Day 17 - Bryson City to Asheville

Monday, May 23, 2022

Weather - Rain, rain, rain, with a high of 64F

Steps - Shaun: 6,550, Shannon: 6,713

Today was a travel day disguised as a shopping day, as we meandered our way east from Bryson City to Marshall, a little town 30 minutes north of Asheville. That's where we ended up choosing to stay because we wanted mountain views more than we cared about direct proximity to Asheville. Our route took us through Dillsboro and Sylva, which we had read about in our travel guide. The former was a bust, with all but one store closed for some reason (even thought the shop we wanted to visit, Dogwood Crafters, said they would be open on their website). Granted, it was raining cats and dogs most of the day, so maybe no one wanted to brave the weather to open their businesses? Anyway, Sylva was much better.

Our first priority in Sylva was to visit a bookstore we had read about called City Lights (but not like City Lights, the iconic bookstore in San Francisco). It was set up on a hill and had a café attached. It was a typical indie store, with a nice used book section in the back, so we were both able to find some goodies to buy. From there, we went to a nice brewery that had an attached restaurant and event space for lunch. The restaurant had a vegan burger for Shaun and tomato soup and grilled cheese for Shannon, so we were both happy campers. 

We wandered around the Sylva a bit, checking out the shops and taking pictures of the pretty cloud formations, before we continued on to Waynesville. Compared to Dillsboro and Sylva, Waynesville is a positive metropolis. We got to check out two very different bookstores, one that was super cool in an old 3-story building with the main stock in the basement, though it didn't feel that way because it was so well-lit and airy, while the other was also in a basement and leaned into that feeling, with lights shaped like old gas lamps and a monastic library kind of vibe. By this time, though, we were feeling a bit shopped out, so we didn't stay long in Waynesville before embarking on the last leg of our journey to Marshall.

The view from the deck of our VRBO. Pretty nice, huh?

Sorry, this picture of the kitchen area is a little askew.

The living room and kitchen from the loft.

The host of the VRBO we chose had warned us that the driveway was a bit treacherous, and indeed, it is a graveled, puddle-filled, narrow, winding drive to get up to the house. It's a good 15 minutes outside of town at the end of the road in the boonies, but it has a spectacular view and is very comfortable for us. 

We spent the rest of the evening unloading and unpacking, getting settled in, and watching movies. We're looking for our Biltmore Estate-filled day tomorrow!

Day 14 - Travel day from Townsend, TN to Bryson City, NC

Friday, May 20, 2022

Weather - HOT again with highs of 89F in Townsend, TN all the way south to Bryson City, NC

Steps - Shaun: 7,536; Shannon:  6,377

Varmints - A duck couple and another duck family with lots of babies and a flock of a weird looking ducks with orange feet

Today we checked out of Cedar Knob Cabin in Townsend and worked our way south to Stonebrook Lodge in Bryson City.  It was a bit of a logistics and packing challenge to set up our next three days in a hotel with nothing but a small fridge and microwave.  Shannon, the Queen of Spatial Relations, had no problem at all with the packing, of course, so we headed out to Phase III of our trip.

Our first stop was breakfast, which was at a really sketchy looking restaurant located just a couple minutes away right on the river that had a 4.6 star rating on Google. It turned out that the food was absolutely excellent, the inside of the restaurant was super cute (see the view in the pic at right), but the service was terrible, and it wasn't only because they were short-staffed. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad, and we left with full bellies, which was the whole point. It just took a really long time.

It's a little hard to see, but imagine yourself living in this house perched on the side of a mountain.

It even had a full on entryway with call box—on the side of a mountain!

To get from the north side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Bryson City (which sits just south of the park), we decided to return to the Foothills Parkway and continue past the point we had exited last time we were there. The only problem was that the road was closed part way down, so we had to fight our way through the construction vehicles and then onto Happy Valley Road. We found this incredible house while going down the side of the mountain (check out their view!), and then we found ourselves on this crazy road with hairpin turns all over the place surrounded by more motorcycles than we'd ever seen in one place. The other weird thing was on several of the turns, there were people under portable canopies taking pictures of the motorcyclists coming down the road, so we just figured it was a motorcycle event of some kind because many of the riders were dressed to the nines and even matched their bikes!

It turns out that we had stumbled onto a road called "The Tail of the Dragon" that we had read about previously but decided not to visit, thinking that it was a closed racecourse or something. Turns out that it's a stretch of US Hwy 129 that contains 318 curves in 11 miles, and the people taking pictures were always there because it's America's number one motorcycle and sports car road...and I drove the Jeep down it without knowing I was anywhere special. Shannon's step-brother David has ridden this road 26 times on his motorcycle and laughed his you know what off when he found out we'd driven it without knowing what it was. It wasn't until we got to the bottom and saw the big ass metal dragon on the side of the road that we realized what we'd done. How crazy is that?

After leaving The Tail of the Dragon behind, we drove to the Fontana Dam, which is the highest dam east of the Rocky Mountains at 480 feet. It was built after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to provide electricity in support of the war effort, including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee where work related to the Manhattan Project was undertaken. The dam displaced thousands of families and inundated several towns at the time (including the dam's namesake town of Fontana), but it has helped the area by providing low-cost electricity and flood control for over 70 years.

The reservoir through the openings in the giant spillway doors.

This is the powerhouse for another, older dam in the same area. We just thought it looked cool.

Unfortunately, the dam's visitors center and gift shop were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, so all we could do was take some pictures outside, walk on top of the dam, and wonder over the small cracks in the structure from which water was leaking. It was pretty concerning, and a bit depressing as well, because the whole area was deserted. It was still a worthwhile stop, though, because Fontana Lake was the first big body of water we'd seen all trip (everything else had been rivers), and the dam is an incredible feat of engineering, taking only 3 years to complete a structure that normally would have taken 10.

From the dam, we headed on to the Stonebrook Lodge, checked in, unloaded, and then left again to wander around Bryson City. We met a couple shop proprietors who were happy to tell us about other places to visit and events to check out the next day, bought a couple things, and ate the wonderful dinners we had prepared ahead of time at the cabin. Tomorrow is our big Great Smoky Mountain Railroad train ride, so we got to bed early. Here are a couple more pics of the Little Tennessee River and Fontana Lake for good measure.

We're finally going to the Smokies!

Three years after originally planning our visit to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we're finally hitting the road! We scheduled the trip for May 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic nipped that in the bud. So, we're going in May 2022 instead in hopes that we'll beat the summer rush and see some pretty wildflowers, waterfalls, and baby animals. Along the way, we'll also explore Knoxville and Gatlinburg, TN, the little and not-so-little towns around the park, and Asheville, NC.

The trip will be 24 days long, including two travel days, so stay tuned for news of all our adventures!