The Smoky Mountains

Well here we sit in the pouring rain.  Don't get the wrong idea, this is very nice once in awhile, the pitter patter on the roof, homemade soup for dinner, watch a movie and veg away a day.  Jan is baking, I am trying to write and work on our unfortunately recurring problem.  I said that the air compressor amazingly fixed itself after we arrived here, we heard it run off and on for several days, and then we noticed, hey, it is isn't running anymore!  Well, there isn't going to be any troubleshooting right now, not worth getting soaked over, and who knows maybe our electrical guru in Elkhart will have some insight.

We had a great time here in Cherokee, NC, right on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, campground not so nice though, very old, run down, tight, no cell service, very iffy internet, but otherwise surrounded by two pretty streams on the Eastern Cherokee Reservation, so even with our NC fishing licenses we can't fish here without a tribal license, but we did do a lot of fishing in and around the park.  We recently read an excellent book about trout fishing in the Smokies, "On the Spine of Time" by Harry Middleton, a great read and made us really want to experience the area.  So first we entered the park north of Bryson City on the Lakeview Drive, parked and hiked down to the Noland Creek and gave it a go.

Lakeview Drive

Suiting up

Beautiful Noland Creek

It was gorgeous and a bit challenging as it was fairly tight amongst the trees to make casts without sticking your fly in the leaves.  But we had a good time and sure enjoyed the scenery.  It was so peaceful and beautiful you could just sit there and listen to the water for hours.  

Another goal that was referred to in the book was to boat over to Hazel Creek only accessible by boat or a long hike.  We drove to the Cable Cove boat launch, set up the inflatable and off we went across Fontana Lake, a TVA lake that was created during WWII to provide power for aluminum manufacturing for aircraft.  It was a gorgeous day, little wind, sunny skies, and we had the entire lake, at least what we could see completely to ourselves.  It's about 4 miles to Hazel Creek, and we didn't really know what we were looking for.  We tentatively poked up the creek as it got narrower, and found a pretty little path that we thought might be it.  We beached the boat, and walked up to find a hiker that had just arrived there from Clingman's Dome, a short little 15.6 mile hike that is primarily downhill, although he said there were plenty of climbs to break it up:-)  We decided to go back to the boat and poke up farther into the cove then hike into the creek.  Well, I have to admit we decided to just head back out into the lake and have lunch and call it a day.  Why you ask, because the 12 water moccasins that came careening out from the bank directly towards us unnerved us a bit and we decided we would do this another time, especially since we had figured out how to get there.  So maybe in the fall.  We ended up drifting around a beautiful cove, had a nice picnic lunch in the boat and fished a bit in the lake.  The we decided to give it another go with spinning gear, so we went back to the boat launch, had a fascinating conversation with 2 guys and a girl who were camping out of kayaks, that said we should have ignored the snakes, they wouldn't have bothered us.  Ha!  Easy for them to say.  Anyway we went back out and fished for another hour or so, had a great time although no fish.  After about 5 hours in the boat we packed up and headed back.

Leaving the boat launch

Beached at Hazel Creek

Up the trail

Why we left!

Out of there

Our lunch spot!!

Beautiful foliage

Then another day we went back up into the park, had a nice picnic along a babbling stream, fly fished for over an hour, much better for both of us, more room to cast, and easy to wade, a great time.  Then up towards Clingman Dome for coffee overlooking the mountains.

Picnic spot

We spent a great week here relaxing, fishing, walking, and went over to Waynesville, found a fantastic restaurant for lunch, Sweet Onion, walked around the cute town for awhile.  Gotta have some food pictures!

The delicious namesake onion soup

Asian salad

Fried chicken and roasted tomato sandwich
with some interesting and awesome
broccoli casserole

Then later we went over to Asheville to look into something we ended up buying to make our storage issues easier, at least we think so.  The fact REI was having a sale at the same time was amazing:-)  More info to come after Albuquerque where we get it.

So tomorrow morning we start moving in earnest.  We are racing up to Elkhart, IN in 2 days to be ready for our 7am appointment with the electric guru, then 4 very quick days to get to Lubbock, TX to pick up our grandkids for 2 weeks!