Marble, NC trip: day 2

 

We started the day out with a cup of coffee on the deck and an excellent mountain view. I was checking my email and such and Raymond was reading the local paper. He came across an article that struck us both a little funny. The next town over, Andrews, decided to remove a stop light. In our county we don’t remove anything, we keep adding and adding and adding.

 

Our loosely laid plans for the day were to travel north to the four lane, the high way, and head west on 28. We had been on this mountain road in the past, but we were heading to another scenic view off of it.

 

I mention the word “loosely”, because we never know exactly what we end up doing. That’s the beauty of a vacation, there really aren’t many plans, maybe a direction. On our way to the mountain, we stopped at several places that kept delaying our destination, but not our journey.
Our first stop was at a fishing hole owned by the Welch family. During the Indian wars John Welch would give local Indian families refuge from the marauding settlers.

After that we stopped for a biscuit at Hardees, this was a top of the morning destination and not to be interfered with. While there a guy walked in the restaurant without a shirt on. We asked an employee about the “No shoes, no shirt, no service policy” and she said, “He has a shirt. See it’s in his hand, so he’s good.” We grinned and finished eating.

 

An quaint old thrift shop ran by Hank was our next unscheduled visit. Raymond was interested in two items and neither one of them were for sale. We waited till we were in the car before we laughed about that.

 

We stopped at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, also known as the NOC. I didn’t know that the NOC was on the Appalachian Trail , AT for short, or I would have talked to more people about there walk on the AT. We ran into several people walking the AT and a pair of ladies took our picture next to a AT sign. They were running from the hurricane, Matthew.

 

We stopped by a nice little restaurant by a creek called Kelly’s, they boasted about their Bison Burger. It was very good. We also received more information about the fly remedy. Hang a water filled sandwich baggie to keep flies away. The water interacts with the flie’s eye sight, you can put a few pennies in it to keep the water clear.

 

Further up the road we pulled into Ruby Mines. At this little spot you can buy a bucket of sand and sift for gems. I bought some neat little rocks for my Grandson Blake, he loves Geology.

 

I finally ate some Boiled Peanuts at the next stopover. I don’t see the appeal. The peanut guy gave us directions to our destination, which turned out to be in the wrong direction. His directions took us further back in the hills past a Trout farm and Winery. We kept trucking and it eventually took us through the very scenic Tellico Gap. At the top of the gap was an intersection with the AT. It looked like it might have been a resting spot for many hikers.

 

 

After we continued down the mountain we went home for a rest, before we went back out to watch the movie The Magnificent Seven. If you like westerns, you will probably like this movie.

 

It was a great day with my best friend.