North Carolina - Day 21 - back to Murphy

Murphy/Peace Valley KOA, Marble

Saturday, 22 July 2023

today's route

We left the campground soon after 8:00 and by 8:30 we'd found a PetsMart in Asheville.  Murphy, where we were headed, is too small for really well-stocked stores, and Asheville is the nearest large city (354,000 residents).  So I tried to load up on supplies before we went west.

From there we went once again to the French Broad River dog park - still nobody else, though I thought there might be on a Saturday morning.

I saw a bumper sticker that read "Hall/Oates '04."  Sounds good to me.  Even the part about going back to 2004 when life seemed simpler.

On US-74 I saw a sign saying "Slow Moving School Buses Use This Highway."  Reminds me of one I saw a couple of weeks ago about farm equipment.

At Waynesville 2 cars pulled out so closely in front of me that I had to brake.  Then suddenly, with no signal, they both put on their brakes to turn right.  I couldn't change lanes and had to do some serious braking to avoid a real mess.  In this area, US-74 is more than a highway - it also functions almost like a residential street in some places.  I imagine local folks don't think anything about pulling out in front of traffic, acting as if the speed limit were 30 mph like in a town.  But I was going highway speed, and I'm driving a large vehicle with a lot of momentum behind me.  With folks like these, leaving a safe following distance is a pipe dream - they don't allow it.

Further along, 2 more cars and a biker did the same thing.  Were they all hung over from partying on a Friday night?

I crossed the Tuckasegee River.  I really like these names.

It's odd that I've driven this road several times recently and still see things I haven't seen before.  This time I saw more signs about hill gradients: 3 said 7% slope, 2 said 6% slope, and 1 warned of 5% slope.  This road is very hilly (duh) and winding and really beautiful this time of year.  I'm guessing it's pretty any time of year, even after trees lose their leaves because the woods here are a mix of evergreens and deciduous trees.

I crossed the Little Tennessee River.  This river starts in Georgia, runs through North Carolina, and winds up in Tennessee.  This river, like the Tuckasegee, flows northwest, which seems odd to me until I remember that 2 days ago I crossed the Eastern Continental Divide.

At the town of Bryson City, a sign told me it was the "Home of the 2013 Freestyle Kayaking Competition."  This seemed improbable and almost incomprehensible, so I looked it up.  And it's a fact.  In 2013 Bryson City hosted the world championship kayaking competitions in 8 different categories.  The scene for all this was the Nantahala Gorge, which I soon came to along the road.

The gorge is 8 miles deep, and this road runs right alongside for part of the way.  And it's that 8 mile depth that was the reason for all those 7% etc. downhill slopes.  There are multiple water-related businesses along this road, which as I mentioned is narrow and hilly and winding.  There are only 2 lanes and no shoulder for much of the road's length.  A sign warned that "Slow Moving Rafting Buses Use This Highway."  What's more, this is the truck route - the main route, really - for anyone traveling east to Asheville from Tennessee.  I can't even conceive of how they managed to accommodate traffic on this road during the full week of the competition.

Eventually I made it to Andrews, where we stopped at a highway rest area we've visited before.  In fact, we've stopped here often enough that Dexter knows exactly where we are and where we walk.

We crossed the Valley River and by 1:00 we were in our site at Murphy KOA, with the waste tanks emptied and the water tank filled.  Three different people told me "welcome back" when I got here, which is nice.