Monday
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
The Great Smoky Mountains hold special significance to a particular group of people. The "
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians" is a protected tribe of Cherokee natives who, during the "
Trail of Tears" in 1838 under president Andrew Jackson, resisted and fled into the Great Smoky Mountains to avoid exodus. These Cherokee survived the exodus and eventually the US federal government recognized them and provided them a protected area of land, known as the "
Qualla Boundary." "Qualla" means "our land" if I recall correctly. The Qualla is located in the southern part of the Smokies and borders the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Some of the national park gravel roads are primarily accessible by driving through some Cherokee backroads. It's a shame I didn't get more pictures of the Cherokee roads. One notable thing is that all road signs within the Qualla Boundary include the english name up above, and the same name in the Cherokee native language down below.
Oconaluftee River
One of the main attractions through Cherokee is the Oconaluftee River. Further up on National Park grounds is the Oconaluftee Visitor Center where we submitted our paperwork for the 3 campsites where we intended to stay.
Beech Gap Trail
The original itinerary was to hike the
Beech Gap Trail up to Mount Sterling Ridge Trail, and hike across there up to campsite#38, where we would set up camp. Beech Gap Trail comprised the first 2.5 miles of this trip. Unfortunately this involved a 2000 foot rise in elevation (in the span of 2.5mi), something I was not really aware of until we started. 9 miles for our first hike is a bit excessive in the first place, but doing an almost 20% grade with a lot of gear on my back was too much for me to handle. We ascended Beech Gap Trail to its top and then after having a late lunch, followed by a 20 minute nap, I declared that I couldn't do the rest of it. I do not want to know what would have happened if I did. We did start up to the trail a bit through what was supposed to be the "flat" part but, it wasn't really flat, seems the trail did a lot of gentle ups & downs and in that physical state I would likely have collapsed. I thought I was in half decent physical shape, but I was totally unprepared for that. After we descended Beech Gap Trail and got back to the car, we found a hotel in Cherokee and recovered for a few hours. I believe around midnight we got the urge to eat dinner, and ended up driving out to Waynesville NC (
~45min away) for a taco bell, which is funny since apparently there is a taco bell inside Cherokee on Business US-441 but I totally forgot about it.
Anyway, here's some pictures of that wretched trail (some showing up ahead, some showing down behind us)-
Yeah, I'm fuckin' beat-
He totally wasn't-
Gaining elevation-
And finally at the top-
