It started raining at Elkmont on Friday morning while I was rolling up the tent, and it didn't really stop until Sunday. We had a cabin booked near Townsend for exactly those two nights. I'd love to tell you I planned it around the weather. I planned it around laundry.
Why we put a cabin in the middle
When we built the route this spring, Dana's one firm request was a real shower somewhere in the middle of the trip. Elkmont has flush toilets and cold running water but no showers, and by night five, four people who have been wading in a river and sweating up trails become a situation. So we booked two nights on Vrbo near Townsend, about half an hour from Elkmont, for June 20 to 22.
Our filters were simple: a washer and dryer, a covered porch and a price we could live with. The cabin we picked came to $468 with the cleaning and service fees, about $234 a night. That's nearly eight nights at Elkmont. I winced when I booked it. I'd book it again tomorrow.
What the rain would have done to us
Here's what Friday morning looked like. Steady rain from 7 a.m., a soaked rain fly, a muddy footprint and two kids in rain jackets holding the tent bag open while I stuffed wet nylon into it. If we'd had two more tent nights ahead of us, we'd have pitched that wet tent again somewhere and lived inside it for 48 hours, or we'd have given up and started driving home early. Neither is how I wanted the kids to remember the Smokies.
Instead, we pulled into the cabin's gravel driveway at 11:30, and by noon the tent was draped over the porch railing and two rocking chairs, the tarp was hanging from the porch beams and both rain suits were dripping off the steps. Between showers, the ceiling fan on the porch and the air under the roof did their work. By Saturday night the tent was completely dry and back in its bag.
Inside, the washer ran three loads before dinner. All four of us showered. The hot water ran out on the fourth person, who was me, which seems fair, since I was the one who'd set the order.
A rainy day underground
Saturday it rained all day, so we went underground. Tuckaleechee Caverns is a few minutes outside Townsend, and tickets for the four of us came to $78. The cave stays around 58 degrees all year, which felt wonderful after a week of humidity. It's also the only time I've seen Dana walk into cold on purpose. The tour took a little over an hour. The big room is much bigger than the kids expected, and there's an underground waterfall you can hear long before you see it. Nico held my hand the entire time, not because he was scared, he told me, but "so you don't get lost."
Back at the cabin, Maya spent the afternoon drawing cave formations from memory in her nature journal and labeling them with names she made up. Nico fell asleep on the couch at 3 p.m. with his new Junior Ranger badge still pinned to his shirt. Dana took her first real nap in a week. I sat on the porch with a book I didn't read and listened to rain on the metal roof, which might be my favorite sound in the world when I'm somewhere dry.
We picked up barbecue in Townsend for dinner and ate it at the cabin's kitchen table, which after five nights at a picnic table felt like a nice restaurant.
Camp math on a $234 night
On paper, the cabin was our most expensive lodging of the trip. Per night it cost more than our Savannah hotel. But look at what it bought: a dry tent, clean clothes for the last four days, a rest day for two kids who'd been going hard for a week and a reset for Dana and me before the long drive to the coast. On Sunday we left with everything packed dry for the first time since Ocala.
If we do another long tent trip, and we will, I'd build it the same way: four or five nights of camping, then a roof and a washing machine. I'd also make sure that roof is covered if plans change, the way this one was by the basic trip-cancellation plan we bought before we left.
When we pulled out Sunday morning, Nico said goodbye to the washing machine. Out loud. He thanked it for "making my clothes smell like home again." Maya told him it couldn't hear him. He said that's what people say about trees, too.
