Day Three: Arrival at Base Camp

Okay, third day, and we're finally at the hotel where we'll be staying for five nights, the Hampton Inn in Franklin, NC. It's on a hill outside of town, with a tremendous view from the parking lot of the mountains (the view from our room isn't so good). But it's centrally located for Cherokee, the Great Smokies, northeast Georgia, and other places we're interested in, as well as the location of gem mining that Sarah loved at four and wants to do again at eight. (More on that anon: don't expect major finds.) It will be out base camp for things 20 to 50 miles in each direction over the next five days.

Today we drove down from Asheville, stopping at Granny's Chicken Palace in Lake Junaluska for lunch and to introduce Sarah to down-home family style southern cooking; then on to Cherokee where we introduced her to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian to make sure she understood real Cherokees before seeing the tourist traps with Plains teepees and Northwest totem poles, neither of which the Cherokee ever saw. We have some Cherokee kin (you can read an introduction to them here), and I wanted her to understand the real story. We also visited the Qualla Arts and Crafts store across the street. Then on to Franklin after looking at one of the cheap souvenir stores. We'll be back to Cherokee for other sights and events; it's on the edge of the Great
. Smoky Mountains National Park. Besides the gem mining attractions, which are mostly an excuse for kids to cover themselves in mud, Franklin is also the old Cherokee Middle Towns center of Nikwasi. Nikwasi is the site of one of the few surviving Indian mounds in these parts, which sits right downtown. Stay tuned.

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