May 21 - A Day Out In Cherokee

What a fun day! We were up a little earlier and had ham/cheese toast with cantaloupe for breakfast. Got our showers and took Xena for a long walk and spent time visiting with fellow campers. These are all really friendly people and they are all interested in my grape tomato plant. They can’t believe how big it is and how many tomatoes it has. I’ve discussed gardening with a couple people. The women all talk about that I drive the RV. They say I’m a better woman than they are and that if it were up to them to drive they wouldn’t go anywhere. Bill says I’m the talk of the park.

Carved long statue in front
of Cherokee Museum

After lunch we went into town to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Following a short intro movie, you follow the trail of the Cherokee from their belief of inception to the Trail of Tears when they were moved to the west. The Cherokee that hid in the mountains and refused to leave became the Eastern Band of Cherokee, while those who were moved west are the Western Band. They say there are no records of who is related to whom from each band. We spend some time in the gift and made some phone calls from the car since we haven’t had service since we were in town yesterday.

Bill with Legend Bear

Next we went on our search of the painted bears. There were originally 20 but the lady at the Visitor Center told us there were only 18 still out as a bus hit one and it’s be repaired, and the one in front of their building had been stored while some work was being done. We got a map of where they all were. We managed 6 within walking distance of the car and then we drove to the others. We managed to find all of the locations but found there were two others missing in action. The last one is in the park on an island and we saw it but will go back another day to get the last photo. Each bear is painted differently, some for where they are displayed, such as the one in Veterans Park is a Patriotic Bear and the one at Museum is Sequoyah Bear since he “invented” the Cherokee alphabet. The different artists all had different ideas and no two are even similar.

Sequoyah Bear

It was time to head back to the RV for a while to feed Xena and Molly and take Xena out. After the walk I had a glass of wine and we read til it was time to leave for dinner. Bill had talked to the campground host and she recommended 2 places in Cherokee. One was a buffet, so that was out. The other was Paul’s. Most of the menu was fried, which I love, but I had the beef tips and Bill had a steak. It was really pretty good but we should not have ordered the fried pickles. They were good but too much grease.

After dinner we stopped at McDonald’s so I could do some email and load the blogs I did last night. Bill did his email as I had both laptops going and Dell stopped on me 5-6 times.

On the way home we saw what Bill said was a white tail deer that was huge. I saw it last night in the dark and its head was so big I thought it was a cow that got loose from someplace. It was in the exact same spot and had some kind of collar on so we guess it was owned by someone. I will try to get a picture next time. It was getting dark out and there was a car behind us tonight.

Xena was howling when she heard the truck pull up and ready for another walk. They had their treats and we watched a bit of TV while I did my blogs.