Mousetail Landing, State Park
Trip Start
Nov 19, 2007
1
48
217
Trip End
Ongoing
Linden, Tennessee
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Mousetail Landing was named years ago by the people of the area who were employed at the local tannery. A fire broke out burning the tannery to the ground. While everyone was trying to put out the fire and as they watched their means of employment disappearing, thousands of mice were high tailing out of there! Hence....Mousetail....
This park is over 1200 acres of beautiful Tennessee land along the Tennessee River. Andy and I checked in at the Ranger Station and began our trek to the campground. No more than a minute later we encountered the incline beware sign!!!! What an insane hill they made to get to the campground area.
After making it to the top in 1st. gear, we discover we were one of two who actually made it!!! Christa and Ray, from Florida, marvelled at how the larger RVs could ever make such a hill. Worst yet is going down! Ray told of his drive over the Rocky Mountains and across the rest of the U.S. and that the hill here at Mousetail was worse than any he had encountered. We had never had to use first gear to get up a hill before. In the past, the worst hill had been a 25% grade in GA and that hill was done in 1st and 2nd gear. When the ranger came by he said that many campers don't make the hill and that he has seen people try it 3 times, fail and leave the park. What were they thinking when they layed this park out?
We sat around a campfire with Christa and Ray and talked about going to Alaska this summer. They are joining an RV caravan and plan on spending a couple of months on the trip. At this point, we are hoping to be in Alaska this summer and maybe we will meet up there.
May 14th
We rode around the park on our bikes, walked up the big hill pushing our bikes, cleaned out the RV and gave it a wash. The rains started around sunset and kept up all night long. We agreed to stay here until we caught up with the blog and that's what we did into the night.
May 15th
The blog is up to date and we are getting ready to head west via some back roads. We should be out of here by 3:00 PM.
This is a private blog
Comments
uphill climb
you have a gift for finding hills 9% is about it for here ,thanks to that low end grunt the diesel has you can get to go were few can.