Quick Update From Southwest North Carolina

We had just arrived in Sevierville to Two Rivers Landing, a very nice park, essentially two rows of sites, one row back ins across the road from the French Broad River and one row of pull in's restricted to motorhomes directly on the river.  When we had called and made our reservation only across the river sites were available and that is what we got, still very nice. 

We woke up our first morning, I use the term loosely as it was 0330am to cop cars, sirens, loudspeakers and popped straight out of bed to find there was a huge fire in the campground way at the end away from us thankfully.  They think a battery caught fire or exploded setting their equipment shed and all the equipment on fire!  The fire engines rolled in shortly after, but there was little if anything left.  So our day started pretty early.  Then it poured rain all day so we just hunkered down and made stew.

We hit a period of poor weather, drizzly off and on and cool, okay by us.  The next morning we got up and had breakfast at Waffle House always a good take, although we only do it about 3 times a year, then ran a couple errands, Lodge cast iron cookware was right next to us so we stopped there, and the world's largest knife store, Smoky Mountain Knife Works was right across the street so we got lost in there for awhile.  

We only had one more day and it dawned beautiful and warmer, and we noticed there were a couple sites empty on the river side, so we asked to move over and they said yes.  What a difference, we didn't realize the river sites were much larger, still all concrete and right smack on the river!  Fantastic!

As you can see an awesome site, and private too as they have a line of hedges between sites, we'll be definitely going back there.

Then off to Murphy, NC and Peachtree Cove, a small park we have stayed at before as recently as this spring, it is quiet, in the woods with a small brook babbling right outside.  We are working ourselves closer and closer to Atlanta, but we had an issue come up that we felt we could address from this spot.  I had been battling an ugly swelling on my neck that had been really bothering me, so I made an appointment with our dermatologist in Woodstock, GA a mere 90 miles away.  So we made a day of it, dermatologist to get my neck fixed, then out to a very disappointing lunch, horrible in fact, I won't mention a name, then over to Costco, Total Wine, Publix, and a few other spots then back.  A long day, 0845am to 4pm, but very worth it, and it's a very pretty ride.  North Georgia and western NC are mountainous and beautiful and still have  color.

We have been here a week and enjoying our time, not doing too much, it's been quite cool and rainy off and on.  But it's peaceful and quiet.

Our site in the woods

We have been cooking, riding around, eating at numerous restaurants, some good and some great, relaxing, reading, walking, just having a nice time.

Jan went all out one rainy cool night and made an awesome Osso Buco!

Absolutely delicious!

We drove down to Dahlonega, a favorite north GA town to walk around the square and have lunch, it was just okay, but we really went for the drive.  It's a really cute town.

Then our second to last day we wanted to go check out Blairsville and surrounds, and tried a Cuban restaurant with good reviews, Nani's.  It was fantastic!  Small place, very friendly and like I say excellent, what a find.

These are delicious corn fritters

This was Jan's.  Shrimp Creo with red and black beans and yellow rice!

My delicious Cuban sandwich with beans

We will be going back there.  We were chatting with the owner and he asked if we were staying at Crossing Creeks, we said no and realized we had no idea of where he was talking about.  Understand we have spent many hours in this area exploring even when we lived outside of Atlanta and have looked, with what we thought was diligence, for campgrounds, so to hear of one we missed and find out it was right in Blairsville was quite a surprise.  So we went to visit.  It is a huge ownership park, very interesting and almost affordable:-)

We got a nice break in the weather and were able to go outside for cocktail hour with a fire finally, first time in a week!

So today is our last day, sunny and bright although 27 degrees this morning after the time change.  And I will interject, I have been reading about a lot of states wanting to do away with Daylight Savings Time, and it seems they can do that themselves, and in our opinion they can't do it soon enough.  It is utterly ridiculous to change our clocks twice each year for no apparent or justifiable reason.

So this afternoon we rode up to the Nantahala River to sightsee and check out the fishing spots.  The weather kind of put a kibosh on us fishing this fall, but we plan to come back in the spring and give it a go.  If we had known today was going to be this nice we would have fished, oh well, next time.

The beautiful Nantahala:

Off to Blue Ridge tomorrow and a little closer to Atlanta.