Cherokee NC 7-29-15 Wednesday to 7-31-15 Friday

Cherokee NC – 7-29-15 Wednesday We did a walk around the campground, had breakfast and later went to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park which joins the Cherokee Indian Reservation. We saw some wild turkeys as soon as we got into the park. We had planned to stop at the visitor's center and tour the homestead that is there but the parking lot was about full so we decided to come back some other time when it was not as busy. We went the Smokemont Campground in the park to see if they had made any improvements to it. We camped here in August 2011. There were a lot of people using the campground. They have added two new dump stations in a much better place.

We checked out a few more commercial campgrounds in the area and then stopped in Cherokee at the DQ for some lunch and an ice cream sundae before returning to the campground.

Cherokee NC 7-30-15 Thursday We did our morning walk, had breakfast and later went to Bryson City about 10 miles outside of Cherokee. We had not been here since bringing Jackson (our oldest grandson) with us on a PT Cruiser Car Owners' Get-to-Gether in 2010. They have a old train that you can ride that takes trips up into the mountains.

We walked around town and stopped at the Cork & Bean to try their coffee and pastries. The cinnamon bun was excellent but the latte was just okay. I think we have come to the conclusion that most of the coffee shops we try are afraid to put any coffee in the lattes so most of them are like warm milk with some flavoring. The building was kind of neat. It was a former bank building that was built in 1905. They were using the vault as a storage room. This is the second coffee shop we have tried recently that was a former bank.

We returned to the campground to relax and read the remainder of the day.

Cherokee 7-31-15 Friday We did our morning walk and had breakfast. I finally installed the new tube in my bicycle tire that I had blown up when we were in Canada in early July. The rest of the day was relaxing, reading and watching all the weekend campers coming in and setting up. This campground has about 375 sites plus several small one room cabins and almost all were full by dark.