Off we go, to the Great Smoky Mountains and to inside an Indian reservation, Cherokee. But first, a detour to Chimney Rock, 1 hour southeast of Asheville.
Chimney Rock is a small mountain settlement named after a rock called... Chimney Rock. Yep it is there in the photo below although not at the very top.
VERY disappointed - the road from the village to the start of the stairs to the top is closed as safety repairs are required so we can't go up to Chimney Rock, just admire it from a distance.
In our view Chimney Rock is misnamed. From a distance, and at this angle we can't help being reminded of something else... <use your imagination here>
To be fair it was not a wasted trip. The drive to Chimney Rock is lovely, on a steep windy mountain road and often running beside this river. Fantastic landscape, very pretty indeed. Difficult to capture on film.
Yep, the water is cold and fast flowing.
There are definitely trout in this river - they are stocked into the river from a hatchery and you are allowed to catch up to 7 per day. If you look carefully at the photo below there are several facing upstream at the far right, our estimate is about 1/2 kilo each. Yummy smoked...
We did a short river walk behind the Chimney Rock village which included a couple of bridges and rock hopping. Quite nice but not a hike.
A few signs in Chimney Rock village caught our attention while we drove around the area. The first sign, the orange on the right, made us smile outside a Harley Davidson store...
The second one just outside the village annoyed us. What a cheek! Self defeating too as there was not one car or person there. Go figure.
Oh well, no Chimney Rock so we head to Cherokee for our next few nights accommodation and to hike in the Great Smoky Mountains.
An uneventful drive except one of our favourite last supper $1 plates had cracked completely on arrival. Jesus is now separated from many of his apostles. We can't be too upset - for 3 months it did us well and we still have one of these plates intact. And the plate cost a whole 1 dollar in Los Angeles. Hallelujah!
We were quite impressed with Baymont Inn, Cherokee as they provided one of these little boxes below. A "chargepoint" with 2 power outlets and 2 USB outlets, placed on the bedside table.
We have heard about these newer modern type of accommodation supporting travelers in the 21th century with plenty of outlets to recharge all your technical gizmos, but we hadn't encountered any of them yet (possibly because the low end style of accommodation that we seek...).
Worked brilliantly. Respect!
After check in, we drove up to Smoky Mountains Visitor Centre (called Oconaluftee) a couple of miles north of where we are staying. Mission was to enquire about hikes, road closures and get some maps and information.
All good, we left armed with several pamphlets. Noticeable was that entry to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is free, but they charge $1 for maps with any substance (you get the 10,000 feet overviews for free). The national park charging formula in the US seems to be very different and no 2 parks seem to charge the same way.
The visitor's centre is situated between the road into the park and the river, and we wander down to the river afterwards. Lots and lots of water in the stream.
There was also this old house there, moved from elsewhere within Smoky Mountains National Park, which belonged to an old pioneer named John Davis. There is no relationship between Mr Davis and the guy in front of his old house.
We drive back to the Baymont Inn, Cherokee for a lazy afternoon and then off to New Happy Garden for Chinese dinner (just 5 minutes walk away).
What? No chopsticks...???
New Happy Garden (btw, what ever happened to the old happy garden? Did it cease to be happy?) had a feel good interior with schmalzy Chinese Muzak piped through the loudspeakers. Yep, we liked that.
The food, and no, we did not go for the ever present buffet, was average, but it filled us up and nothing was expensive.
Later, a chatty older bloke from Arkansas with wife sat down at the table to the left of Di in the above picture. He used words like "redneck" and "retired and retarded" to describe himself and told stories about himself as a youngster trying to get into Australia and how his great grandfather (or similar) was chased by Indians and swam across Missisippi river.
The bloke would have been a great success at any Australian pub with his yarns.
We wandered back to our motel just as we can feel a few raindrops. Good night.
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