Thanksgiving Cricket Camping

This year for Thanksgiving, we decided to visit the Great Smoky Mountains area. During our quick trip, we got to explore America’s busiest National Park at an off-peak time, enjoy a highly recommended campground in Cherokee, NC, ran a turkey trot and visited the largest home in the United States in Asheville, NC, and got try out some new gear.

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The Cherokee KOA
We researched a lot of campgrounds in preparing to visit the North Carolina side of the Smoky Mountains. We strongly considered Asheville, but we booked late and couldn’t find a location that could accommodate our need for a campsite and two cabins. We are faithful listeners of RV Family Travel Atlas and they gave a very thorough review and recommendation of the Cherokee/Great Smokies KOA. We have yet to stay at a campgroud twice, but would certainly consider a repeat visit here. This KOA is located just outside Cherokee, maybe eight miles from the North Carolina Great Smoky Mountains National Park Visitor Center and roughly six miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We arrived mid-day on Wednesday and set up our camp across from the camp store. Our site was large, shaded, and level, and featured a covered picnic table, fire pit, and asphalt parking pad. We were close to the amenities of the KOA. During our visit we enjoyed many of the amenities, including an indoor pool and hot tub, mini golf, bounce pillow, a nature island, the creek, camp store, and playground. There is also trout fishing, a dog park, outdoor pool (in season), splash pad, and hot tub (in season), giant checkers, arcade, café (in season) and basketball. The kids had a great time playing at the campground and we would have enjoyed it even more time if time allowed. The rest of our party stayed in cabins. They were nice cabins and even had newer Weber gas grills on the deck, overlooking a creek. 

We rank this campground very high, but there were two things that disappointed us. First was the location of our site.  While we just listed this as a plus because it was close to all of the amenities, we had near constant foot traffic across our site. We were up early on our last day packing and almost opened our door into a guy walking past. We would request to not stay on site 5 again because of this issue. Second was the bathrooms. They were big, new, and plentiful, but they were messy. We suspect the floors weren’t swept during our four night stay, as the same trash was still on the floor. We admit that both of these issues can be attributed to inconsiderate campers more than the KOA, but these issues did negatively influence our enjoyment of the campground.​

​The disappointments were minimal and easily fixable, so we would recommend the Cherokee/Great Smokies KOA for exploring the North Carolina side of the Smokies and Cherokee, NC. If you plan to explore Asheville, the Tennessee side of the Smokies, or Gatlinburg, you’ll discover the 30 to 50 mile drive is very long through the mountain roads.

Asheville on Thanksgiving 
We did our official family Thanksgiving feast before this trip, so we instead planned a low-stress day for Thanksgiving. We started early with the Asheville 5k Turkey Trot. We were concerned about the smoke in the area due to nearby wildfires, but the weather was perfect for a quick race.

​After the race, we stopped by Pack’s Tavern to recharge. Pack’s was one of the few places open downtown on Thanksgiving. They were packed and serving a full menu and a Thanksgiving buffet. We opted for a drink and appetizers. The wings tossed in Tiger sauce were a great post-race treat.

We spent most of the afternoon at Carrier Park. This is a fantastic park that was formerly a race track converted into a walking and riding track. The park is loaded with features - bocce, roller hockey, basketball, volleyball, walking paths, and a really fun playground. The kids played here for maybe three hours, as the weather was perfect: seventy and sunny.

Our final event of the day was dinner at Buffalo Nickel. We pick this spot out as it was a farm to table meal that wasn’t a buffet and it sounded like a perfect option. The menu had a choice of soup or salad, an entree of turkey, trout, short ribs, or gnocchi, and dessert of pumpkin pie or a cake. Between our party of ten, we tried and enjoyed all of the dishes.

Our Thanksgiving Day was extremely untraditional for us, but a big hit. Untraditional is becoming our new Thanksgiving tradition as the prior year was spend hiking Sedona on our first big camping trip and next year we already have a trip booked.  

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 #OptOutside on Black Friday
We were proud to spend our second Black Friday in a row by #optoutside in a National Park. Last year we spent the day hiking down and back up the Bright Angels Trail at the Grand Canyon.

This year we headed into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with Lillian's fourth grade Every Kid In a Park pass.  The Ranger was excited to give out her pass and Lillian was excited to receive it!  This is a wonderful program and we plan on getting to as many National Park sites as we can the upcoming year. 

After that, we talked with the Rangers and got the kids started on their Junior Ranger programs. We learned that there was a Ranger-led hike starting so we joined the hike and found that it was a nature walk through a church, campground, and historical sites of early homesteaders in the region.  This was our first Ranger-led hikes and we will try to join more when we can.

After the walk we stopped to see the gristmill in action. The drought conditions have shut the mill down, but it is still a neat site to see with Rangers ready to answer any quesions. Finally we returned to the visitors center to get our Junior Rangers sworn in and explored the farm and river walk nearby.
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On a sad note, we witnessed what might have been the beginning of the fires that ravaged the area that week after Thanksgiving.  Our route home took us through the Smoky Mountains and as we approached the Chimney Tops trailhead, we saw fire.  We snapped a few pictures and hoped that it would quickly be put out.  Unfortunatly, that was not the case and the Gatlinburg area was devastated by fire. 

Biltmore Estate 
Biltmore is an experience. This is a 178,000 square foot, 250 room, home completed by the Vanderbilt family in 1895. Biltmore is the largest privately own home in the United States. The estate sits on 11 square miles that was landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for his design work of Central Park. The design, history, and experience of the Biltmore is something that really has to be seen to be appreciated. We toured the house, the gardens, had lunch in the Stable Cafe, and visited Antler Hill Village.

At Antler Hill Village we split up: some of our group visited the winery while we took the kids to the playground and were talked into letting Lillian and Mitchell do the Land Rover Kids Adventure Course. This was a high end power wheel on an off-road course. It was expensive, but the kids really enjoyed this splurge.

​We arrived about 8:30am and left the Estate about 5:00pm. The property is really a two day experience if you have the time. 

New Toys
We did try out some new gear on this trip.
We recently ordered an Alps table and side table. These are lightweight tables that set up quickly. The full sized table is perfect just outside the camper to store outdoor cooking gear. The side table is great between our chairs outside to hold a book or drinks.
To go with the tables, we ordered Alps rocking chairs. These are well-built folding camp chairs that rock. We tried a lot of chairs and ruled them out. These are comfortable, lightweight, and seem very durable.
We got the kids new chairs as well. We decided on Susufaa Camping Chairs – Ultralight. We have seen similar chairs at REI, but found these for half the price and with great reviews on Amazon.
This is not a flashy piece of gear, but we had to buy an adjustable water pressure regulator. We’ve had some minor water issues in the Cricket and we think it’s due to our previous regulator not reducing the psi enough. With this flashy new regulator, we can monitor the gauge and get just the right amount of water. Set at 20 psi, we’ve had no issues.  

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This was our second year of Thanksgiving Cricket Camping, which is now a tradition since we have year three booked.