"Off-season" at Biltmore means the tickets are cheaper, the gardens are bare but not barren, and your dining options are limited but still ample. "Off-season" in Bryson City, North Carolina, at the southern end of Smoky Mountains National Park, means that there's just not a heck of a lot to do.
I'm not really complaining. Mostly I am on the way to see family in eastern Tennessee and the way you get there from Asheville is, luckily enough, through the Smokies. I had anticipated spending a couple of days based in Gatlinburg, on the Tennessee side, if for no other reason than to get a head start Friday morning when I head north. But the snow on Wednesday made me nervous about driving through the mountains so I figured I could still get a taste of the Smokies in Winter from the east side. And I think I have.
For instance:
And this:
And this:
Beautiful no matter what the time of year! I've been to the Smokies in July, and obviously the beauty in early March is more, um, subtle, but it's not hot and there are no crowds.
Those pictures are from Wednesday, the day it snowed. Apparently depending on where you were in the area, you got one to six inches of snow. It was nearly all gone by the mid-afternoon and only a few roads were still wet.
Temperatures rose slightly on Thursday, into the high 40's, so the snow was mostly gone when I hiked around. I got a kick out of this path because water was running down it (which you can kind of see in this picture) and it seemed to be the complete opposite of the Rio Grande.
Also on the south side of the park is a historic building:
This is an old turbine mill that was operational until the owner (not named Mingus, by the way) sold it to the Feds during the Depression. In the summer they have demonstrations of it.
Ah, the summer. When every place is open. Dare to dream.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. There are places open, just not every place. For instance, I wanted to see the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina, on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and a coldish day like Wednesday seemed like a good day to do so. But it wasn't open - I found out later it was because of the weather that day and that normally it's open.
Cherokee is an odd kind of tourist trap: a combination of Smoky Mountain activities (motels, tubing trips) with more moccasin shops than you can shake a stick at. And if you want a carved stick, they can take care of that, too. Lots of Indian-themed stores which I frankly didn't have the energy to explore. They just seemed too kitschy.
Fortunately the museum opened on Thursday so I was able to visit. It's a beautiful museum - Harrah's, located down the road, is a sponsor, so it's not a hand-typed-notecard sort of place. They do a really interesting job of intertwining Cherokee heritage - and by that I mean mythology and stories and art - with history - and by that I mean the Western view of history, with names and dates.
And if you've been around for 11,000 years, you've got a lot of stories to tell. Unfortunately for most of the Cherokee, those stories ended in tragedy either along the Trail of Tears or at the end of it, in Oklahoma. The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of the Cherokee (along with four other tribes from the southeastern U.S.) in the 1830's. (Interestingly, you can actually walk parts of the Trail of Tears which are scattered in several states. The National Park Service has a handy guide here.) The Creeks and the Seminoles lost roughly half of their population who died along the way.
Remember John Ross? Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation? Right, that John Ross. We met him outside of Chattanooga, in Rossville, last month. Anyway, his wife shared her only blanket with a sick child and ended up dying on the forced relocation. She was one of an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 Cherokees who died during the relocation.
I've been to Oklahoma, and let's just say that its countryside isn't exactly lush. It's flat. There are no forests to speak of. It's dry. To move people who view nature as an integral part of their lives from someplace like the Appalachian Mountains to someplace like Oklahoma is beyond cruel. And of course, there's the whole "leaving behind everything you have and traveling hundreds of miles without much in the way of food and shelter" thing. But then again, I haven't yet found any history of U.S. Indian policy that makes me proud.
There was some irony to the Indian Removal, as it was called. ("Removal" is a pretty neutral word, don't you think? Other than the fact that it's used to describe actions taken against human beings, it all sounds very sanitary.) Anyway, in 1814, the life of Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson, was saved at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend by a Cherokee named Junaluska. I guess Jackson didn't seem to feel this was a favor to be returned to Cherokees in general, because it was under his Presidency that the forced relocations began. Junaluska was quoted as saying that if he'd known what Jackson would later do, he wouldn't have saved his life. I think that's fair.
So, you may ask, if all the Cherokee were relocated to Oklahoma, why is there a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina? The short answer is, they weren't all relocated. The longer answer is more interesting.
In 1817, a 12-year old white orphan named William Holland Thomas arrived in the area where he was eventually adopted by the Cherokee Chief Yonaguska. As a child, Thomas worked in a trading post and became fluent in Cherokee. As an adult in the 1830's, he served as attorney and advisor for the Oconaluftee Cherokees and helped keep them from being relocated. After the Civil War (in which he fought for the Confederates and led a unit of Cherokees; they were attacked near Bryson City according to the historic marker I saw) he was able to purchase land that eventually became the Eastern Band reservation which exists in Cherokee today. (Interestingly, while Wikipedia calls him a chief, the museum calls him an "unofficial chief." I guess I'll go with the museum on this one.)
There's a lot more history described in the museum, including a trip that several Cherokee leaders took to England in 1762. If you're ever in the Smokies, drive over to the museum and take a look around.
Cherokee is a beautiful language to look at. The street signs in the town are in both English and Cherokee, and there was even a billboard in Cherokee. Here's what the language looks like. Of course, I have no idea what this says. I'm just putting it here so you can see it:
Most of the time when you drive through an Indian reservation you don't see much. At least, that's my experience in the west. The reservations are pretty rural and the main roads generally don't go by towns - lately, of course, they tend to go by casinos, but that's a recent development. So I was fascinated by Cherokee and I'm glad the snow kept me on the eastern side of the Smokies for another couple of days.
Tomorrow, north to Tennessee and then Kentucky and then Indiana to see some family. Catch you in a few days!
I'm not really complaining. Mostly I am on the way to see family in eastern Tennessee and the way you get there from Asheville is, luckily enough, through the Smokies. I had anticipated spending a couple of days based in Gatlinburg, on the Tennessee side, if for no other reason than to get a head start Friday morning when I head north. But the snow on Wednesday made me nervous about driving through the mountains so I figured I could still get a taste of the Smokies in Winter from the east side. And I think I have.
For instance:
 |
| Deep Creek Trail |
 |
| Toms Branch Falls
|
 |
| Indian Creek Falls |
Those pictures are from Wednesday, the day it snowed. Apparently depending on where you were in the area, you got one to six inches of snow. It was nearly all gone by the mid-afternoon and only a few roads were still wet.
Temperatures rose slightly on Thursday, into the high 40's, so the snow was mostly gone when I hiked around. I got a kick out of this path because water was running down it (which you can kind of see in this picture) and it seemed to be the complete opposite of the Rio Grande.
 |
| Walking Path |
 |
| Mingus Mill |
Ah, the summer. When every place is open. Dare to dream.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. There are places open, just not every place. For instance, I wanted to see the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, North Carolina, on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and a coldish day like Wednesday seemed like a good day to do so. But it wasn't open - I found out later it was because of the weather that day and that normally it's open.
Cherokee is an odd kind of tourist trap: a combination of Smoky Mountain activities (motels, tubing trips) with more moccasin shops than you can shake a stick at. And if you want a carved stick, they can take care of that, too. Lots of Indian-themed stores which I frankly didn't have the energy to explore. They just seemed too kitschy.
Fortunately the museum opened on Thursday so I was able to visit. It's a beautiful museum - Harrah's, located down the road, is a sponsor, so it's not a hand-typed-notecard sort of place. They do a really interesting job of intertwining Cherokee heritage - and by that I mean mythology and stories and art - with history - and by that I mean the Western view of history, with names and dates.
And if you've been around for 11,000 years, you've got a lot of stories to tell. Unfortunately for most of the Cherokee, those stories ended in tragedy either along the Trail of Tears or at the end of it, in Oklahoma. The Trail of Tears was the forced relocation of the Cherokee (along with four other tribes from the southeastern U.S.) in the 1830's. (Interestingly, you can actually walk parts of the Trail of Tears which are scattered in several states. The National Park Service has a handy guide here.) The Creeks and the Seminoles lost roughly half of their population who died along the way.
Remember John Ross? Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation? Right, that John Ross. We met him outside of Chattanooga, in Rossville, last month. Anyway, his wife shared her only blanket with a sick child and ended up dying on the forced relocation. She was one of an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 Cherokees who died during the relocation.
I've been to Oklahoma, and let's just say that its countryside isn't exactly lush. It's flat. There are no forests to speak of. It's dry. To move people who view nature as an integral part of their lives from someplace like the Appalachian Mountains to someplace like Oklahoma is beyond cruel. And of course, there's the whole "leaving behind everything you have and traveling hundreds of miles without much in the way of food and shelter" thing. But then again, I haven't yet found any history of U.S. Indian policy that makes me proud.
There was some irony to the Indian Removal, as it was called. ("Removal" is a pretty neutral word, don't you think? Other than the fact that it's used to describe actions taken against human beings, it all sounds very sanitary.) Anyway, in 1814, the life of Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson, was saved at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend by a Cherokee named Junaluska. I guess Jackson didn't seem to feel this was a favor to be returned to Cherokees in general, because it was under his Presidency that the forced relocations began. Junaluska was quoted as saying that if he'd known what Jackson would later do, he wouldn't have saved his life. I think that's fair.
So, you may ask, if all the Cherokee were relocated to Oklahoma, why is there a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina? The short answer is, they weren't all relocated. The longer answer is more interesting.
In 1817, a 12-year old white orphan named William Holland Thomas arrived in the area where he was eventually adopted by the Cherokee Chief Yonaguska. As a child, Thomas worked in a trading post and became fluent in Cherokee. As an adult in the 1830's, he served as attorney and advisor for the Oconaluftee Cherokees and helped keep them from being relocated. After the Civil War (in which he fought for the Confederates and led a unit of Cherokees; they were attacked near Bryson City according to the historic marker I saw) he was able to purchase land that eventually became the Eastern Band reservation which exists in Cherokee today. (Interestingly, while Wikipedia calls him a chief, the museum calls him an "unofficial chief." I guess I'll go with the museum on this one.)
There's a lot more history described in the museum, including a trip that several Cherokee leaders took to England in 1762. If you're ever in the Smokies, drive over to the museum and take a look around.
Cherokee is a beautiful language to look at. The street signs in the town are in both English and Cherokee, and there was even a billboard in Cherokee. Here's what the language looks like. Of course, I have no idea what this says. I'm just putting it here so you can see it:
 |
| Credit: http://ani-kutani.com/13moons/13-moons-page1a.jpg |
Tomorrow, north to Tennessee and then Kentucky and then Indiana to see some family. Catch you in a few days!
We vacation in the Cherokee/Bryson/Sylva/Whittier area and love it. You're right about Cherokee being....interesting. Both kitschy and respectful. In the summer they have a nightly drama, "Unto These Hills", about the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. Safe travels!
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