North Carolina Vacation - Day 3 (part 2)

Now for the rest of our vacation, day 3. We made it across the mountains and headed down the very long road to Cade's Cove. This river followed the road the entire way and even though it was pretty cold, we saw these people kayaking.

After driving for awhile, we finally made it into Cade's Cove. It's a driving tour. It was pretty long because of the distance itself, and the fact that you have to go very slow. But it was well worth it.

There are quite a few historic buildings here, and I believe they are all in their original spot. This one is John Oliver Place (circa 1820) - the oldest in the park.

It was interesting to see just how tiny these houses are. What kills me is that people have written on and carved their names in the walls of these places. So destructive and so sad.

But look at this view.

After that house, there were three churches. This grave was outside of the Primitive Baptist Church (1887). Note that it says he was murdered by North Carolina Rebels.

Here's another section of the same graveyard.

This is the Methodist Church (1902). We read that it had two doors because men & women entered through separate doors, and sat on opposite sides of the church, but that they didn't follow this. They just copied the plans from another church.

This is the LeQuire Cantilever Barn.

And the Cable Mill (1870).

Another unique barn.

I believe that this is a corn crib.

And yet another unique barn.

Now the main reason we didn't get more photos on our way to Cade's Cove, was that we figured we could take more time coming back home, and we'd stop then. So we left Cade's Cove and headed out. We finally made it to the end of the road, expecting to turn right, and take 441 back towards Cherokee, NC. Except the road (Newfound Gap) was closed. For snow & ice. Oh my god. We pulled in to the visitor's center, only to find it was also closed. I didn't panic, but definitely got kind of worried. We were in Tennessee. We needed to get back to North Carolina. So we headed the only way we could.

And that was Gatlinburg. We had a GPS but it was worthless. It kept trying to have us do a u-turn. Thankfully we had an atlas with it. We had to make a huge circle out of the way to get back home. It took about 4 hours, but we made it! It was quite the adventure. I kind of wish now that we had just found a hotel room in Gatlinburg, and spent the next day coming back across the Smokys, but we were afraid that Newfound Gap would be closed again, and we'd be stuck. It was a long day, but we had a great time.