This is a retrospective blog of my seven-week exploration of Virginia along with a journey through the Shenandoah National Park and on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina. 'Retrospective' means simply that it wasn't written during the trip, but is being written after-the-fact, a little over a year later. Baaswell Sheep accompanied me and is writing the blog in the way he's done my later blogs, since he's so good with the color commentary. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan for this blog back when I was doing the trip, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little larger than I do in my later blogs.
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Our home for the last four nights has been the McKinley Edwards Inn up on School House Hill on the west side of Bryson City. We commonly stay at places that are Victorian era or close to it, but this one looked interesting even if the buildings with the rooms are a bit newer. We had a third floor "walk-up", which gave my companion a lot of exercise, but it proved to be quiet and pretty comfortable, and it was a real treat to have such beautiful stained glass windows in the outside doors of our room. The breakfast setup was a small buffet, but with freshly cooked items each morning, which we appreciated, as most places simply bring out a full plate of food that sometimes is more than we can eat. We also appreciated the lovely gardens on the property that included a genuine flower "bed" and a freestanding porch swing where we spent an hour or two every night. We definitely recommend this place and hope to be back in the future.
Maggie Valley Area
Wanting to do something a little different this morning, we drove out east along US 19 through Maggie Valley and looked in a few of the shops there, but never found anything we wanted to actually buy. On the way back to Cherokee, we stopped off at Santa's Land and looked around the public gift shop area just to see what sorts of merchandise they offered. Santa's Land is a small amusement park, so you have to buy and admission to see anything else there, and we weren't interested in doing an amusement park today, even though I do find my companion to be a bit of a kid at heart.
Heading back to Cherokee before turning south, we stopped in an old favorite, a buffet style restaurant in Cherokee called Granny's Kitchen. It's good homestyle food and plenty of it for a very reasonable price, and it was a nice way to have an early dinner before we started the drive to Georgia.
Heading south down US 441 from Dillsboro towards Franklin, there's an interesting little place on the left side of the road that is a museum to all products and artwork connected to the not so humble housecat. My companion just had to stop and look around, and it was unbelievable the amount of stuff they had packed into the place. There were figurines, stuffed animals, poster, prints, paintings, and every imaginable product that could have a cat featured on it or in it somehow. And, of course, a couple of live cats, though they were not the friendliest pair. We immersed ourselves in the collection for the better part of an hour before heading on southward. I include a few pictures below – we took a bunch more, but I don't like including pictures of copyrighted products and/or artwork in this blog unless they're on open display outdoors.
Well, we're back in Georgia now, but we're going to squeeze a couple more days of fun out of this trip before we return to normal life. We're spending the next two nights here and my companion hopes to go on a horseback ride tomorrow (as for me, I have my own four hooves, thank you very much.) We had a little time before dark today, so we went out see the animals in the barnyard, which was rather amusing.
Please note that all restaurant and product names are used simply for referential purposes and links provided as a courtesy. Reviews are the sole opinions of the reviewer: no restaurant has paid to be listed here, and no restaurant is being explicitly endorsed. In other words, go out there, try them all, and form your own opinions!
Our home for the last four nights has been the McKinley Edwards Inn up on School House Hill on the west side of Bryson City. We commonly stay at places that are Victorian era or close to it, but this one looked interesting even if the buildings with the rooms are a bit newer. We had a third floor "walk-up", which gave my companion a lot of exercise, but it proved to be quiet and pretty comfortable, and it was a real treat to have such beautiful stained glass windows in the outside doors of our room. The breakfast setup was a small buffet, but with freshly cooked items each morning, which we appreciated, as most places simply bring out a full plate of food that sometimes is more than we can eat. We also appreciated the lovely gardens on the property that included a genuine flower "bed" and a freestanding porch swing where we spent an hour or two every night. We definitely recommend this place and hope to be back in the future.
