A Cabin in the Smokies

Once the Shoreline Duathlon was done, my focus quickly shifted to preparing for our upcoming vacation in North Carolina.  Why North Carolina?  Last winter, I was having a conversation with a friend via Twitter and she sent me a link to a resort property in the Nantahala Gorge that she'd always wanted to stay at.  After looking through the website and doing a little additional research, Mr. R&R and I determined that the area sounded interesting, but the resort wasn't quite the right fit for us, so I did what I always do: turn to Google. My searching led me to a vacation rentals company located in Bryson City, NC (about 3 hours outside of Charlotte).  I plugged in my criteria and the next thing you know, I was reserving a cabin for the last week of August.

Our flight was insanely early on Saturday morning (rolled out of bed at 4:30am after 2 1/2 hours of sleep) and just to make it more interesting, the fine folks at the Department of Transportation decided that Saturday morning was an ideal time to shut down the only freeway exit to the airport and start tearing it up - with no signage to warn us!  After an annoying detour, we managed to park, check our bags and make it through security in 20 minutes flat - which was a very good thing since our flight started boarding about 15 minutes later!

The flight to Charlotte was uneventful and as soon as we collected our luggage we caught a shuttle to pick up our rental car (which was more expensive than 2 round trip flights!). Soon enough, we were on our way to the Smoky Mountains.  The roads grew curvier and the mountains began to appear in the distance.

We also passed a road sign that my un-caffeinated, sleep-deprived self found far more amusing than it really was.

Finally we pulled into Bryson City.  To be perfectly honest, Mr. R&R and I both experienced one of those "Oh shit. What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?" moments.  Bryson City itself was about 2 blocks long by 3 blocks wide and looked like a cross between tourist trap hell and a complete and a run-down dump.  We located the rental office (a lovely little house across the 'street' from what appeared to be a scrap yard) and got directions to our cabin - about 20 minutes away from Bryson City.

Once we arrived at the gate to the cabin community, things got really interesting.  The private road leading up to our cabin was wide enough for one car (although it was a two way road), full of sharp, blind hairpin turns, and steep as hell!  The nail-biting 1.25 miles was totally worth it when we made the final sharp turn up our driveway and were greeted with our first look at our "cabin".

This was no cabin. It was a house!

Kitchen

Dining Area

Living Room

Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Back of Upstairs Porch

Front of Upstairs Porch

View of Road from Front of Upstairs Porch

Back Yard Fire Pit

After a quick tour of the house, we hopped back in the car and made our way back to Bryson City to stock up on groceries for the week.  The map the cabin company provided was utterly useless, but fortunately the GPS/Navigation app on our phones (affectionately dubbed: 'Not Siri') worked and eventually we found it!

The light was starting to fade as we drove back to the house and neither of us wanted to try negotiating that crazy road in the dark!  On the way back, we saw something that you just don't see back home: