Campfire Vibes & Mountain Views: Your Guide to Mountaineer Campground, Townsend TN! 🏕️ #VANLIFE

Hey everybody we are where we at we're Wears Valley but we're going to Townsend to camp the peaceful side of the Smokies. Yes, and Where it's the Mountaineer Can't I swear it all started in Fullrunner and our little tent. Yeah, we camped in our tent and I think we made biscuits and gravy mic and we did Yeah, but that was long before the Travato and so we're gonna go back and pay him a visit and stay in the van. I believe we're on the river I bet you ought to come along. We are going to have Some of Karen's homemade chili with hot dogs over the fire tonight. Yeah for dinner So yeah, it's like come on Ain't that a pretty view right there Welcome to Townsend, Tennessee You in there buddy Yeah, welcome to the Mountaineer, it is in the mountains Hey guys, how are ya? Good, how are you? Hey, it's them. Hey, how you doing? I don't know them. Well they don't know me, but look at the little pocket dog. That's Winston. That is Winston. New pug, he's 12 weeks out today. Oh my goodness, look at him. I'm scared of all this excitement. I'm Mike. Matt. Matt, nice to meet you. You ever gone last time? Yeah, my grandma passed away. So we ended up having to go back for her funeral. So we missed you guys. Where was back to? Colorado. Thank you. Well it's great to be back, nice to meet you finally. Yeah, actually I was I think I told you last time when we talked on the phone Watching y'all's videos helped us to move here. Really? When we were thinking about moving to East Tennessee I get on YouTube I do all my research and I've seen y'all's videos about all the smoky campgrounds and stuff, and I'm like, oh yeah, we gotta go. You guys helped bring us here. Well, good. It's a beautiful area, Townsend's amazing, we just love it over in here. Alright. Yeah, let us know if you guys need anything. Welcome back. There's a nice little patio and walk out place. That's where we're going to be staying. This is a nice place right here. I was just saying that it's crazy how they build that deck right around that big tree. Yeah, right there, looks good to us. Look at all that space and that table, nice. I'm going to get us on, I can't remember if they got thirty, both thirty and fifty, or just fifty. Looks like it's fifty. So I have to put a little on the end of the line here. So you have to use a different adapter? Yeah, usually if there's a straight thirty amp you don't need an adapter. But since it's fifty amp you have to go from fifty amp down to thirty. Then you always want to test it. Correct wiring. I can hear the creek or river, whatever it is. It's a river. Okay. We are all set right there. It's so pretty. Yeah, it's pretty. This is a nice table. Yeah, you can sit right out here. Yeah. You can put your chairs right here at the end. Look at that. Isn't that beautiful? Gorgeous. Now last time we were here we walked over here and walked down there. That's beautiful. Let's let Winston see it. See that Winston? See the water? We're going to go up here and show you guys inside one of the cabins in case you want to come down here and stay in the cabin. Here's the bathroom and bathhouse back here. Yeah. Let me show you in one of the cabins here. This is thirty nine. They do have a pavilion over here. That thing's huge, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. Thank you, ma'am. Oh, yeah. Nice. Very rustic. Yeah. I love the rustic feel. It's nice. It's like a little booth at a diner. We've got an air conditioner. TV. We've got kids. There's a loft up here. Let me get my head and see what we can see. A mattress. You'd think the kids wouldn't love that. And kitchen. A little kitchenette. So you're in Codes Cove all day. Come back if you want to warm up some food or whatever. Bathroom. Shower. Very nice. Yeah, I love the feel of it. Rustic, don't you? Yeah, rustic up here. You've got a nice screened-in porch. Some chairs you can sit. This would be nice. Keep the bugs away. Rock away the evening. But still be outside. And they were saying that they are currently in the process of redoing the patio on the pool. Putting in new screeners and some other things. And it should be up and running by Labor Day. Memorial Day. Is that what it was? Memorial Day in May. Now last time, we were sitting down here where that white truck's at. Where we were at in our tent and 4Runner. And Big T was still alive. He wasn't with us because we had to put him in doggie daycare. Yeah, and they loved him at doggie daycare. So this is 32, 31, 30. Right here by this big ole tree. Anyway, this is a big bike trail over here. I can't remember the name of it. We'll take you out down here. See some nice tent camping here. Yeah, so this 23, this is a spot. 23 right here. You'd have to be tent because I don't think you can get anything else down in here. You comfortable with him on you there doing? Yes. Look at this. That is so clear. It's unbelievable. Can you see how clear that is? Probably not showing up on video. You can see a lot. You can see most of the bottom, can't you? Look at there. What a beautiful sight here in the Smokies. Let's open up the back windows and back doors and listen to the river run by. Isn't that just gorgeous, isn't it? What do you think, Winston? He's like licking his paw. He'll understand one day how pretty that is. And it's a pretty day today. I think some rain might be coming in tomorrow. Yeah, we may have rain the rest of the time we're here, but Well, tomorrow, not Sunday. Yeah. Coming in tonight, something like that, maybe. We'll see. I'm on the edge. I could get on the bridge. I believe we walked across that bridge last time. You do. I don't. Maybe we did. You all have to go back and watch that video. You can go through right here. Careful. So this is V Hollow. Got some trail guidelines right here. Who we are. V Hollow is a 14 mile mountain bike trail. You guys can pause and read there. We'll walk out here and see what the view looks like from the river. You can rent these cabanas over here at therat.com There you go. Scan that code right there. It's like a hefty bridge, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. My goodness. This is up higher than you'd think from over there on the bank, isn't it? Mm-hmm. Now you can see the bottom. Yeah, you can see that. How clear it is. Let's look at this other side. It's deeper right over here. Yeah, right over there to the right it's pretty deep. See that? I see an exit sign up there on that tree. I guess that's where you get out if you're riding the tubes down. Well, it sure feels like the Smokies here, doesn't it? It does. Love it. All right. We better go over and finish getting camp set up. What are you doing, buddy? Yeah, we met somebody up in the office that's camping here and... From Greenville, Tennessee. Yeah. And first words out of his mouth was, Hey, you're Big T's parents. That's how we're known. Yeah, then he went, I mean Winston now. Yeah, and he finally spotted Winston in his little cubby here. All right, we're going to finish getting set up here folks and enjoy the afternoon. Yes. Hot dogs and chili after a while? Later. Not hungry right now. No? All right. I say, dinner time. Yes. What do you say? Sounds good. Getting your boots on. Somebody helping you put your boots on there? He thinks he is. Yeah. I've got to get the awning out. It's raining some. You're going to make some of this good chili, right? Yes. And y'all have probably seen her make chili. I think there's a video just on your chili on her Facebook page. Videos. So if y'all want to see that, you can watch it. Okay, no, you can't come out here, buddy. It's raining. I've got to put the awning out. Here we go. I'm going full apron. Keep that chili off of you? Yes. We keep our Coleman table right up here. Can y'all hear the rain hitting the top up there? The awning? I'm not sure you can hear the river coming by out there either. If you haven't seen, this is our Coleman portable table. We love this thing. So simple to get up. Just like that, it's done. Piece of starter here. And we'll put some of these little ones on there. Keep going. Going to be going here in just a little bit. Okay, fire's going. Ballpark Frank. Bun size. Woo! That's my favorite to get. Beef bun size. Okay. Chili coming along? Yes. Should I go ahead and start cooking these here in a minute? I'm going to let the fire get up a little bit. Yeah, let the fire get up. Look at that. We always get the beef. What do y'all get? Y'all like the regular hot dogs always? I just love the beef ones. I don't know why. Here we go. And the race is on and here comes right up the back I don't know why George Jones has come out of me there. I love the smell of a good campfire. I don't know what it is. That's hickory I believe. Right there. Smells so good, Bonnie. Those are black. That night at me and Valerie, I cooked hot dogs and mine were black. We thought those were the best. Take a towel and wipe them off if they're too dark for you. Oh, no, no. We liked them We thought they were better. I'm cooking two more. You take those. I don't believe I'm going to cook all those. Winston is scared of noises he's not familiar with so when I tore off this aluminum foil he went running. Did he? Time to eat. What do you think? Are you scared of the aluminum foil? Here's the hot dogs, ma'am. Thank you, sir. Let's see how's it looking. Looks good. Oh, yeah, that does look delicious. I always like to make it a little bit juicy and we'll just use a spoon with slats in it for hot dogs because what's left over we can put crackers and cheese in it or put it on top of nacho chips and eat with cheese. It's got a little kick to it and a little touch of sweetness in it. Time to scoop. That looks really good. How much chili do you want? That's plenty for me. Look at that. Lord, thank you for this beautiful area here. Thank you for the drizzle of rain and for just a beautiful place to come and hang out for a little bit. Thank you for this food and we pray you bless it to our bodies. Amen. I got it pretty spicy but I put quite a bit of sugar in it too. Winston, this is really messy. I'm going to have to lean way out. He's going to eat a chip. You didn't get any wiener. Chili's good. Chili is delicious. It's drizzling out here so I can't get the camera out in the rain so we won't hardly fit in here. Making it work though. That was a folded one and you ate it right in front of me. You put it on a plate. I know but it must have been hidden or I would have got it would have snatched it up. That was a good bite right there. I'm going to keep the fire going and we'll see you all for dessert. Karen said she had something. I haven't seen it yet. Here's what Karen has got for us. Strawberry swirl cheesecake. Here's your fork. You eat that piece I'll eat this piece and that will leave one in the center. Look at all this crust we get to ourselves. I know. It's amazing isn't it? It's nice little dessert right there. Y'all see all this dessert? See all this crust on the side and the bottom that I get my own piece and Mike gets his own piece. We figured out how to solve this little issue. A lot of y'all say we should just have our own piece but sometimes we do. You did alright on that. That's good. I'm full. We didn't eat much. You didn't even eat two hot dogs. You used to always eat two hot dogs. Of course that chili is filling too. She put a lot way too much chili on my hot dog. Let's try another bite. It's so nice having my own crust. Isn't it? I guess we'll let Winston rest a little while. Winston's got the hiccups. He gets them about four or five times a day no joke. He does. It doesn't matter what time of day it is. He's going to get them. The rain's following. We've tried to pull under the awning a little bit. We've got a fire going. Welcome to the Fireside Chat our podcast. We'd love for you to go and download our podcast. If you haven't, just search for Fridays Forever, iTunes or wherever. On other social media places like on Twitter, Facebook. We usually put the full-length Campfire Chat up, don't we? On Facebook. Sometimes Twitter. It was a beautiful day here in the Smokies. It was. The rain didn't really move in until late this afternoon beginning of evening. It's really supposed to rain tomorrow. It's not raining hard now. It's just been windy. We're back to showing regular marshmallows, regular size marshmallows, not giant roasters. Yeah. We boondocked last night, didn't we? Mm-hmm. Just outside the Smokies a little bit. At a Cracker Barrel. Mike had a birthday a couple days ago. Yeah. We stopped. I'm not sure how I feel about turning 40. Yeah, I know. I've felt bad for you since I'm still 39. Oh, my goodness. We stopped today coming in at Smoky Mountain Knife Works and let him pick out some knives. I got a couple. Yes, for his late birthday present. You'll be seeing those. Winston's first vet appointment after we got him and he had to have boosters, he weighed 5 pounds. A couple days ago... Winston's our little pug if you're just listening to the podcast. A couple days ago he had his second vet appointment with us and boosters and he weighed 7 pounds. So he's gained a few pounds, a couple pounds and he's growing. He's doing good. He's getting longer. Let's talk about this peaceful side of the Smokies a little bit and all the beauty around here. It's been a while since we've been in this area. I mean the creation of God is amazing when you look at all this. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is just a couple tenths of a mile this way. That's true. The Townsend Y which we love. It's a great place to have a picnic. Cades Cove you can get in that way. It's just a gorgeous area. It is. You can probably hear the rain maybe hitting the awning. I'm almost out in the rain here. Oh gosh! What was that one? That one's about to fall off of there. And hey guys, this was our first ever camping video on the channel at the Mountaineer Campground in Townsend. We stayed over on the other side. I think we showed y'all today about where the site was. We had a 4-runner at that time and we tent camped. We made biscuits and gravy. Just stayed one night. But it was a nice little trip. That video is up there. If you want to search Mountaineer Campground or look in our library. Yeah, so it probably was what our life camping was like before we got the van. You can check that out. It was probably a couple years ago. We had fun. You remember my mat? We blew up. Had a big hump in it. It was ruptured. Yes. Because we hadn't used it in forever. And we had a cot. We had two cots. You had one. I just slept on the ground. And then we had those mats. Oh yeah. Oh that's right. I had a cot with a sleeping bag on top. And you had that blow up mat and something went wrong with it. And it was all bumpy. And Miss Shirley, Mama Friday, she was worried about us. She wanted to know if that tent locked. It had locks on it to keep the bears out. And if we had bear spray. Oh Mama, you know better than that. But that was a fun camping trip. Yeah it was. And it was the first ever. And we really didn't camp anymore after that until we got the Travato. So. This didn't work out for us to be able to do that. But things worked out. We were able to get the Winnebago Travato. And we've been camping ever since. Yeah, we've stayed in a few cabins. Yeah. And whenever people invite us, we'll try and go if we can. And do a little tour of their cabin and show you folks. Let us know if you'd like to have us come and do that. We've done cabins, condos in Gatlinburg, cottages in Pigeon Forge. Hotels. Hotels. Yeah. We've done a lot of that. Yeah. Since we started the channel. So we're in Townsend, Tennessee. We know where some of y'all live. But it would be great down in the comments if you would put where you live but what is the beautiful part of where you live? You may go, nothing. But hopefully there's something. Yes. I think everybody has something. Or you could put something that's within maybe 100 miles or 200 miles of where you live. Say, well that's God's creation and it is beautiful. Let us know. That would be great. I'm getting rained on out here. Are you? Yeah. Oh, look at that. But yeah, it's beautiful here and Townsend and Woods Valley, there's places to eat, shops, different things to do and several little campgrounds and inns and hotels and stuff. And sometimes it's just nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of what Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge could be like. It's a beautiful. Although we love all those places too. This is just really neat. And we love the KOA in Townsend and we have a video on the KOA in Townsend. But this is a really nice campground also. We like the mountaineer. It's got really neat mature trees. Oh, beautiful mature trees. And the Wi-Fi is crazy good here. Excellent. I'm burning that out there. You see that? Yes, I can tell. Those of you just listening to the podcast, there's a little residual marshmallow left to the roaster stick and I am burning it off. Can you not scrape it off there too? I don't want to get it sticky on that little solo stove. Yeah, that's true. On a regular campfire, I wouldn't mind at all. There's something mesmerizing about sitting and watching a fire, you know it? Is his eyes closed again? Yeah, he's back asleep. I guess we'll sit here and enjoy the rain and the fire. See you guys inside before we head to bed. Okay. We are in clean up mode. Time to clean up. How much chili do we have left? Quite a bit. You all send us an email if you want us to send the rest of that to you. I don't know how to package it. We've got a candle going here. What kind is that? Pumpkin cinnamon bun. Somebody send us that one of our subscribers. That's awesome. Thank you. I wanted you all to listen to this. I was sitting out here so peaceful. Look at there, Adam. Sacked out. He slept in his bed for a while but then he got up and started stretching and acted like he was a little lost so he's snuggling with me now. I let folks hear that rain out there. It's soothing. Very soothing. Yeah. Have you all been watching a movie? Yeah. Have you? Well, one of us has. Somebody's been sleeping most of the time. I guess we'll see you all tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Good night, everyone. It's a good night. The birds singing this morning. Sun's coming up. Have a little breakfast. Looks like somebody's sacked out over here. Out cold. Okay, so what are we having? We're going to have French toast and sausage. Well, that sounds good. Who's cooking? Me. That sounds even better, doesn't it, folks? Music Thank you for this great looking breakfast this morning. The sun is shining. Isn't it? Yes. Well, we're diving in here. Sunny morning. Good, isn't it? Good stuff. That's wonderful. Wilson already had breakfast. Didn't you, buddy? What is it about breakfast here in the mountains that makes it so good? I don't know. The ambiance. Of course, I don't know if you say ambiance outside. It's just where you are, I guess. We'll finish up here. Then we'll let you guys know our thoughts about the campground. We've been here before. So hang tight. We'll be right back. Okay, that was a great breakfast. It was. Always good cooking here in the Smokies. Thoughts about the campground? We love it here. I would definitely come back. It's a really good location. You went out of the hustle and bustle. There's some decent food up and down through here you can grab. If you really like to stay back in the mountains, you can get back into Cades Cove, the Sinks, the Townsend Y, all those things from this location. It is a little smaller campground so it doesn't have this big huge feeling of the KOA or Little Arrow down the road. We really like this kind of feel. We like the KOA also. This is a neat campground and the real rustic cabins. They're working on the pool. It has a lot of amenities to offer. Absolutely. The staff is very friendly. You can see from the tour where we took you around, everything about the campground. We hope you'll consider coming and being a part here. The Wi-Fi is really good here. Verizon, I have three bars right now. That's good too. Winston liked it, didn't you? The bathhouses are nice. Always clean. I think I've got some video we'll show you there. Just a great smaller campground here in the peaceful side of the Smokies. We'll leave some information down below if we don't forget where you can contact them, tell them Fridays Forever sent you. Yes, y'all should check it out. Until next time, we're Fridays Forever. Bye-bye everybody. Winston, tell everybody bye. Bye.