We were booked to speak at the
RV Travel Club's national rally in Sevierville, but that was about 500 miles, and we had 10 days to get there, so we made a few stops.
First up was the FMCA campground just outside of Cincinatti. Do you know about
Jungle Jim's? It's a huge store in Cincinatti with everything imaginable from a wine/beer tasting bar, to live lobsters, to International items from all over the world. Since we were passing right by, we had to stop and see if it was as impressive as we remembered from having been there in August 2015 and I wrote:
Think of Trader Joe's and World Market together, then multiply times 10.
Plan to spend a few hours at Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati
FMCA Campground
We've stayed here before. Every FMCA member gets 2 free nights. A lot of FMCA members have big motorcoaches. It was fun to see the comparison with our Roadtrek!
We especially enjoyed the new trail around the lake. Especially around sunset time.
Rocky Top
Back on the road, we made it to Rocky Top, Tennessee. Yep, that's for real - a town called Rocky Top with a State park campground nearby. We checked out the campground and found good Verizon service, so we signed up for 3 days! Then we got out the electric bikes and explored a bit. We even found a
brewery nearby with good food and live music.
 |
| Chris enjoying Clinch River Brewing |
Also nearby is the Museum of Appalachia
Then we planned to stay at the nearby
Escapees park called Raccoon Valley. We didn't have any reservations, so we pulled in the driveway and checked the Internet speed first. We were booked to do a remote presentation to the
Golden Gate Computer Society in California the following night, so we had to have good Internet. When neither the download speed or the upload would push past 1, we decided to turn around and drive a bit further before stopping for the night.
Knoxville
Ahead of us was Knoxville, Tennessee. It was Sunday, and we wanted to find a sports bar where we could watch the Miami Dolphins play football. Google Maps sent us to one place that was closed, so we took the time to call the next place - they said sure, come on down and watch your football with us. Only after we got there did they try to find the game and discovered that none of their channels were carrying it. It was discouraging, but as so often happens, what we ended up doing was the best! We found a sports bar right downtown - another advantage to our small RV that can park anywhere! The
Hill Bar and Grill even had good food. They were busy and had TVs everywhere playing every game. This gave Jim the motivation to discover a new app for his phone, it's called
Tunity and you can use it to hear the sound from whichever TV you want. Just open the app and point your camera at the TV that is playing the game you want. The sound then comes out of your phone. Jim talked about this app in our
YouTube show episode 153.
Did you know that Knoxville hosted a
World's Fair in 1982? Some parts of it remain a permanent part of downtown Knoxville - and it was right nearby the Hill Bar and Grill. So, we took a walk.
 |
| There is no charge to take the elevators up the tower in World's Fair Park and see the views of downtown Knoxville. |
A hotel? Really?
It was now Sunday night, and we had our remote seminar presentation on Monday night. It was not at all clear that there was a campground with good Internet nearby. We didn't want to check in to the park where the rally is - just too early. So, we checked into a hotel instead.
You heard me right, we pulled our little camper van into a hotel parking lot and took advantage of a special rate to stay for 2 nights. Ever since we traded in our big RV for the little RV, we've told ourselves that hoteling it was an option, but we haven't done it.
It was nice. Especially since our seminar was so late. This club's meeting time is 7pm, but they're on the west coast - so that meant 10pm for us. I, for one, was really glad that the hotel beds were ready and waiting when we finished rather than having to put all the studio stuff away and convert the room back to a bedroom in the RV.
Their WiFi was pretty good, but I still think we used our Verizon hotspot as well. We taught a new subject this time - editing videos with Google Photos and Windows 10. We did not record the seminar, but here are a couple of our short tutorial videos on the topic (for Geeks on Tour members.)
