On the east end of Tennessee, the Little River slides past the RV pads at Walland while the first ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains come out of the fog behind them. Halfway across the state, the Cumberland Plateau breaks into gorges and waterfalls at Fall Creek Falls, and further west the lakes around Nashville go still at dusk with the lights of parked rigs along the shore. The far end is Memphis, where a motorhome sleeps within walking distance of the Graceland gates.
Those are four different weeks, and each one works best with the rig parked on one site and the days running out from it. Summer here is hot and humid enough that a family wants the air conditioning on all night, which pushes a week toward a full-hookup base over a dry campground. In Memphis that base is Graceland's own RV park and campground, with full hookups at 30 and 50 amp, and the Memphis RV page builds the week around the mansion and Beale Street.
The Smokies from Townsend and Walland
From Townsend, the Cades Cove loop is close enough to reach at first light, when deer graze the open field before the cars line up. A rig does best based outside the park at a full-hookup site, like Whispering River Resort at Walland, with pull-through and pull-in sites for units up to 45 feet on full 50/30-amp hookups and sewer, or Little Arrow in Townsend. Cades Cove and Elkmont have no hookups and firm length caps, with Cades Cove taking RVs up to 40 feet and Elkmont up to 35, so reserve the campground before the rig if you want a night under the trees. The Knoxville RV page plans the Townsend week night by night, and Pigeon Forge and Dollywood belong to the lake week on the Douglas Lake RV page.
Further north along the same mountains, the Tri-Cities run a lake week on South Holston Lake and a much louder one when the race crowd pours into Bristol. On race weeks the speedway and the lake want the same rigs and the same pads, so lock both early, and the Johnson City RV page covers each.
Nashville and the Middle Tennessee lakes
Around Nashville the rig stays put for a city week, plugged in near a lake while the days go to downtown and the Opry. Nashville Shores puts its RV sites on 385 wooded acres beside Percy Priest Lake, and at dusk the pads light up along a shoreline gone quiet. CMA Fest week is the one to plan around, when the festival crowd and the lake parks want the same rigs and the same pads at once. The Nashville RV page has the full parked week, from Music Valley's hookup parks to the Corps of Engineers parks on Old Hickory Lake.
The rest of Middle Tennessee rings the city with more lake weeks and one long parkway. Northwest, the Clarksville RV page parks a rig at Land Between the Lakes for a week on the water. South, the Spring Hill RV page follows the Natchez Trace, and southeast the Manchester RV page has Normandy Lake and Bonnaroo, which squeezes the region's rigs the way CMA Fest does.
Fall Creek Falls RV loops on the Cumberland Plateau
Fall Creek Falls plunges 256 feet off the rim of the Cumberland Plateau into the gorge below, a single ribbon of water you can follow the whole way down from the top. Fall is when everyone comes, when the plateau's forest turns and the park books out months ahead.
In a rig the plateau is a parked week. The motorhome stays in the Main Campground with the power on, and the days go to the falls, the gorge rim and the rest of the park on foot or by a short drive from the loop. Evenings end back at the site with dinner cooked inside and nowhere to be in the morning.
The Main Campground is laid out in five areas, A through E, with water and 50/30/20-amp electric, sewer at 107 sites and some sites up to 65 feet. Book the site before the rig, since the site you land tells you how long a motorhome you can bring, and fall weekends go first.
Two people who would rather sleep somewhere new each night along the gorge can size down to something smaller. South of the plateau, the Chattanooga RV page runs a lake week at Harrison Bay State Park on Chickamauga Lake, with Cloudland Canyon across the Georgia line.