The McCabe Family Great Smoky Mountains Road Trip 2014

Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 6, we head to the Biltmore Estate, via the Blue Ridge Parkway .  It will add a bit of time to the trip, but will be well worth it in my opinion.

After dinner, we drove through the pretty little town of Sylva, North Carolina.  Sylva is the county seat of Jackson County.  Its Main Street is littered with small shops, cafes, bookstores, and general stores.  The historic courthouse is the county's most photographed building, was constructed on a hill overlooking Sylva's Main Street in 1914 by an early industrialist, and is now part of the county's library system. We parked the car and strolled the Main Street before heading back to our hotel.

I found  Jarrett House in my Road Food book, and we were not disappointed.  Jarrett House, which dates from 1884, is located in Dillsboro, North Carolina , and features southern home-style cooking. We started off with fried green tomatoes and southern egg rolls. Then we had sugar cured oven baked ham, southern fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, and fried breaded trout, with heaping sides of mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, cole slaw, and candied apples.  Suzanne threw in a garden salad in a valiant effort to appear to be eating healthy! Ha, she didn't fool any of us. I topped it off with warm cherry cobbler and ice cream for dessert.  Still no pie for me on this trip, but the cobbler was very good! They had to roll me back to the hotel after all that fine eating!  Here are Clare and Conor relaxing on the rocking chairs after our meal.

Our third stop of the day was at Mingo Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in the area on the Cherokee Indian Reservation and just outside the park boundary.  It's reached by a one-half mile hike up a set of stairs and then a rocky path.  No one else was enthusiastic about another hike, but I convinced them to come along. Needless to say, it was worth the short hike, and the view was special.  I'll let the photographs do the talking.

After visiting Clingmans Dome, we exited the park along the Newfound Gap Road and headed into Cherokee, North Carolina.  There, we entered the Cherokee Indian Reservation. We had a quick lunch at the Oconaluftee Islands Park.  Then, we toured the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, where we learned about the Trail of Tears and the history of the Cherokee Nation which was originally based in North Carolina but was forcibly moved to Oklahoma in the 1830s.  Our visit here nicely dovetailed with our trip last year to the Grand Canyon when we drove through Oklahoma and stopped at the Oklahoma visitor center  where a large painting of the Trail of Tears was hung. The museum was moving and Clare was very animated by the museum.

The next stop on our second day in the park was Clingmans Dome , the highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with an elevation of 6,643 ft.  The summit straddles Tennessee and North Carolina, and is the highest peak in Tennessee. The summit at Clingmans Dome is reached by a one-half mile long, very steep paved trail that ends at a 45-foot circular observation deck, which was built in 1960.  The Appalachian Trail also runs along Clingmans Dome.  The weather at the summit was much cooler and very misty and foggy, with visibility as a result being very poor. Here is Conor walking up to the summit. The observation deck shrouded in mist. Clare and Conor on the observation deck. Dad on the observation deck. The misty view from the observation deck.

We left Gatlinburg before 10 am, and headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a second day of touring in the park. We drove the Newfound Gap Road which runs for 33 miles, and bisects the park on an east-west axis between Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Cherokee, North Carolina. Our first stop was Newfound Gap, elevation 5,046 ft.  Here we also stood at the border between Tennessee and North Carolina and took in some awesome sights.

First stop, Clingmans Dome.  Then onto the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.  Third stop, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Finally, we hope to do a short hike to see some waterfalls in the Smokies.

After a long day touring the Smokies, with some walking thrown in for good measure, we walked into Gatlinburg proper for a nice dinner at Cherokee Grill. Here are some of the sights.  Our restaurant. I had southern fried catfish, mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli.  Conor had southern fried chicken.  Clare had a crab cake sandwich, and Suzanne had an asian sirloin beef salad.  Conor's and mine were by far the tastiest. Before: And after: After dinner, I stopped in at Berkshire's for a hot apple dumpling, topped with whipped cream and frozen custard. Not pie, but altogether very good.  Finished it in about five minutes.

After arriving back in Gatlinburg, we detoured out of town for a quick auto tour on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail. This favorite side trip is a six mile, narrow one-way loop road that travels through beautiful woods and next to the Roaring Fork mountain stream. Along the way, there are a number of well-preserved log cabins, grist mills, and other historic buildings. We visited the home of Ephraim and Minerva Bales. It's a small two-room cabin where they raised nine children. Gives some credence to the "tiny house" movement.  Here is some of the scenery we viewed along the way.