North Carolina – Mountains and Rivers

We left Gaffney, SC late last week and drove about three hours through the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains to Murphy, NC.  The mountains were just starting to show a little color, so we knew we were in for some great scenes while riding the motorcycle.

The Great Smoky Mountain Expressway through our windshield

The Nantahala River from the motorhome window

We are parked at Rivers Edge Mountain RV Resort, six miles south of Murphy.  This park is just what we like, long pull-through sites on concrete with paved roads.

River's Edge RV from the highway- We're in the middle right

After spending a week in the rain in Virginia, it was great to have clear skies and warm weather for a week straight!  Our first trip on the motorcycle was north to the Nantahala Outdoors Center along the Nantahala River.  We have stopped here before on motorcycle trips and our daughter, Jessica, spent a week here in leadership training before entering her freshman year of college.  We had a nice lunch at a small restaurant along the river and enjoyed watching the kayakers.

We then stood on the foot bridge shown above and enjoyed watching two really good kayakers on the river.

 

A small kayak called a play boat used for freestyling

The Nantahala River is controlled by a dam operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.  We came by the same area two days later at a time when the TVA had shut down the water flow and observed a completely different river as shown below.

During our lunch visit, we stopped to talk to the local rafting vendor about a trip the next day.  We made arrangements for the 2:00 trip and returned the next day for our adventure.  We shared the raft with a guide (very important to rookies like us) and a Dutch family from Curacao, a small Dutch island just off the coast of Venezuela.  It was a beautiful day and we had a great eight mile ride of over two hours.  The picture below was taken at the end of the run.  John is in the white hat and Pam, well she is easy to spot!

The weather looks great for the next couple of days so we look forward to some great motorcycle riding in the mountains.