Relax RV Podcast – episode 46 – We visit the Smoky Mountains and our generator DIED

Published: March 12, 2020, 11 a.m.

On 3/10/20 this podcast celebrated it's 2 year anniversary.
Our Boondockers Welcome hosts in Brooks Georgia invited us in for ice cream. We sat with them for over an hour having a really nice conversation about a lot of different things. Then I met my buddy Rob at Nic & Norman's in Senoia. This is the town where Walking Dead was filmed.
The next day we drove to The Cottage Vineyard and Winery which are Harvest Hosts. After setting up we drove over to Helen Georgia. We were pleasantly surprised by it. We liked it better than Frankenmuth Michigan.  You can park for free at the Unicoi Hill Park or in the City of Helen parking lot on the other end of town. Otherwise it's $5 to park (March 2020). We ate at the Heidelberg restaurant which had really good heavy German food. We had nice conversations with some of the shop owners.
That evening we got back to the rig Trish suggested starting up the generator you hadn't started it in a while. It started right up and ran for about 10 minutes and then it died. It's not sending an error code. We have flashbacks from 2018 (check out episode 5 to hear about that mess).
We hope its the dipstick/oil fill plug, and have one on order.
That day we drove a whopping 7 miles to Timber Ridge Campground that we reserved through Passport of America. 
We then went back to Helen Ga and hiked the Unicoi / Helen Trail. 
Then we drove to Smokemont Campground in the Smoky Mountains National Park (no entry fee). We picked a sunny campsite for our solar (here is a link to our solar system in our rig). We then did a 5 1/2 mile hike. It was 62 degrees and beautiful. That night it was 30 degrees fahrenheit out, it's nice having our inverter so we can use our electric blankets to warm up our bed. And its nice having heated tanks.
The next day we went for a hike on the Appalachian Trail.
The next day we woke up to total cloud cover and rain. We packed up and drove north out of the Smoky Mountains and by the time we left the campsite our batteries were fully charged, we love our 3000 watt pure sine wave inverter. We drove through Gatlinburg and will return to it someday.
We drove to Fall Branch, Tennessee. We met our Boondocking Welcome hosts. They invited us in for a glass of wine and nice conversation.
The next day March 11th 2020 I recorded this episode of the podcast while Trish did laundry. Then off to find a small park and go for a walk.