Our original plan was to go to Cherokee NC where we hoped it would a highly spiritual event honoring culture of the Native Americans who honored the earth in this area.  Our dreams are to fence up our property and live on the earth that we can call our own and since we haven’t been able to reach any goals related to improving our land so we can reduce our cost of living, we felt we needed some spiritual guidance…touch base with those who lived close to the earth and fought hard to keep their home.  We wanted to connect with a time before materialism controlled the country and living with the earth…not just in house on top of it…was the normal way to live.

We set out of Beech Island SC on Friday June 12th, but after making sure there was food for both kids and animals for the weekend and food for us to camp, we kinda doubted that we were going to have money do much on this trip.  We didn’t know how much money we would have so we didn’t reserve any camp sites.  We hoped that with what we had in our account would be enough to rent a camping spot somewhere.

We traveled up route 28, then connected to 178, then the 215.  The scenery along those routes was breathtaking, The weather was beautiful and we were doing really well on gas.  Our first scenic stop was near a wooden bridge….The creek was beautiful so I wanted to stop for a close look.

Unfortunately chair access towards the bridge was not going to work and my walker hadn’t been released from it’s strong bungee hold on the whole trip so it was not really accessible.  I tried to use our shovel for a cane but that wasn’t working out so well.  Finally we decided to just get back on the road and see if we could find more accessible locations.  This was going to be a learning trip for me, I was going to have to learn to use my chair in a whole different way if I wanted to enjoy the scenery.

The sun was going down when we got on the parkway so we started thinking about camping for the night.  We were never going to make Cherokee before dark and since we had no reservations or idea of where to camp we hoped we would find something nearby.  There was a tourist sign that said “limited roadside camping” so we figured we would find something, yet we had no idea how this roadside camping worked.  We did see lots of open spaces that were great pull off and scenic locations but they were all crushed rock and did not seem to be camping sites.

We traveled till we found a little tiny campground called “At the Ridge“.  It was a small little family owned site and was just the right kind of rural space we wanted.  We pulled in and asked the only other camper at the site how much it was, he pointed us to a guy on the other side of the gate who could check us in.  Amy went and talked to the guy and we found out it was only $15 a night.  Wow!!!  All the other places we looked up were over $25.  This was great.  The guy said pick whatever site we wanted so I got out and rolled around till I found an area I could navigate easily in the dark.  We set up camp quickly and I got busy cooking some fish and rice.  We got to bed early for our trip to Cherokee the next morning.

Rise and Shine about 8am, broke camp and talked with the owners who welcomed us back if we didn’t find a place to camp in Cherokee.  It was such a nice place we kinda did wish we just stayed, but our destination was Cherokee so we decided to go that way.  We saw lots of road side overlook sites so decided we would make this a scenic sight seeing trip too.

Here is the first place we stopped

We headed out towards the Blue Ridge Parkway which is an extremely fun road filled with lots of S curves, hairpin turns and spiral curves and of course scenery.  We stopped at most sites that had chair accessibility, and was thankful that just about every site did.

This photo below was really interesting.  We had come upon a scenic overlook which had an exhibit.  It was basically a bridge to nowhere.  It expanded out several feet over the valley.  In looking down we saw an oak hugging a spruce tree.  If you look closely at the left limb you can see it’s wrapped around the green trees behind it.

We finally made it to Cherokee.  I’m not sure what made us decide that we were not entirely thrilled with Cherokee, for me it was the site of the huge ugly casino in the middle of a cultural village.  You are presented with that before you really get into the heart of the villiage and that seemed to ruin it for me.  I wanted to be someplace free of all the materialisim and the idea that money is needed for happiness, but that glaring casison with multi lanes of traffic to guide casino visitors was kind of slap in the face…a wake up call that money rules.  Evidently you need money to keep a history in a museum.  However, whatever, I was unfortunately disappointed by so much materialism and so little of what I believed I would find in a people connected so tightly to the earth.

We did stay to visit the free outdoor exhibits and watch the Warriors of AniKituwha
I was highly impressed with the Warrior dances and would love to see them again.  I caught video of the “Ant Dance” which is a social dance.

Shortly after the dancing was done we visited the Qualla Arts and Crafts to see some of the cultural arts that were kept alive.  We took some pics in front Sequoyah statue.

We then decided to head back to that beautiful camp ground we stayed at on the way to Cherokee.  We didn’t really have money to go inside the museum, nor to pay admission to any of the other places we had been interested in, but the real goal of the whole trip was to get away from home and commune with nature and we could do that peacefully At The Ridge.

On the way back to the campground we stopped at the WaterRock Knob welcome center.  We stopped there on our way to Cherokee and it was simply a beautiful scenic place.  They had a pedestrian walk up the side of a hill, and at the top there would be a lookout.  I kept looking at the hill wondering if I could make it up there.  Amy said we could kick ourselves in the butt if we didn’t at least try.  So I decided to try.  Everyone coming down off the hill was encouraging, yet let me know it was a hard walk on foot.  Amy walked up a ways to see if I could do it safely and it appeared I would be able to be safe in trying it out.

So here is Waterrock Knob Trail

My goal was to at least make it part way…I really wanted to get to the top but I know my limits.  A ways up I set my personal goal of a break in the fence on the right side.  You can’t see it in the picture as it’s around the corner but if you look to the left at the bushy flowers, to the left of that is a spot where you can see the fence again.  That is where the fence ended on the right hand side and that was my personal goal.  Amy stayed close behind me till the hill got too steep to move in a forward facing position so I spun around to pull it up in a rear facing direction.  Not easy and I had to stop every few feet but eventually I did make my goal of the break in the fence.  I was interested in going further and Amy scouted the path beyond that area but it would be an extremely steep upgrade, hard on foot and since I’m not conditioned for that kind of wheeling it would most likely be impossible for me at this time in my life…perhaps in the future though   Amy caught video of me coming down the hill.  I’m pretty proud of this one.

After my trek up the hill and down we headed back to the campground When we pulled in they were happy to see we were back and we went in to pick a spot.  Since it was daylight I could see the places better and I chose a nice place right on the creek.  It was a tight squeeze for our tent but we pulled it off.

Amy circled some stones, collected some fire wood and started a fire for the night.

I got out the grill and started some charcoal going for our dinner

We were both exhausted from our day and retired early.  The sound of the creek, the horses, dogs…even Burt the campground dog who was rambling through our stuff again..LOL…was a pleasant backdrop.  We got up around 10ish to get some more pictures of the beautiful campground.

This was a nice place to camp, simple, rural, and quiet.  We will come back to this one someday.  We left camp around 2 pm headed back to Beech Island.  Of course soaking up all the scenery on the way home.  We wanted to check out some of the waterfalls and found a map for one on a road called Diamond Creek Road.  It was on a county tourist waterfall map so we decided to try it.  Ummm…there should have been a warning this road was not for the weak of heart, drunk drivers, or unskilled motorists.  It was a very scenic, very curvy and dangerious road that would have really been fun in a 4 wheeler.  We came to a spot where we were met with two big pickups with trailers coming the other way.  There was no place to pull off, there was a cliff side on our side and a sheer drop off on the other, oh, and no guardrails.  We pulled as close to the cliff side as we could and stopped the truck in hopes that that the other guys could make it safely around us.  Well they did of course.  Then we had to pull our own truck out of the wet gravel on a road that had no guard rails to stop us from going off the edge should we fishtail.  Amy handled it perfectly and we got out without a problem.  The waterfalls were up a few paces, around a few curves but after that little episode I felt perhaps we should just enjoy the picture on the visitor map and get the hell off that road!

I noticed on the map that the road actually circled back to pretty much right where we started from when we left the campground.  Rather then going back down the road, we just kept going till we did a huge loop and came back to where we started and then headed home.

It was a great trip and it all cost under $50.  Like I said in my cell tweets, the truck was good on gas and the scenery was free, can’t have a better vacation than that.