Welcome to our Summer 2016 RV Trip, Part II.  The Doctor has okayed my traveling after ear surgery, so we decided to get away from the Charleston heat and humidity for the next few weeks.

We left home Sunday afternoon and drove west on I26 straight to the North Carolina mountains for some cooler, drier air.  We stopped for the night at a great Pisgah Forest campground just outside Asheville.  Nice private campsites, a lake and cooler weather -- perfect!  We had already toured the  Biltmore Estate in Asheville, so we decided to just look into some of the fabulous art and craft galleries - we spent more than an hour exploring the New Morning Gallery - fabulous pottery, metal sculptures and furniture....  although we saw many items we wanted, Jack decided on their signature item - a beautiful hand-thrown pottery large cup and saucer to make crispy bacon in the microwave....we will see.

After lunch, we drove northwest on scenic Route 25E through the Great Smokey mountains to the Cumberland Gap and found a nice campsite in the Cumberland Gap National Park campground.  Met a wonderful couple in the campground who were in their 80,s and had been sweethearts since the 5th grade!  That may even rival some of our family and friends who have been married for-EVER!

This morning we drove to the visitor center and viewed the two movies they showed about the Cumberland Gap.  One highlighted the history (famous for Daniel Boone establishing a trail that westward immigrants could follow) and the other was "geophysical" about how the Appalachian Mountains and the Cumberland Gap were formed.

I hiked a short, but pretty wooded, trail up to the saddle of the Cumberland Gap where Daniel Boone and 300,000 immigrants had gone before me in their quest to find the rich Kentucky farmlands west of the forbidding east coast mountains.

We next drove up a restricted road to Pinnacle Point (guess how long our RV is?) 

Pinnacle Point gives a view of three states (okay, Friday Trivia folks, we have to remember this) Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Beautiful views from the pinnacle included lakes and the three states.  

The Cumberland Gap has been restored by moving the major highway through a tunnel built in 1996, allowing the National Park to let the Cumberland Gap trail revert to close to what Daniel Boone would have established in the late 1700's.