Townsend Tales: The Smokey Mountains

Kirby and I needed a weekend away and had never been to the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains. Kirby did some research and found a train we could take to explore the mountains - a 4 hour ride out of Bryson City, North Carolina. I did some research and found that it was high season and the lovely little cabins with the great views and hot tubs were way out of our price limit for this trip! I found us a cute little motel room right in town where we could not only walk everywhere we wanted to go but also could sit on our little balcony and watch the river roll by. It was a "quaint" little room with pick curtains and a pink bed cover. I will admit that it was one of the cleanest rooms I have ever stayed in with a good mattress and clean fresh bedding. The bathroom also was the cleanest ever - and the smallest. As you can see from the picture, it could be challenging to use! The toilet is closer than it looks in the picture to the sink!! But there was a window that opened to the river! And everything that should shine, did.

This is our view from the little balcony. It was a lovely place to hang and enjoy the late afternoon and a glass of wine.

We really enjoyed being able to walk everywhere we went. It was about 4-5 blocks to the other end of town - or at least as far as we wanted to go. We were at one end and the pub with the brewery next to it were at the other end. We were up before the sun on the first morning (comes with age - can't help it!) and hoped to get coffee at the Cork and Bean but they didn't open until 8:30! Late! We found a bakery and got muffins and returned to our room and had our coffee in our room. We were just too early! Kirby was a sport and posed for this picture for me!

Then it was off to the train station and our excursion into the forest!

We met really nice people from Vermont on the train. The layout was four seats facing each other so we didn't know who would be sitting with us. We lucked out! They were nice and interesting and fun to be with. I had a mimosa first thing as I was on vacation! We also had lunch on board and lots of entertainment from our serving person. I think she wanted to be an actress and did a great job of entertaining everyone!

We made a stop along the way and everyone got off the train and wandered around the area. I am not sure what the area was as we didn't even know we were going to be deboarding. I think they called it a Welcome Center. There was food, drink, shopping and lots of kayaks and rafting. The river was pretty low and very cold - about 45 degrees so there were not too many partakers of the water sports. But we enjoyed our time walking around and watching the 300 plus people who got off the train with us!

We were excited to see the Appalachian Trail!! After hiking the Pacific Crest Trail so many times when we lived in California, this was a treat for us so we took each others picture. Some of us didn't want to do that and made a funny face. Can you tell which one that was??