NORTHEAST GEORGIA BLOG

This past weekend my wife and I got together with some great friends of ours and headed up to Gatlinburg for the weekend.  We had a fantastic time – all the way around – from the actual roadtrip to our stay in the Smoky Mountains.  We stopped at the WalMart in Clayton to pick up some food, drinks, and misc items.  Seems like we always stop there.

We stayed at a place call Mountain Heritage Inn.  MHI is located back on River Road just off the main Parkway – but it’s possibly the best location we’ve had in all of our stays up in Gatlinburg.  The place is old.  It’s not a luxury hotel by any standard.  But we knew that in advance so our expectations were not particularly high – we were just glad to get a reservation – very busy weekend with all of the leaf lookers!  More on our accommodations later.

We had a great trip up to Gatlinburg  – via Cherokee NC.  The trip over the mountain to Gatlinburg was very slow – bear and elk tend to stop traffic.  It’s a short 35 miles but you should allow at least an hour for this little journey.  It was about a 3 hour drive from Oakwood so we were sitting in the parking lot of our motel by around 1130 or so – thinking we would have to wait to check in we had planned on eating lunch and coming back.  Much to our surprise they had our place ready to go and we were allowed to check in as soon as we pulled up.  Our accommodation was called a “rondette” – a little round cabin-type thing with two bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, and a living room.  They look like they were built in the 70’s —- because they were!  I think the lady at the desk said they were built in 1971.

Once we got checked in it was time to hit the Parkway.  We walked.  We walked.  And we walked.  I think we went in every shop in town.  We finally took a break and had some lunch at CrawDaddy’s – great little place to have a lunch and watch some football!  They had outdoor seating – sitting above the main road – great location for people watching.  We wimped out and ended up inside – it got kinda chilly out there.  I’d recommend this place – get the appetizer sampler – try those fried gator tails – they were awesome.

After more walking and shopping we ended up back at our little cottage.  We fired up the charcoal grill and cooked some new york strip steaks – nuked some baked potatoes and beans in the microwave – all the while enjoying a few drinks and some great conversation.  Nothing like being up in the mountains with some good friends, having some good food, and enjoying each other’s company over a couple of drinks.

And then we crashed.

Sunday was an eventful day.  Steve and I woke up early and walked around town – got back to our cottage and he cooked up some french toast – fabulous!  We did a little walking around town, packed up, checked out, and headed for home – well – sort of.  The road over the mountain to Cherokee was the worst I’ve seen it in 30 years – so I decided to take the alternate route – the foothills parkway to I-40, around to Maggie Valley and into Cherokee – a long way around but with far less traffic.

Not a good choice.

I’ve made this trip dozens of times – usually when the road over the mountain is closed due to snow and ice – so I wasn’t very concerned about where we were headed.  Until…well…we got detoured by some Park Ranger folks onto this horrific, terrible, and dangerous dirt road.  We followed this sucker for about 25 miles – took us a little over 2-hours.  We had a small pack of cars – 4-5 of us – following each other, top speed of about 8 mph.  It was rough.  We ended up way too far east on I-40 than I anticipated – so the old route was out of the question, especially when I looked at the interstate and saw a complete lockdown.  Turns out they had a rockslide that morning and a portion of the interstate was shut down.  Ugh.

So – after driving all the way to Asheville – down to Greenville – we got home about six hours later.  Not the most fun I’ve had – wouldn’t want to repeat that drive again anytime soon.  Other than that little glitch, we had a fantastic time.  Gatlinburg is a great place for a short weekend trip – it’s close and there is a lot to do.  You can spend a ton of money, or you can be thrifty and spend little – lots of options when it comes to lodging and dining.

The leaves were spectacular!

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Filed under: RoadTrips