Forest Lake to Mammoth Caverns

Douglas Dam on the French Broad River, Kodak, TN

Spending only two days at Lynchburg, VA, we traveled to the Forest Lake Thousand Trails at Advance, NC for a single overnight stay. We have stayed at this park twice before for simple overnight visits.

Forest Lake is a very nice park with a pool swimming beach on a medium sized lake;  miniture golf course, swimming pool, and clubhouse.  It is well worth a longer stay.

Forced to unhitch when sent down a deadend road by the GPS ;(

After being mis-routed by the GPS, we checked into a very nice campsite (with 30amp electric and water).

View from the high dam overlook.

We had not planned to  visit any of the tourist attractions.  However, we did take a drive through Pidgeon Forge past the Dollywood entrance and the many other tourist attractions.

The campground is on river bank on the downstream side of the Douglas Dam.  There is also another Douglas Dam campground on the upstream side of the dam.  Although we did not visit the other campground, it appears to be equally attractive. 

                                                

We had time to fly the drone and get a little video of the camp area. The Douglas Dam campgrounds are a good place to use for extended stay for the Dollywood area.

                                           

We checked out of the campground and stopped for an overnight at the Beanpot campground near Crossville, TN.  We had stayed at Beanpot 3 yrs ago, but did not take any pictures of the campground which is heavily wooded.  We got a very unlevel site.  We left for the Diamond Caverns Thousand Trails near Mammoth Cave National Park.

Diamond Cavern Visitor Center

Train Museum, Bowling Green, TN

We picked the Diamond Caverns park as it was convenient to our route through Indiana to the Iowa border.  We had already visited and toured Mammoth cave three years ago.