North Carolina - Day 4 - east and north to Boone

Boone KOA, Boone

Sunday, 2 July 2023

today's route

According to Google, Asheville would be less than halfway on today's drive, and I already knew that part would take a couple of hours, so we left Murphy at 8:00.

Just past Andrews, I came to a turn labeled for the Granny Squirrel Covered Bridge.  Apparently this area is known locally as Granny Squirrel, named for the stream running through it.  Legend has it the name came from a Cherokee woman named Squirrel and, as she got older, her name was attached to the area where she lived.

I had a heck of a time finding anything about that covered bridge online and still know nothing about it except what it looks like.  All of the photos are copyrighted, but this website has a nice photo.   https://pixels.com/granny-squirrel-bridge

I passed 2 labeled slide areas.

And I passed the turn for the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Later I found the highway I was on was designated the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway, also the Appalachian Highway.

This road to Asheville is, surprisingly, the recommended route for truckers, and I saw plenty of them even on Sunday.  This is the road with so many curves and hills and no shoulders.  We went down a 9% grade for 2 miles to the Nantahala River and Gorge, and through the Nantahala National Forest.  Followed by 3 7% grade downhills.  And later by 2 6% grades.

I'd hoped for lighter traffic because of it being a Sunday but forgot all the rafting companies and other water sports promoted in this area.  I saw lots of vehicles carrying kayaks.  A sunny Sunday meant lots of folks coming out to enjoy themselves.  When I got glimpses of the river I thought it looked like melted milk chocolate. 

The mimosas are blooming and looking beautiful.  Speaking of which, North Carolina seems to plant masses of day lilies all over their highways.  Maybe some are natural, but the concentrations I see at highway entrances can't be coincidences.

At Asheville, we stopped at the French Broad River dog park we've been to before.  Today it was downright crowded.  I talked to a young woman who said she'd moved here from Dubai.  She said in the summer it was too hot there for dogs to walk on pavement, and she and her husband sent their dog to day care on a dog bus to a big warehouse with air conditioning.  She said her dog loved it and jumped right into the bus and knew where his assigned seat was.  She said cactus doesn't grow there but they had palm trees instead.  And camels.  And her dog used to chase the gazelles when they'd come around.  It certainly sounds like a different world.

Leaving town on an interstate, I realized this is one of the only times I couldn't tell I was on an interstate.  It was a beautiful drive - not only lots of green trees but also the mountains seemed to be green.  (Yes, I know they're the Blue Ridge Mountains.)  Actually, we were driving through the Pisgah National Forest.

One section of the road included an extremely steep hill that went on for several miles.  Truckers were told to exit the highway for driving instructions before tackling the hill, and the drive included several runaway truck ramps.

We went through the small town of Old Fort, which seemed to be a nice old town.  It says it's the Home of the North Carolina Gold Festival in early June.  They say that before gold was discovered in California, North Carolina was the nation's leading gold producer.  

For some reason, the town displays an arrowhead that's at least 5' tall and mounted on a pedestal that's another 3' or so.  As I was leaving town I saw a very large plant for a company named Auria, which turned out to be "a leading global supplier of automotive acoustics and fiber-based systems."  I guess that's the primary employer for the town.

We passed the small town of Pleasant Gardens (no highway sign but I saw the name on businesses and churches).  

And coming into the much larger town of Marion - elevation 1,400', they say - I passed a building labeled the Historic Carson House, c. 1793.  After so much traveling, I of course assumed it referred to Kit Carson - forgetting I'd left him behind back west.  This Carson was a colonel and, in the Revolutionary War, fought at the historic Battle of King's Mountain in South Carolina.  This house was used as a stagecoach stop for years, where folks like Daniel Boone, Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson passed through.  The house is now a museum.

All along the drive today I passed churches in every town, all of them well attended, judging from their parking lots.

At one point, 2 bikers passed me.  Both of them were wearing full protective clothing and both had a pair of "saddlebags" - those metal containers attached to either side over the rear wheel.  And one of the bikers had a case of Bud strapped behind him.  First time I've seen that.

As I drove north I came to multiple places with the name Linville: Linville Mountain, Linville Caverns, Linville Falls, Linville Gorge.  Linville River was named after an in-law of Daniel Boone, and I suppose these other features were named for the river.  The caverns are privately owned, open to the public (for a fee) and are the only "show caverns" in North Carolina, per Wikipedia.  The parking lot there was packed when I drove by.

Eventually I came to the town of Boone (named for Daniel, of course).  Boone has a population of more than 19,000 and calls itself the Heart of the High Country.  The elevation here is 3,333' (2,000' higher than at Marion earlier), so Boone claims the highest elevation of any town larger than 10,000 folks east of the Mississippi River.

The campground was about 4 miles from town, and we were in our campsite by just after 2:00.  A long day of driving, thanks to all the mountains we drove through, so I was glad to be able to stop for a couple of days.