Thursday,
July 2nd – Friday, July 10th
Franklin, N. Carolina
Picasa picture link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/107097369989809012646/Summer2015FranklinNC?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCOy88Zy2npXPdQ&feat=directlink
We finally made the transition from Georgia to N. Carolina.
Again, we took the Hwy 441 route north towards Franklin. We passed through
several small towns along the way, as we rose higher into the mountains of the
Nantahala National Forest. The weather is so much cooler and less humid up here
in the Great Smoky Mountains!
We stayed at a lovely RV park that we had found in 2008 on a
trip to Franklin before we even had an RV. River Bend RV park is along Hwy 28
(Highlands Rd.) situated along the convergence of the Cullasaja River and
Ellijay Creek. This small park has only 13 campsites and is one of the nicest
that we have ever stayed in. All the sites backed up to the river. We really
love this area of the mountains, with its cooler summer weather, mountains,
valleys and rivers. We spent July 4th celebrating with a feast at
the campground and later watching the fireworks in Franklin.
During our 9 days here, we were able to kayak the Little
Tennessee River, hike the Appalachian Trail in three different places (Winding
Stair Gap-north of Hwy 64, Winding Stair Gap – south of Hwy 64, and Wayah Bald Mountain).
We took the dogs and they ran around the trail like crazy and played in the creeks. We have trained them
to stay on the trail and close to us.
One of our missions on this trip was to scout out some land
where we can setup utilities and necessary amenities to make a home for our RV
for extended time periods. We spent two days and looked at 8-10 different
properties with our requirements of having gently sloping to flat land, off a
paved road, 1.5 – 2 acres, preferably a creek and trees. We did find a couple
in the Franklin area, one in particular we instantly loved. It was back in
Cowee Valley, north of Franklin, about 5 miles from the highway, with awesome mountain views. This
1.6 acre lot had everything we wanted! It was very lovely with many large trees
for shade and a beautiful creek running along one side. It was already fenced
and had electricity installed. We really love this one, but want to look around
some other areas of the N. Carolina mountains/towns.
Next stop is in the Sylva/Dillsboro area. There will be
kayaking, hiking and property searching there also.
