkmont has flush toilets and cold running water but no showers, and I know what a five-year-old smells like after five days of creek play.
The calendar mattered as much as the map. Dana works three 12-hour shifts a week and builds her schedule about six weeks out, so the dates had to be locked by early May. She's using vacation time for the whole stretch. My school year ends in early June, our baseball season ended in the district semifinal last month, and I run a youth baseball camp the last week of July. That left one clean window, and we took it.
Here's where the bookings stand. Elkmont is paid. The cabin is booked. The Savannah hotel is prepaid in the Hilton app because the prepaid rate was cheaper. Skidaway is booked through the Georgia State Parks reservation site. Two questions are still sitting on the kitchen table: whether to drive our Pilot 2,400 miles or rent a minivan (I'm pricing that this week), and whether to buy trip insurance, since hurricane season starts June 1 and we'll have several hundred dollars prepaid.
Maya has started a color-coded packing list in the back of her nature journal. Nico has started a pile of sticks by the back door that he says are "for Tennessee." I explained that we can't bring wood into the park. He explained that these aren't wood. They're sticks.
